I think a part of it is the Instagram/Twitch mentality where publicly performing or sharing something plays into things now.

Easier to take photos of your computer and share them if they look like a cryogenic chamber. :)

In addition, a lot of companies are going "full stack" for computers, and a system-wide RGB integration/syncing for Company X's components (RAM, motherboard, graphics card, case, fan controller, fans, mouse, keyboard, mousemat(!)) is a simple way to lock in customers.

EDIT: You could also argue that we're at an inflection point where videogames and tech nerdiness are normalized to the point where computer cases, like TVs once were, are now considered furniture and not some heinous eyesore you're forced to have around.

I recently built a new PC so I had to wade into this space again. The main difference I believe is that many components themselves now have their own LED lighting.

Before, it was primarily LED fans or light strips. Now, motherboards have their own LED line traces. Ram has it's own LED lights. There is also support to control the colors of these components from software.

I just wish the lighting told me something useful. If the CPU fan changed color to indicate temperature or CPU load, that would be really cool. Likewise, if RAM lighting indicated the rate of data transfer.

That would be pretty awesome. But all this fluff just to make PC more pretty seems pointless to somehow.

(Don't get me wrong, if you like that sort of thing, by all means, enjoy it. My sister's boyfriend has a gaming PC with a big glass window in the case so one can see all the pretty lights quietly shifting around. It is pretty, and I bet it's boatloads of fun to look at when tripping.)

> I just wish the lighting told me something useful.

There's a cross-platform, open source project that does this[1]. You can even script it and bind colors and effects not just to CPU load but to any variable (I don't know - maybe requests being served per second)

1. https://github.com/dcerisano/RGB-LED-Motherboard-Header-Driv...

That is really, really cool!

My PC case does not have a window, so I will never know the difference. But it is very cool one can do that!

That would be really cool but the wiring might get a bit too complicated. Also the lighting is slapped on to readymade parts, so it's not like you can do alterations to the silicon that would be necessary for those features. With that said, since we're seeing programmatically controlled RGB lighting getting released, maybe someone could write a lightweight daemon to control it based on those parameters.

>If the CPU fan changed color to indicate temperature or CPU load

With Asus's "Aura" application that comes with their new boards you can have the LEDs change color with CPU temp. The default was to set everything to green/yellow/red depending on range but it might be capable of something more complex. The lights are addressable so your CPU idea might be doable I haven't really played with it yet.

That would be cool. I am a little OCD when it comes to monitoring. I can be perfectly patient with a slow computer as long as I know why that machine is slow. But if a computer goes slow on me and does not offer me any way to find out why it is so slow, that drives me mad.

So if the lighting in the PC reflected the components busy-ness, that would be really cool. "Why is my PC so slow today?" - "Aaah, the hard drive is shining white - I/O overload!"

Anyway, my PC has a window-less case, so all that beauty would be lost like tears in the rain...

It’s also essentially impossible right now to buy a motherboard that isn’t tarted up with a bunch of stupid LED nonsense. (Unless you buy something low-end or server-grade.)

Yeah it really ruins it honestly, back when I built machines I always went with black aluminium Lian li cases with no windows since they had a nice professional look. I just hate useless lights on anything.

Not true. Asus and some other brands have Workstation class motherboards without the LEDs.

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Workstation-Products/

Fine if you want old stuff. None of those boards support Coffee Lake chips though.

You know you can turn it off right?

On my board, I'd have to install some Windows application to do so. No thanks, I'll just close them up inside my windowless case.

That naming has been used for a few years already. I'm not sure how it started.

For example, this Linus Tech Tips video about the first RGB backlit mechanical keyboard from 4 years ago uses the term:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-GjMH8kQlc

It's become conventional to use it to refer to a light with customizable RGB parameters, versus a single color. For example both my desktop keyboard and mouse are "RGB" and they have various color modes and even animation settings.

My hypothesis is, most assembling is now done by young gamers, as majority other users have migrated to laptop/tablet. So flashing PCs is now major chunk of the market.