Skip to main content

Unify your PC and accessory lighting with Razer’s expanded Chroma support

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Razer has expanded its stable of supported devices and accessories for its Chroma lighting system to include third parties. That means that anyone running AMD, MSI, Thermaltake, NZXT, and other third-party accessories will be able to synchronize their lighting effects with Razer products and with one another, to make for a prettier, more uniform lighting experience.

Most of the major gaming mice, keyboard, and PC makers offer some form of lighting with their products. The problem with that though, is that unless you happen to buy all of your accessories from the same company, making them look cohesive in the way they blink and flash isn’t easy — even with control software. With Razer’s new Chroma partnership scheme though, you’ll be able to make a much more unified lighting profile for your gaming system.

Recommended Videos

Razer Chroma is a lighting platform that combines back-end software for customizing RGB LEDs across a variety of devices, with game profile support for unique looks when playing games like Overwatch, Fortnite, Thumper, and many others. Now those games and profiles can be supported across AMD, Lian Li, MSI, Vertagear, Ducky, NZXT, and Thermaltake devices. The Chroma platform already supports Philips smart lights and Nanoleaf light panels for full room ambience, as per The Verge

That broad swathe of company support means that you can have your PC case, motherboard, keyboard, mouse, headset, and other accessories, all synchronized to display the right colors at the right time, and the right frequency. It’s made possible through a new Razer API which helps connect them all to the Chroma software. This makes integration of the Chroma platform far easier for developers than Razer’s previous partnership offering, which required hardware makers to hard-program the products to work with Chroma. With the API, companies can simply add that expanded functionality to their lighting systems through software.

The only downside to this is that at present, most existing products don’t support it. Razer suggests that the first products from third parties to fully support Razer Chroma will be released toward the end of this year.

If you’d rather just get your hands on some great gaming accessories right now, these are our favorite gaming keyboards.

Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale is a freelance evergreen writer and occasional section coordinator, covering how to guides, best-of lists, and…
PS5 controllers now work even better with your PC
A hand holds a DualSense Edge.

Sony is extending its reach into the PC gaming world with the introduction of its new PlayStation Accessories app. The new application allows players to fully customize the DualSense Edge controller directly from their Windows PCs.

Offering a suite of customization options that were previously only available on the PlayStation 5, PC gamers can adjust stick sensitivity, button mapping, and trigger dead zones, among other settings. This level of customization brings the PS5’s premium controller experience to a broader audience, making it a compelling choice for PC gamers looking for a high-quality controller with a wealth of options.

Read more
This new game will make your gaming PC sweat
black myth wukong benchmark

Black Myth: Wukong is coming out next week, but ahead of the game's release, developer Game Science has put out a dedicated benchmark tool. The free app, which is available on Steam now, will push even the best graphics cards to their limits, and I took it out for a quick spin to see how demanding the game really is.

The short answer is extremely demanding. As you can see from my initial run below, I was only able to achieve an average of 22 frames per second (fps) in the benchmark at 4K with maxed-out settings. That's with the most powerful gaming hardware available right now, pairing an RTX 4090 GPU with a Ryzen 7 7800X3D.

Read more
This is the best PC gaming hardware I’ve reviewed this year — so far
Forza Horizon 5 running on an Asus gaming monitor.

We're only halfway through 2024, and I've already reviewed a ton of PC gaming hardware. Despite the most exciting launches coming in the back half of the year -- Ryzen 9000 and RTX 50-series GPUs chief among them -- there's already been a deluge of hardware built for PC gaming.

It's been a surprisingly packed year already, but there are six pieces of hardware that stand out from the crowd. From graphics cards to gaming monitors to a keyboard (of all things), here's all the PC gaming tech you can't afford to ignore.
Nvidia RTX 4070 Super

Read more