Soldato
This is something a little different from me, I don’t usually look at software, but Corsair mentioned that they had new version of the Link software, Link 4. I mentioned I didn't think I would be the best person for it as I hated the previous software, it was buggy, riddled with issues and caused more problems than it solved in my opinion. Corsair told me that due to this, I was exactly what they were looking for, they wanted to change my opinion of the software and try and convince me it is now worth it. A hard sell!
Corsair sent me some products to help me with this, a Corsair AX1200i digital PSU, some Corsair RGB LEDs, a Link Commander and also a Corsair H100i. These all have the “Corsair LINK” logo on the package so we can assume that they all work well with the new Link 4 software. The logo can be seen below.
So, let’s have a very quick look at the hardware side of things before we actually look at the Link software. with a set of Dominator Platinum and a Neutron XT SSD all I needed was a motherboard and a GPU.
First up I want to show you the Corsair Commander Mini, as the name suggests, this is a small unit that helps to 'command' your multiple Link enabled Corsair products, It has 4 Link Digital connection headers, 4 temp sensor headers 6 fan headers and an LED header for the RGB strips.
The Commander mini comes with 4 temperature sensors as well as one digital link cable and 4 fan extension cables.
The Corsair Link RGB LED Lighting Kit (purchased separately) also comes with connectors which plug straight into the commander unit, giving you control of them via the Link 4 software.
We have all seen a Corsair modular PSU, but the difference with the Digital series is that we get a Comm Port, this really does open a whole host of features with the Link 4 software which I will go into later.
You can use the PSU with the link 4 software without having the Commander Mini. Included in the box there is a Corsair Link Digital unit and a cable to connect it to the PSU, the other end of the Corsair Link Digital unit connects to your motherboard via internal USB header. If you do have a Commander Mini, then you can connect the PSU straight to it by using one of the Corsair Digital Link headers.
Corsair Dominator Ram can also be used with Corsair Link, however, I realised that the connectors on the ram are different than any of the other connectors I had available, after some research I found out that these are only compatible if you use the Corsair Airflow PRO. Not a major issue, but slightly annoying.
I also had the Corsair H100i V2 to use for this review, as the eagle-eyed of you might have noticed, this comes with a USB mini connector, so out of the box isn't compatible with the Corsair Commander mini, but the H100i V2 does come with a cable to allow you to connect it to an internal USB header and you can also use an external USB to Mini USB cable if you do not have enough internal headers available.
You might have noticed that I mentioned the connectors a lot so far, and this so far is my only gripe with the Link-enabled products, they use many different connectors! Admittedly, I didn't really research the Commander mini, but I expected everything to be able to be plugged into it directly, straight out of the box. So Cooler, PSU, Fans, Ram, LEDs, Temperature sensors and anything else that is released. Unfortunately, this isn't the case and although I was able to use all of the products (except for the RAM) without purchasing anything additional, it just seems like Corsair missed an opportunity.
So, now we have had a quick look at the hardware, let's do what we set out to do and look at the Link 4 software.
Inside the AX 1200i there was a nice little card letting me know that if I wanted to download the latest version of the Corsair Link software, I could find it at www.corsair.com/linksw . It is a very small download so even on a low-speed connection, you will have no problems. After downloading the software you will have an installer .exe, looking something like the one below.
Run this and you will start to install, it is a very quick install and couldn't be simpler. After the install is finished it will request you to restart your computer, ensure you do this and then your software will be ready to use.
Once you start up your Link software, you will be greeted with this home screen, there is a lot of information to process here and you can click on almost anything to get even more details.
I will start with the temperature sensors as there are quite a few of these, but the interface is the same for them all upon clicking one of the sensors a pop-up will appear with two different tabs, "Configure" and "Notifications". The configure tab is very simple, it allows you to rename the sensor and also shows you a graph of your current and past temperatures. The Notifications tab has a few more options to make sure you can be alerted if there are any problems with your temperatures, you can set minimum and maximum temperatures and then you can completely control what happens if the values go outside of these parameters. The Link 4 software gives you the ability to automatically shut down the PC after a set period of time, run a file of your choice, trigger all LEDs to a certain colour or set all the fans at 100% speed. You are also able to select multiple actions so that the Link 4 software can turn all the LEDs a certain colour at the same time as setting the fans to 100% for example.
