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

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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.

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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

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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…
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