Does the Dragon Center sound like a bad place to go?
Does the Dragon Center sound like a bad place to go?
So I finally got my hands on an MSI 3080 Gaming X Trio at Micro Center. Like most people who make a smart choice, I looked into MSI's products after buying this card. From what I know, they make decent graphics cards and okay-to-good motherboards, but their software is not great. Specifically, it seems like lots of people have trouble with Dragon Center. The problems I've heard about include: locking the CPU to a specific speed, causing crashes, forgetting RGB settings, accidentally deleting Mystic Light, or messing up Afterburner fan controls. I could just skip installing Dragon Center and then leave my big rainbow strip on the GPU set to whatever it wants. I looked into some alternatives and workarounds: OpenRgb (not sure if it works on 30 series), Mystic Light 3.0 alone (apparently doesn't work on x570 or 30 series), and a Reddit post detailing how maybe reduce a lot of unnecessary stuff. I don't doubt people have had issues with the software, but is this just a case where loud voices make the problem seem more common? I'd love to hear stories from anyone who is currently using it. I hope this thread doesn't sound like I'm complaining, because I know how lucky I am. I'm just curious what everyone else thinks.
You should be able to install the software, change your RGB color to one that stays the same, and then stop it from starting up or even take it out completely. Your chosen color will stay there so you can keep using Afterburner to adjust fan speeds and Core/Memory clock settings. There is a chance your motherboard's control software might see the card and let you manage RGB lighting from there. More companies are adding features that let you control 3rd party parts. Corsair's iCUE program has also become great for spotting other brands' lights and letting them be controlled. When I opened it up to check my keyboard, it showed options for my ASUS motherboard and Fractal Design case's aRGB settings now. Maybe checking this could help me without messing with other things or parts?
Hey JunkSniperJoe! Yeah, Dragon Center is super bad for me. After I install it, my clock speed stays stuck at 4.7GHz even when I stop using it. But if I take the software out, my speed drops to 800MHz. I tried talking to MSI support but nobody helped. It's just a waste of time.
Here is what happened to me: I took away the extra stuff from Dragon Center and turned off all the color lights on my graphics card by setting them to zero, using a special app called Mystic Light. Even though Windows 10 got reinstalled later because of other reasons, the computer still remembered those lights were off. I don't have Dragon Center installed at all right now, and everything seems to be working fine so far. This thread might help you take it down completely. Good luck!
For me, MSI Dragon Center was the reason behind so many BSODs that I couldn't fix them. I tried changing RAM, CPU, and motherboard, did a lot of clean installs of Windows 10, and experimented with different drivers. It still happened often. (I turned off almost all features of Dragon Center because I only wanted to control the RGB LEDs on my motherboard. So I also disabled the overclocking tab, network management, and driver updater.) Even though Dragon Center was installed but not running, it caused BSODs. When I looked into why my problems were happening, I found several threads online where people said MSI Dragon Center is known for causing crashes like this. I uninstalled Dragon Center, and since then I have had no more BSODs or any other crash. I now use MSI Mystic Light instead. The website says Mystic Light is only compatible up to Windows 8, but it works great on Windows 10, just like in my case. There are a few detailed threads about my issues here that mention the specific problems I had in detail.