Next, we are going to look at the fans, again, we have two tabs, "Configure and "Notifications". Under the Configure tab, you can completely control how you want your fans to act, you can do this using the Mode drop-down box and selecting one of the pre-made fan profiles, or you can create your own using the "Custom" profile. You can also "Group" each fan individually so that each fan can be controlled independently from a separate temperature sensor, or you can group them all together to run as one, it is entirely up to the user.
Next, I am going to look at the H100i V2, this has a temperature and fan speed control like above, but it also has pump and LED configuration. You can Choose between quiet mode and performance mode for the pump, allowing you to control the pump RPM. The notifications tab works the same as the fans and temperature sensors but we can also select an LED colour for the cooler. There is an option to pick two colours, one for when it is working as per usual, but you can also set another colour if the temperature gets too high. Yet another way the Link software keeps the user in control.
Speaking of LEDs, if you are using the Corsair Link RGB LEDs with the Commander Mini, you can also control them using the Link 4 software, we can choose between modes, such as cycling through multiple colours, or alternatively have them temperature based. If you want to change the colour based on temperature, you can also put them into a group, so if it is in the CPU package, it will be controlled from the temps of the CPU.
This is how I set my LEDs, just a simple scroll through primary colours.
So, now we have looked at some of the cooling functions the link offers, but if you are using a Corsair digital PSU with the link, then you have a whole host of other new options...
I have previously been asked if buying a digital (DSP) PSU is worth it, I.E why bother? Previous to this testing, I hadn't really had much hands-on time with one, so I didn't really see the point and with the Link 3 being a little....problematic, I wasn't going to take the plunge and hope for the best. Now I have some time with an AX 1200i and Link 4 so hopefully, it will be worth it, we shall see.
Just like the other hardware you are able to control via the Link software, you have some basic stats on view straight away, so for my AX1200i we can see our 12v rail is showing 12.03v , our 5v is 5.03v and our 3.3v is showing 3.31v. This is just basically showing us that everything is healthy, this is basically doing the same job as one of the cheap PSU testers that you can buy. The temperature is self-explanatory as is the fan rpm. When the PSU is doing very little, the fan won't kick in, hence the 0 rpm.
If we want to look a little more into the PSU though we can just click on the area showing the basic information and we get a far more in-depth view. Straight away you will notice the graph, the two lines are basically the power in from your wall compared to the power to your components . This is also then shown in figures in the "Main" area. So currently, at idle, the system is using 143W but the PSU is pulling 160W from the wall, with these two figures we can work out the efficiency by dividing the output power by the input power
so 143w / 160w = 89.37% efficient. This is really nice information to have, we can see straight away whether the power supply is wasting power when we are using it. Usually, when looking at efficiency, we will get a curved line, so at very low load, the PSU will be at its worst efficiency and at very high load it will be less efficient too, this is why you want to try to aim for a PSU that puts your usage between the two extremes.
This time, I put a little bit of load onto the GPU to see what happens with the Link software, as you can see, we go to just above 425W. Using the Link software we can see that we are pulling 456W from the wall. This instantly enables to work out that the PSU is running at 93.42 % efficiency. I am really impressed with this little idea, it just gives the user complete piece of mind.
This time, I added a little bit extra load, but also want to look at some of the other features. So we already know how to work out the efficiency (93.49% this time) but this time, we are going to look at the individual rails, so we have the 12v rail pulling 47A and 440W and it is supplying a steady 12v. The 5v is pulling 5A, 25W and is supplying a steady 5.03v. The 3.3v rail is doing very little.
Next to the 3.3v rail statistics, we can see Temp and Fan statistics, this works exactly the same as the ones we looked at earlier, clicking on them gives us the options to set what happens if they go above the set parameters, such as shutting down the system, changing the LED colours or running a program.
