[section_title title=”Software”]
SoftwareÂ
Let’s take a look at the software.
Here is the first page you are greeted with when opening CUE (Corsair Utility Engine). As you can see it is dedicated mainly to button assignments but it also allows us to load profiles in if you want to pinch lighting profiles from t’internet (thanks to DieselWeasel from the Corsair forums for the very cool Dark Side of the Moon profile!). It definitely is awesome to be able to share profiles online and importing them couldn’t be easier.
Next along is the performance tab, which mainly controls our DPI settings. It is nice to have five stages but even nicer that you can disable them if you want to either have fewer stages or use the buttons for something else and stick with one DPI. I really like that you can assign different colours to every DPI setting too, that is truly a well thought out inclusion.
We also have a lift off height adjustment, and I have to say this is probably the best DCU I’ve ever seen on an Avago 9800, I had no complaints about the lift off height on its lowest setting which is very rare for laser sensors!
Here is the actions tab which lets you see all the custom bindings for the buttons and what their function is.
Here is the lighting tab which shows you all the lighting effects you have created which can be added into your profiles to create really advanced effects. The sheer amount of different effects you can achieve here is amazing, users who really want to get their teeth into CUE will get a lot out of it.
Here is an example of the lighting effect creation screen which comes up when you click ‘new’ in the above screenshot.
Here is the lighting tab under profiles where you can manage which lighting profiles are applied to the mouse, or you can apply quick and dirty constant colours to see which ones you like you would like to build into your effects. There really is so much depth here I couldn’t scratch the surface if I tried (and keep this section a sensible length) but fortunately the 147 page (no that’s not a mistake) user manual provides great documentation for users looking to unlock the power of CUE.
The settings tab gives us three options, device program and support. Device tells us our firmware version and lets us disable the lights, but curiously we also have the polling rate adjustment here and not in the performance tab but hey at least it’s in there, I’m sure Corsair will move it somewhere more sensible if enough people ask about it!
The program tab has general options for CUE although I think the media players stuff is more geared around the media controls on the K70 than it is much to do with the mouse.
There are lots of information here in the support tab with links to the forums and dedicated tech support alike, great for less advanced users who need a hand!
So, CUE is a very powerful software suite that users can get an awful lot out of if they choose to; I barely scratched the surface here! Personally I was a bit turned off by simply how much is going on but ultimately it’s easy to change the basic performance stuff and set up some simple lighting effects but more advanced users should be able to reference the great documentation and create some truly awesome effects!
