Physically Disabling LEDs on a Powercolor Red Devil RX6600 XT
As a disclaimer, if you use any of this information to make any changes to your own card, I am not liable for anything that goes wrong. There is a connector on the board that powers the fans. It is a connector that is vertical/perpendicular to the card, and near the connector the cable splits out into blue, green, yellow, black. Unplugging this will disable your fans, so make sure to avoid doing so unless that is your intent. It is not shown in the diagrams in this article
In one of my computers I use a Powercolor Red Devil RX6600 XT as the GPU. This is a secondary machine that is mainly used in the living room for watching content or playing games on a large TV.
The case that I use for the machine has a mesh/fan front so bright LEDs shine through it strongly. As someone that likes to keep my living area fairly dark, especially for media, the very bright red LEDs that are on by default on this card are distracting.
This computer runs linux, and controlling RGB can be a hit or miss adventure on linux. Many devices, including the motherboard on this PC, can be controlled using OpenRGB software. Powercolor control is not yet available, though I have seen Gitlab issues where it has been investigated and worked on, just no official release yet.
While I didn't take enough time to do a deep dive, I tried Powercolor's DevilZone software in Wine but the card could never be detected. I figured it was a long shot but it is the software that gives some control on Windows. I'm thinking that I probably had to dig in and find a method to expose the hardware to Wine or something to get the software to detect the card- and it's detection routines and such might be done in such a way that this is not worth the effort.
For me personally, it's less about being able to control the LEDs, and more just about being able to disable them. So what is one to do when you can't accomplish a goal like this with software? Try hardware.
I found that this particular card has three LED "sections". One is powered alone by a connector, and the other two are powered by a second connector. These latter two are also connect to each other with an extension- and that proved to be helpful in disabling one of the two.
This is how it is structured:
LED Section 1: Fan Shroud Lines (View Image ➚ 20.4kB)
There are some lines on the fascia of the card on the fan shroud. These are powered by a connector that is easy to reach without disassembly. How I disabled them: unplug the connector shown.
LED Section 2: Front Edge Stripes (very bright) (View Image ➚ 17.0kB)
On the front edge of the card (usually points toward the front of a PC case) are some stripes with very bright LEDs. These are connected with an Y/extension to Section 3's power cable. How I disabled them: this one was tricky. The extension cable for the power (at least on my card) had its connector right behind the plastic LED diffusers. I attempt to show this in the diagram. It had just enough slack that I was able to pry it out of the edge of the card and disconnect it. I happened to damage one side of the cable in the process and just wrapped it with electrical tape. I never plan on using these LEDs so I went into it knowing this was a possible outcome and was fine with it.
LED Section 3: Back Plate Logo (View Image ➚ 16.1kB)
The logo on the backplate also lights up. This directly connects to an LED power connector on the back of the card. It's the same type of connector Section 1 uses, however, this connector is very difficult to get to. I was not able to do so, because it would require a large amount of disassembly of the entire card to reach. It is tucked under the backplate and the holes in the backplate do not really provide enough clearance to disconnect it. I also did not want to cut the cable and risk a short. I did not disable the backplate LED and I don't see a way of safely doing so without disassembly. It can be done if you want to go that far- once the backplate is off, you just disconnect the LED power connector and you're done. However, this LED is very directional, and isn't really visible out of the front of the case, so it wasn't something that bothered me to leave connected.
After being able to disable two out of the three LED sections, the bright red LED presence of the card in the case has been reduced enough that it is no longer a distraction from viewing media on the TV. The red glow from the backplate logo is barely perceptible at all where I have my PC set up, so the PC is a much darker, minimal presence in my TV stand now. Success.
This page was last edited 6 months ago