So you have seen this screen 3 times now and I haven't mentioned the "Enable OCP " toggle switches, so let's look at them now. OCP Stands for over current protection and certainly isn't a new idea, what is new however is the ability to control the OCP. In layman's terms, OCP is basically a limiter, stopping too much current getting to a certain component, this can be useful as if there is a short in the system and a certain connector tries and pull too much current, it will shut down the PC in an attempt to save your hardware.
The idea that we can control when OCP kicks in is yet another way of putting us in control, we have a choice of anywhere between 20 and 40 amps per PCI-e output by just using the slider, or alternatively, we can turn it off completely.
Now, this is already getting quite a long article, but there are even more features to Link 4 which I want to briefly go through...
All of the screens that we have used so far are accessed from the "Home" tab, but as you have probably noticed, we also have some other tabs, Configure, Profile, Options and Graphing, so let's take a look at these.
First, we will take a look at "Configure". This is basically to help you visualise how your system is compared to all the temperature and fan monitoring. So when we first click it, we get something like this, a lot of monitoring tools down the left-hand side and an image of a case.
If you right click on the case, you can choose to change it to one of the many Corsair cases that are available, or if you prefer you can also browse for an image of your own computer from the file. I like this option the best as you can take a picture of your built system, then add it and your pride and joy will be on show.
Once you have chosen your image, you can then drag and drop the sensors monitor to where it is in your system. this will leave you with something like this. As you can see it is far easier to visualise where every component is when it is set up like this.
The next tab along is "Profile". These are basically quick controls to give you yet more control over your PC. You can choose between presets such as "Performance" which gives you better cooling, but a louder system, this is great for if you are going to be doing something such as gaming where you don't mind the noise, but want a nice cool running PC. "Balanced", which is a balance between cooling and noise, which is great for everyday use or alternatively you can choose "Quiet", which, as I am sure you have guessed, puts fans at a slower speed, which makes the system quieter, but it may get a little warmer, this would be good for when you are watching a movie, so want to keep the noise down and you don't really need the system extremely cool. You can also create your own profiles if you wish.
The next tab "Options" gives us a drop down box with 3 different selections. Settings, Devices and About.
"Settings" let us change settings such as the Language, the Skin and temperature unit. "Devices" lets us see which firmware our devices are using and "About" lets us check for updates for Corsair Link as well as some giving us some useful links.
Finally, we have "Graphing" which I think should be a little more prominent. This is an excellent part of the Link software that should not be overlooked. Just clicking on it seems to give us the same as what we already have available on other screens, however, there is one excellent idea here that for some strange reason is actually Off by default. That is the "Log to file" option that is hidden away down the bottom right of the screen. This, as the name suggests logs any graphs that you want to keep an eye on to a .CSV file enabling us to keep track of our system continuously. The log file can keep track of temps, CPU usage, fan speeds, power usage and everything else Link 4 keeps an eye on.
If you click the "Configure" button, it is possible to choose which charts you want to see by just ticking or unticking the boxes next to the name. You can also select where you want your log file to be saved and give an
This is just a small part of one of the log files that I created whilst checking out the Link 4 software. needless to say, it works very well and if your computer was to shut down randomly, if it was due to temps or PSU related, you have a lot more information than the standard user.
So that is almost it for the actual link 4 software, this is the last screenshot for you, this, yet again, is just showing you just how much control you have, even without opening the full Link 4 software, you can see a wide range of information as well as changing the profile of your cooling. very handy if you just want to change something very quickly.
Now you have seen pretty much all the software that I am able to show currently. Let's have a quick round up of it and I can give you my thoughts on using the software and conclude this somewhat larger than expected article.
Price
So you have made it this far, so I am assuming you are interested in the software, well price wise, it is free! Yup, that is right, if you have any Corsair products that are able to use the link 4 software you can just download it and use it. Can't get better than free right? The products that benefit best from the software such as the H100i and the digital PSU's actually come with everything you need to get started, if you do want to have full control over everything, such as all fans, temperature sensors and ram, you will have to buy additional hardware.
Pros
Free.
Gives quick and easy monitoring over many aspects of your system including cooling, performance and more.
