MOBO upgrade and RGB questions

[JJBandit]

Hey folks,

Long story short, i have been buying Asus ROG STRIX everything (much to my eventual dismay)

I have had more issues with the Armoury Crate than most people have, and i vaguely recall contacting Asus for some advice, and they said they think i may have had a faulty MOBO, but at the time it was too much hassle to remove the board and send it back to them, so i never bothered. A few times AC has worked perfectly fine, so i managed to get a few nice looking RGB patterns going and just never really ended up changing it due to fear of loosing everything.

The AC simply says i have no AURA enabled devices connected (most of the time), but the AC sees them all connected in the update manager

I have tried using iCUE which does seem to pick up all of the devices, but can't control the RGB on them. And i have tried openRGB which scans, tries to see the MOBO for about 30 seconds, then ends the scan and nothing shows. I suspect its something to do with the motherboard, but i have no idea what. I have tried uninstalling, using removal tools, changing/deleting the registry objects.

I'm now at the point where i'm considering upgrading my MOBO, and i'm a bit worried/unsure about what to get. My main concerns are:

1) I would like it to be a significant upgrade if possible, if i'm going to have to pay for it, i want to get my moneys worth, but on the flip side, i could really do with keeping the RAM and processor for obvious financial reasons. But i understand that for a significant upgrade i'm going to have to consider a new CPU and DDR5 RAM. But i'm quite out of date with whats good and whats not these days. Without going overkill, can anyone recommend a MOBO, or MOBO + CPU + RAM bundle thats a decent step up from what i already have? I'll pop a wishlist below.

2) As i basically have everything already Asus ROG STRIX, i need something thats going to work with it all. I'm happy to get another ASUS ROG STRIX MOBO, IF its actually going to work with my hardware. But i would like to move away from the Armoury Crate where possible, as its not a great app. But if it actually worked, i would be quite happy to keep using it.

3) If i was to get, lets say a Corsair MOBO, would that mean i'm no longer forced to use armoury crate, and iCUE or openRGB would actually work? AC seems to force install at the point of booting up, and i cant find an easy way to stop it.

4) for anyone who has the armoury crate, do you think its my board that screwed and causing the AC to not pick up any of my devices (most of the time)? or it is really that bad?


So my current setup is:

Asus ROG STRIX z270E GAMING Motherboard
Asus ROG STRIX RTX 4080
Asus ROG Ryujin 270 AIO cooler (i think its the 270)
Asus ROG Helios Case
Asus ROG Flare Keyboard
Intel i7 7700k CPU
32GB Corsair DDR4 RAM
UTech MMO Mouse
Some other RGB case components

My Wishlist for a MOBO (bundle?):
At least a decent, preferably significant upgrade from what i currently have
Onboard RGB would be nice
ARGB headers (currently only have RGB)
Will be able to easily control my other Asus hardware and lighting
Hopefully under the £500 cost, but i can be a little flexible for a full bundle


Does anyone have any suggestions, answers, or at the very least, can point me in the right direction?
Any advice would be greatly welcomed.

Or is there anything i might need to know or may be missing?

Thanks in advance

 

[JJBandit]

Hi Guys appreciate the advice so far, Its really helpful!

In both cases, you will likely need to get a new mounting bracket for your AIO.

With regards to the additional mounting bracket for the AIO, is this due to AMD CPUs being taller? Or will this be the case with Intel CPU's also? Are they just taller now so need a higher mount?

With regards to ARGB just don't bother with the manufacturers buggy software and download OpenRGB instead.

Well, this is kinda the issue i'm having, I tried OpenRGB, and it doesn't pick up any of my hardware either. It seems to get stuck on SMBus (i think) then gives up. So i'm guessing this is something to do with a faulty chip on the board that controls the RGB or hardware identification. But iCue seemed to sometimes eventually pick up most of the hardware except the AIO and Mobo.

Is there much of a difference between Intel and AMD these days? I have pretty much always had Intel CPUs in the past. But have heard/read AMD are as good, if not better, especially if well cooled.

I'm not into overclocking, so don't need anything that is uncapped/unlocked as such. Is that still a thing? or is everything unlocked these days?