In the past, that meant wiring up LED bands to the motherboard and soldering connections, and the result of all of that work would be a single band of blue lights behind the windows. The HUE+ instead uses two LED strip connections with support for up to eight strips total. It mounts easily into a 2.5-inch drive slot, and connects via internal USB.
The lighting is managed through NZXT’s CAM software suite, a comprehensive application that will help keep everything in order. It boasts a wide array of customizable effects too, and that doesn’t just mean a color-changing wave and a blinking pattern.
The HUE+ can be configured to reflect any of a number of diagnostic details and runtime info from your system, and will express those details in the LED colors and patterns. No more using GPU-Z to tell if your graphics card is overheating — your system will just turn red and yellow like a fire to let you know to tone down the settings or take a break. It can even listen to the system audio output and match its pulses and rhythms.
The HUE+ includes four LED strips that are attachable magnetically or with included 3M tape strips. At just $59.99 for the whole setup, it’s cheaper than a lot of aesthetics-enhancing peripherals on the market, and the fact that it’s easy to connect and control is a plus.