Gives control over LEDs on your AIO cooler or if yo use the Commander Mini also the RGB LEDs.
Full log file support enabling you to troubleshoot problems easier.
Gives you full control and monitoring over Digital PSU's such as the AXi or HXi series.
Very easy to use.
Full control of your PC.
Cons
Non-uniform connectors for the hardware, it would be nice for all of the hardware to use the same connector to enable the commander to control everything straight out of the box.
Would be nice to see a live efficiency reading for the PSU. It would be easy to implement as it is a simple equation.
Final Thoughts
Well, I was asked to look at Link 4 because I have been critical of the other versions, I have seen many people asking for support for them and quite frankly, I have never seen the appeal when there were other options that worked just as well for checking temperatures and also controlling LEDs and fan speeds. Ok, there was no good all in one solution, but at least, there was a way to do it that worked. The support for the digital PSU's seemed far more clunky and to top it off, anyone using Windows 10 wouldn't be able to use Link 3 at all. Now, if you are using multiple Corsair products, I think you would be silly NOT to use Corsair Link 4. It really has changed my view on how I keep an eye on my system. The extra control over the PSU is fantastic, being able to see exactly how much power is being used and where the power is going is great and then to give us the ability to be able to log absolutely everything really does give users a unique way to keep track of everything.
The design of the new Link 4 software is so much better than the previous versions of Link it is obvious that the developers must have realised they had problems previously, it is far more streamlined, far less clunky and now doesn't look like it belongs with windows 98.
I hate to write only positive things about a product, it does make it seem like I am being biased, but I am actually just very impressed by what I have seen. I am actually going to be swapping my current PSU out of my PC for the AX 1200i. I never thought that I would be convinced to change hardware just because of the software that is available to use with it.
Design: 4/5
Aesthetics: 4/5
Usability: 5/5
Value: 5/5
Features: 5/5
Total: 23/25
The Corsair Link 4 software has left the previous versions far behind with features refreshed, looking great and more importantly, working. The user now has full control over pretty much al of their hardware from one single piece of software. Fans, LEDs, AIO Cooler, Hardware Temperatures, Power Load, CPU load and more can be controlled and monitored. Would I use previous versions of Link? well, no. Would I use Link 4? Absolutely, the more control for the user the better.
Corsair sent me some products to help me with this, a Corsair AX1200i digital PSU, some Corsair RGB LEDs, a Link Commander and also a Corsair H100i. These all have the “Corsair LINK” logo on the package so we can assume that they all work well with the new Link 4 software. The logo can be seen below.
So, let’s have a very quick look at the hardware side of things before we actually look at the Link software. with a set of Dominator Platinum and a Neutron XT SSD all I needed was a motherboard and a GPU.
First up I want to show you the Corsair Commander Mini, as the name suggests, this is a small unit that helps to 'command' your multiple Link enabled Corsair products, It has 4 Link Digital connection headers, 4 temp sensor headers 6 fan headers and an LED header for the RGB strips.
The Commander mini comes with 4 temperature sensors as well as one digital link cable and 4 fan extension cables.
The Corsair Link RGB LED Lighting Kit (purchased separately) also comes with connectors which plug straight into the commander unit, giving you control of them via the Link 4 software.
We have all seen a Corsair modular PSU, but the difference with the Digital series is that we get a Comm Port, this really does open a whole host of features with the Link 4 software which I will go into later.
You can use the PSU with the link 4 software without having the Commander Mini. Included in the box there is a Corsair Link Digital unit and a cable to connect it to the PSU, the other end of the Corsair Link Digital unit connects to your motherboard via internal USB header. If you do have a Commander Mini, then you can connect the PSU straight to it by using one of the Corsair Digital Link headers.
Corsair Dominator Ram can also be used with Corsair Link, however, I realised that the connectors on the ram are different than any of the other connectors I had available, after some research I found out that these are only compatible if you use the Corsair Airflow PRO. Not a major issue, but slightly annoying.
I also had the Corsair H100i V2 to use for this review, as the eagle-eyed of you might have noticed, this comes with a USB mini connector, so out of the box isn't compatible with the Corsair Commander mini, but the H100i V2 does come with a cable to allow you to connect it to an internal USB header and you can also use an external USB to Mini USB cable if you do not have enough internal headers available.
