Hi all!
I know that AMD has software for controlling RGB on Windows. I found some old threads where someone suggested disconnecting the LEDs themselves, which is not something I’m willing to do with my 2-day old card.
I also would love not having to switch to Windows just to turn the bloody RGB off.
I’ve never used OpenRGB and I don’t quite understand their compatibility guide for the 9070, so I’m not sure if it’s doable there.
So! Does anyone here have that card and was able to disable RGB on Linux?
As a sidenote: I just realised that my OS sees two GPUss - the dGPU and the iGPU. Is there a way I can turn iGPU off so that it doesn’t get in the way?
Any help appreciated!
Oh, I should probably mention - I’m on:
OS Garuda Linux x86_64
├ Kernel Linux 6.13.8-zen1-1-zen
├ Packages 1366 (pacman)[stable]
├ Shell fish 4.0.1
DE KDE Plasma 6.3.4
├ Window Manager KWin (Wayland)
There is a patch-series that is now merged into 6.15-rc1 that exposes more i2c/RGB controllers on the GPU side for AMD cards, so that kernel + OpenRGB (as others have mentioned) might be a solution down the line
Patch series for reference: https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/amd-gfx/2025-January/118399.html
Ah, good to hear there’s hope! Thanks for that!
Yeah openrgb is your best bet, but like others already pointed out it can be hit or miss. For example i used to have a sapphire nitro+ vega 64 and that thing never worked with openrgb in linux. They used a weird implementation that someone would have to reverse engineer in order to get it working, which to my knowledge never ended up happening. At the moment i’m using a reference rx 6950xt and it just worked straight away.
Aren’t the reference AMD cards, Sapphires? Lol.
There is no AMD reference design for the 9070 or 9070 XT.
I’m not sure if they still are, but yeah i think they were made by sapphire as well. My vega was specifically a nitro+ though, so not a reference design.
Fiddle with OpenRGB and see if it works. If it doesn’t, check if there’s any open issues for your model of card - you might be able to aid testing, and if you’re likely, someone might have already made a branch that hasn’t been merged yet. That was the case with my keyboard.
Googling it, some might also have support for using hooking to the motherboard RGB header instead of internal controls.
You can’t really disable rgb but you can set brightness with openrgb to 0. Also you could try to disable igpu in bios
You can’t really disable rgb but you can set brightness with openrgb to 0.
I guess that’s good enough.
Do you speak from experience with 9070, or just in general as a “thing that OpenRGB does”?
From experience with gpu that had leds
For the iGPU issue, there should be an option in your setup utility/BIOS on your motherboard that either allows you to disable the iGPU entirely (usually in the settings for CPU or chipset, can vary from board to board), or (in the case of my Asrock board at least) there is a “dGPU only” mode that automatically disables the iGPU when a dGPU is detected. For the RGB, since the 9070XT is a partner only card (so many different manufacturers make them), the RGB implementations can vary a lot between models as there is no standard design (would be wise to edit your post to say which specific brand and model of card you have in case other people with that brand have experience with it). It might be worth just installing openRGB anyway and seeing what it detects automatically, as it could pick it up.
I would rather disable it on the OS level because I’m slightly paranoid that the dGPU dies at some point and then I can’t even access UEFI, because the iGPU is disabled.
I can’t guarantee this, but I think most motherboards would fail safe if the dGPU is removed and give you the UEFI over the iGPU. If you’re worried about it, you could always change the setting, then remove your GPU to test what happens when you try to pull up the UEFI.
In general, I’d suggest being a bit more curious and playing around with stuff, even if more carefully. Like you said you didn’t understand the options for OpenRGB and it sounds like you didn’t try installing it at all to eliminate it as an option before posting. I understand being anxious but you’re not going to learn much if you’re not willing to muck up sometimes. It’s not like an app like OpenRGB is going to break your GPU or anything.
In general, I’d suggest being a bit more curious and playing around with stuff
Man, I’m 40, my 9-5 job is being curious, testing and retesting stuff. When I’m home, I just want to play some games…
Like you said you didn’t understand the options for OpenRGB and it sounds like you didn’t try installing it at all to eliminate it as an option before posting
Yeah. I’ve learned (through curiosity and testing, btw) that it’s super easy to break stuff in Linux, so I was a bit weary of installing third party software that does “something” to control the LEDs on a graphics card.
I did test it out yesterday, though. Sadly, does not recognise the GPU. It did recognise my mouse, though, which is neat.
It’s not like an app like OpenRGB is going to break your GPU or anything.
That’s the thing - I’m in a state where stuff works and is fine. That came after five reinstalls and three distros. Linux is not Windows - it’s fairly easy to do some unrecoverable* damage if you don’t know what you’re doing.
* yes, I know, technically everything is recoverable, but that requires knowledge and time, neither of which I have for this kind of stuff.
Which model of the card do you have?
Sapphire Pure RX 9070 XT.
You can maybe use OpenRGB to turn it off https://openrgb.org/
If you want a ghetto fix just a white piece of tape over the RGB.
The last option is to stick the card in a Windows PC and run the Sapphire TriXXX software to turn off the RGB.
Which brand/model card do you have? There’s no “reference design,” so it matters.
Sapphire Pure RX 9070 XT.
Sometimes there is a small hard to see switch on some gpus that will just turn off RGB. I know asrock cards are like this.
Ooh, nice one! I’ll need to have a look for some detailed manuals/design diagrams of the Sapphire Pure, see if it’s mentioned.
It was not mentioned for my Asrock card i just found the switch
You can take the card apart and unplug the RGB.
Downvoters: do you not own screwdrivers? Opening a video card isn’t exactly hard.
someone suggested disconnecting the LEDs themselves, which is not something I’m willing to do with my 2-day old card
Bawk bawk BU-CAWK! – <chicken>
Does the GPU store the RGB settings?
I use Corsair iCUE and I configure on a Windows VM. If I turn off the VM it keeps the settings in some hardware memory and works as if I configured it from Linux.
Huh, a Windows VM might be a brilliant solution to this.
And now I’m wondering - could I maybe use something like Bottles or Wine to install the Windows software that handles Sapphire LEDs? Or would these apps not see the dGPU when virtualised like that?
It’ll depend on the implementation of the software. iCUE did not work using Wine when I tried it. I have no clue about Sapphire.
