Just after Christmas, I got a new PC custom built by PB Tech. It has a Gigabyte X570 UD motherboard and a Cooler Master ML120L liquid cooling system, which has RGB LEDs in the pump and fan. I downloaded RGB Fusion 2.0 to control that and the G.Skill RGB RAM. Now, RGB Fusion has never worked properly after about the first day. It stopped recognising the RAM completely so I downloaded ASUS Aura Sync to see if that would work as a solution for both (no) and then the G.Skill software to control the RAM independently. The fan and the RAM have never been in sync with each other but that's okay - I just set both to cycle through the spectrum and was happy with that.

Yesterday I noticed that my fan and pump were stuck on static green, and went into RGB Fusion to see if I could fix it. RGB Fusion was now recognising both the RAM and the motherboard (to which the fan is connected) but the motherboard was greyed out and I couldn't interact with any of the controls. I wondered if Aura Sync was causing some kind of conflict so I uninstalled it. No change. Then I remembered that the fan came with a wired controller that PB Tech had neglected to install, so I shut down the computer and removed the glass side of the computer case to see if I could work out where it went. I've installed computer components before so I thought I might be capable of doing this. I identified the LED cables leading from the fan and the pump - they go into a splitter that is plugged into the LED_C1 header on the motherboard. I unplugged the one leading from the pump, inspected it, plugged it back in (ensuring the arrows matched up), and decided I didn't have the confidence to attempt adding the wired controller (or the necessary parts - I was missing a 4-pin connector and something to plug the controller into the PSU). So I closed up the case and resigned myself to living with whatever colour the fan decided it wanted to be.

However, when I restarted the computer, the lights in the fan and the pump were dead. The fan and pump are still operating just fine. A friend walked me through checking that everything was still properly seated. I re-plugged the splitter into the motherboard to ensure I hadn't knocked it loose when I was gently poking around. I reseated the LED cables on the splitter. I checked the power cables for the fan and pump were properly plugged in. I restarted several times and also uninstalled and reinstalled RGB Fusion. I found a lot of people online who have had issues with that software and there were a couple of fixes suggested, including moving the AtiTool folder out to the desktop and renaming a couple of the dll files. Neither of those worked - I still cannot get the software to communicate with the motherboard.

So now I am stuck with no RGB and I don't know if it's a hardware or a software issue. I can't find any way to try changing the RGB profile to see if that brings it back to life, or anything wrong with the way the components are plugged in. I am reluctant to lug the thing back to PB Tech because it's very heavy and I am very tiny, and if it's not a hardware fault covered by the warranty, I will probably be charged to fix it. Any suggestions on anything I could try would be very gratefully received.

And, yes, I realise I shouldn't have fiddled with it in the first place!