You might have noticed that I mentioned the connectors a lot so far, and this so far is my only gripe with the Link-enabled products, they use many different connectors! Admittedly, I didn't really research the Commander mini, but I expected everything to be able to be plugged into it directly, straight out of the box. So Cooler, PSU, Fans, Ram, LEDs, Temperature sensors and anything else that is released. Unfortunately, this isn't the case and although I was able to use all of the products (except for the RAM) without purchasing anything additional, it just seems like Corsair missed an opportunity.
So, now we have had a quick look at the hardware, let's do what we set out to do and look at the Link 4 software.
Inside the AX 1200i there was a nice little card letting me know that if I wanted to download the latest version of the Corsair Link software, I could find it at www.corsair.com/linksw . It is a very small download so even on a low-speed connection, you will have no problems. After downloading the software you will have an installer .exe, looking something like the one below.
Run this and you will start to install, it is a very quick install and couldn't be simpler. After the install is finished it will request you to restart your computer, ensure you do this and then your software will be ready to use.
Once you start up your Link software, you will be greeted with this home screen, there is a lot of information to process here and you can click on almost anything to get even more details.
I will start with the temperature sensors as there are quite a few of these, but the interface is the same for them all upon clicking one of the sensors a pop-up will appear with two different tabs, "Configure" and "Notifications". The configure tab is very simple, it allows you to rename the sensor and also shows you a graph of your current and past temperatures. The Notifications tab has a few more options to make sure you can be alerted if there are any problems with your temperatures, you can set minimum and maximum temperatures and then you can completely control what happens if the values go outside of these parameters. The Link 4 software gives you the ability to automatically shut down the PC after a set period of time, run a file of your choice, trigger all LEDs to a certain colour or set all the fans at 100% speed. You are also able to select multiple actions so that the Link 4 software can turn all the LEDs a certain colour at the same time as setting the fans to 100% for example.
Next, we are going to look at the fans, again, we have two tabs, "Configure and "Notifications". Under the Configure tab, you can completely control how you want your fans to act, you can do this using the Mode drop-down box and selecting one of the pre-made fan profiles, or you can create your own using the "Custom" profile. You can also "Group" each fan individually so that each fan can be controlled independently from a separate temperature sensor, or you can group them all together to run as one, it is entirely up to the user.
Next, I am going to look at the H100i V2, this has a temperature and fan speed control like above, but it also has pump and LED configuration. You can Choose between quiet mode and performance mode for the pump, allowing you to control the pump RPM. The notifications tab works the same as the fans and temperature sensors but we can also select an LED colour for the cooler. There is an option to pick two colours, one for when it is working as per usual, but you can also set another colour if the temperature gets too high. Yet another way the Link software keeps the user in control.
Speaking of LEDs, if you are using the Corsair Link RGB LEDs with the Commander Mini, you can also control them using the Link 4 software, we can choose between modes, such as cycling through multiple colours, or alternatively have them temperature based. If you want to change the colour based on temperature, you can also put them into a group, so if it is in the CPU package, it will be controlled from the temps of the CPU.
This is how I set my LEDs, just a simple scroll through primary colours.
So, now we have looked at some of the cooling functions the link offers, but if you are using a Corsair digital PSU with the link, then you have a whole host of other new options...
I have previously been asked if buying a digital (DSP) PSU is worth it, I.E why bother? Previous to this testing, I hadn't really had much hands-on time with one, so I didn't really see the point and with the Link 3 being a little....problematic, I wasn't going to take the plunge and hope for the best. Now I have some time with an AX 1200i and Link 4 so hopefully, it will be worth it, we shall see.
Just like the other hardware you are able to control via the Link software, you have some basic stats on view straight away, so for my AX1200i we can see our 12v rail is showing 12.03v , our 5v is 5.03v and our 3.3v is showing 3.31v. This is just basically showing us that everything is healthy, this is basically doing the same job as one of the cheap PSU testers that you can buy. The temperature is self-explanatory as is the fan rpm. When the PSU is doing very little, the fan won't kick in, hence the 0 rpm.
