Hardware

• NZXT Control Hub
• NZXT Kraken 2024 Elite RGB (AIO cooler)
• NZXT F420 RGB Core fans (×2, connected to Control Hub)
• NZXT F120 RGB fan (connected to Control Hub)
• ASUS Aura LED Controller (motherboard ARGB/RGB headers)

Installation

liquidctl is available in the Arch repos:

sudo pacman -S liquidctl

Discovering Devices

liquidctl list

Device #0: NZXT Control Hub
Device #1: NZXT Kraken 2024 Elite RGB
Device #2: ASUS Aura LED Controller
Device #3: ASUS Aura LED Controller

Four devices show up. Device #3 is a duplicate — the ASUS Aura controller exposes two HID interfaces but only one accepts writes. Even with sudo, device #3 returns OSError('Could not write to device'). Safe to ignore it.

Initializing Devices

Before setting colors, devices need to be initialized:

liquidctl --match "ASUS" --pick 0 initialize
liquidctl --match "Control Hub" initialize
liquidctl --match "Kraken" initialize

The --pick 0 flag selects the first result when multiple devices match the same filter.

Identifying Control Hub Channels

The Control Hub showed three LED channels during init (led2, led4, led5), but I wasn’t sure which was which. I set each to a distinct color to identify them:

liquidctl --match "Control Hub" set led2 color fixed ff0000  # red
liquidctl --match "Control Hub" set led4 color fixed 00ff00  # green
liquidctl --match "Control Hub" set led5 color fixed 0000ff  # blue

Result:

• led2 — nothing (no device connected)
• led4 — F420 RGB fan unit #1
• led5 — F120 RGB fan

I then tried led1, led2, led3 and found the second F420 on led3. So the full map is:

Setting Colors

ASUS Aura uses static mode:

liquidctl --match "ASUS" --pick 0 set sync color static E41C91

The sync channel sets all channels (ARGB + RGB) at once. You can also target led1 or led2 individually.

NZXT Control Hub uses fixed mode:

liquidctl --match "Control Hub" set led3 color fixed E41C91
liquidctl --match "Control Hub" set led4 color fixed E41C91
liquidctl --match "Control Hub" set led5 color fixed E41C91

Other supported modes for the Control Hub: off, fading, spectrum-wave, covering-marquee, super-rainbow.

Sampling the Color from My Wallpaper

Rather than picking a color by eye, I sampled the dominant colors from my wallpaper using ImageMagick:

convert wallpaper.jpg -resize 100x100 -colors 8 -format "%c" histogram:info: | sort -rn

This gave me the top colors by pixel count. The dominant purple was #5C3A8C and the hot pink accent was #E41C91 — I went with the hot pink.

Kraken 2024 Elite RGB — Partial Support

The Kraken 2024 is a newer device and liquidctl’s driver doesn’t support ring LED control yet (_color_channels is empty). However, the LCD screen is controllable:

# Show coolant temperature (default)
liquidctl --match "Kraken" set lcd screen liquid

# Display a static image (640×640)
liquidctl --match "Kraken" set lcd screen static /path/to/image.png

# Adjust brightness
liquidctl --match "Kraken" set lcd screen brightness 80

I kept it on liquid mode to show coolant temperature.

Persisting with systemd

Colors reset on reboot, so I created a script and systemd service to reapply them automatically.

~/.local/bin/set-rgb.sh:

#!/bin/bash

# Hot pink from wallpaper (3-milad-fakurian.jpg)
COLOR="E41C91"

# ASUS Aura LED Controller (device #2) — motherboard ARGB/RGB headers
liquidctl --match "ASUS" --pick 0 initialize
liquidctl --match "ASUS" --pick 0 set sync color static $COLOR

# NZXT Control Hub — led3/led4: F420 RGB fans, led5: F120 RGB fan
liquidctl --match "Control Hub" initialize
liquidctl --match "Control Hub" set led3 color fixed $COLOR
liquidctl --match "Control Hub" set led4 color fixed $COLOR
liquidctl --match "Control Hub" set led5 color fixed $COLOR

# NZXT Kraken 2024 Elite RGB — ring LEDs not supported by liquidctl yet
liquidctl --match "Kraken" initialize
liquidctl --match "Kraken" set lcd screen liquid

/etc/systemd/system/set-rgb.service:

[Unit]
Description=Set RGB LED colors
After=multi-user.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/home/danny/.local/bin/set-rgb.sh
RemainAfterExit=yes

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Enable it:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now set-rgb.service

Summary