If we want to look a little more into the PSU though we can just click on the area showing the basic information and we get a far more in-depth view. Straight away you will notice the graph, the two lines are basically the power in from your wall compared to the power to your components . This is also then shown in figures in the "Main" area. So currently, at idle, the system is using 143W but the PSU is pulling 160W from the wall, with these two figures we can work out the efficiency by dividing the output power by the input power
so 143w / 160w = 89.37% efficient. This is really nice information to have, we can see straight away whether the power supply is wasting power when we are using it. Usually, when looking at efficiency, we will get a curved line, so at very low load, the PSU will be at its worst efficiency and at very high load it will be less efficient too, this is why you want to try to aim for a PSU that puts your usage between the two extremes.
This time, I put a little bit of load onto the GPU to see what happens with the Link software, as you can see, we go to just above 425W. Using the Link software we can see that we are pulling 456W from the wall. This instantly enables to work out that the PSU is running at 93.42 % efficiency. I am really impressed with this little idea, it just gives the user complete piece of mind.
This time, I added a little bit extra load, but also want to look at some of the other features. So we already know how to work out the efficiency (93.49% this time) but this time, we are going to look at the individual rails, so we have the 12v rail pulling 47A and 440W and it is supplying a steady 12v. The 5v is pulling 5A, 25W and is supplying a steady 5.03v. The 3.3v rail is doing very little.
Next to the 3.3v rail statistics, we can see Temp and Fan statistics, this works exactly the same as the ones we looked at earlier, clicking on them gives us the options to set what happens if they go above the set parameters, such as shutting down the system, changing the LED colours or running a program.
So you have seen this screen 3 times now and I haven't mentioned the "Enable OCP " toggle switches, so let's look at them now. OCP Stands for over current protection and certainly isn't a new idea, what is new however is the ability to control the OCP. In layman's terms, OCP is basically a limiter, stopping too much current getting to a certain component, this can be useful as if there is a short in the system and a certain connector tries and pull too much current, it will shut down the PC in an attempt to save your hardware.
The idea that we can control when OCP kicks in is yet another way of putting us in control, we have a choice of anywhere between 20 and 40 amps per PCI-e output by just using the slider, or alternatively, we can turn it off completely.
Now, this is already getting quite a long article, but there are even more features to Link 4 which I want to briefly go through...
All of the screens that we have used so far are accessed from the "Home" tab, but as you have probably noticed, we also have some other tabs, Configure, Profile, Options and Graphing, so let's take a look at these.
First, we will take a look at "Configure". This is basically to help you visualise how your system is compared to all the temperature and fan monitoring. So when we first click it, we get something like this, a lot of monitoring tools down the left-hand side and an image of a case.
If you right click on the case, you can choose to change it to one of the many Corsair cases that are available, or if you prefer you can also browse for an image of your own computer from the file. I like this option the best as you can take a picture of your built system, then add it and your pride and joy will be on show.
Once you have chosen your image, you can then drag and drop the sensors monitor to where it is in your system. this will leave you with something like this. As you can see it is far easier to visualise where every component is when it is set up like this.
The next tab along is "Profile". These are basically quick controls to give you yet more control over your PC. You can choose between presets such as "Performance" which gives you better cooling, but a louder system, this is great for if you are going to be doing something such as gaming where you don't mind the noise, but want a nice cool running PC. "Balanced", which is a balance between cooling and noise, which is great for everyday use or alternatively you can choose "Quiet", which, as I am sure you have guessed, puts fans at a slower speed, which makes the system quieter, but it may get a little warmer, this would be good for when you are watching a movie, so want to keep the noise down and you don't really need the system extremely cool. You can also create your own profiles if you wish.
The next tab "Options" gives us a drop down box with 3 different selections. Settings, Devices and About.
"Settings" let us change settings such as the Language, the Skin and temperature unit. "Devices" lets us see which firmware our devices are using and "About" lets us check for updates for Corsair Link as well as some giving us some useful links.
Finally, we have "Graphing" which I think should be a little more prominent. This is an excellent part of the Link software that should not be overlooked. Just clicking on it seems to give us the same as what we already have available on other screens, however, there is one excellent idea here that for some strange reason is actually Off by default. That is the "Log to file" option that is hidden away down the bottom right of the screen. This, as the name suggests logs any graphs that you want to keep an eye on to a .CSV file enabling us to keep track of our system continuously. The log file can keep track of temps, CPU usage, fan speeds, power usage and everything else Link 4 keeps an eye on.
If you click the "Configure" button, it is possible to choose which charts you want to see by just ticking or unticking the boxes next to the name. You can also select where you want your log file to be saved and give an
This is just a small part of one of the log files that I created whilst checking out the Link 4 software. needless to say, it works very well and if your computer was to shut down randomly, if it was due to temps or PSU related, you have a lot more information than the standard user.
So that is almost it for the actual link 4 software, this is the last screenshot for you, this, yet again, is just showing you just how much control you have, even without opening the full Link 4 software, you can see a wide range of information as well as changing the profile of your cooling. very handy if you just want to change something very quickly.
Now you have seen pretty much all the software that I am able to show currently. Let's have a quick round up of it and I can give you my thoughts on using the software and conclude this somewhat larger than expected article.
Price
So you have made it this far, so I am assuming you are interested in the software, well price wise, it is free! Yup, that is right, if you have any Corsair products that are able to use the link 4 software you can just download it and use it. Can't get better than free right? The products that benefit best from the software such as the H100i and the digital PSU's actually come with everything you need to get started, if you do want to have full control over everything, such as all fans, temperature sensors and ram, you will have to buy additional hardware.
Pros
Free.
Gives quick and easy monitoring over many aspects of your system including cooling, performance and more.
Gives control over LEDs on your AIO cooler or if yo use the Commander Mini also the RGB LEDs.
Full log file support enabling you to troubleshoot problems easier.
Gives you full control and monitoring over Digital PSU's such as the AXi or HXi series.
Very easy to use.
Full control of your PC.
Cons
Non-uniform connectors for the hardware, it would be nice for all of the hardware to use the same connector to enable the commander to control everything straight out of the box.
Would be nice to see a live efficiency reading for the PSU. It would be easy to implement as it is a simple equation.
Final Thoughts
Well, I was asked to look at Link 4 because I have been critical of the other versions, I have seen many people asking for support for them and quite frankly, I have never seen the appeal when there were other options that worked just as well for checking temperatures and also controlling LEDs and fan speeds. Ok, there was no good all in one solution, but at least, there was a way to do it that worked. The support for the digital PSU's seemed far more clunky and to top it off, anyone using Windows 10 wouldn't be able to use Link 3 at all. Now, if you are using multiple Corsair products, I think you would be silly NOT to use Corsair Link 4. It really has changed my view on how I keep an eye on my system. The extra control over the PSU is fantastic, being able to see exactly how much power is being used and where the power is going is great and then to give us the ability to be able to log absolutely everything really does give users a unique way to keep track of everything.
The design of the new Link 4 software is so much better than the previous versions of Link it is obvious that the developers must have realised they had problems previously, it is far more streamlined, far less clunky and now doesn't look like it belongs with windows 98.
I hate to write only positive things about a product, it does make it seem like I am being biased, but I am actually just very impressed by what I have seen. I am actually going to be swapping my current PSU out of my PC for the AX 1200i. I never thought that I would be convinced to change hardware just because of the software that is available to use with it.
Design: 4/5
Aesthetics: 4/5
Usability: 5/5
Value: 5/5
Features: 5/5
Total: 23/25
The Corsair Link 4 software has left the previous versions far behind with features refreshed, looking great and more importantly, working. The user now has full control over pretty much al of their hardware from one single piece of software. Fans, LEDs, AIO Cooler, Hardware Temperatures, Power Load, CPU load and more can be controlled and monitored. Would I use previous versions of Link? well, no. Would I use Link 4? Absolutely, the more control for the user the better.
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it still shuts my pc down when connected .....
