Software

As expected from a flagship ROG peripheral, there are unified software drivers for the ROG Azoth called ROG Armoury Crate. You can find the installer in the downloads page on the ASUS website with the latest version at the time of testing being 3.2.11.2 that supports Windows 10 and 11 64-bit only. It downloads as a compressed folder that is just 4 MB in size and turns out to be an executable you can then use to install Armoury Crate, AURA Creator, and/or an ASUS virtual pet, if you ignore the typo on the screen. The downloads page allows you to also get the full package installer (v5.9.4 at the time of testing) and I highly recommend going this route to give you more control over what is installed and where. In addition, you may also want to have the uninstaller tool ready to go since even installing Armoury Crate flawlessly can be a hassle. I had to try three times before everything was up and running, which is never something you want to see from a software program that people have complaints about to begin with.


When you first open either ROG Armoury Crate or AURA Creator, you are greeted with the EULA. Seen above are the various steps to agree to in Armoury Crate before you can finally use it. Also note that ASUS Live Services is needed and has to be running in the background for them to work, especially for AURA Creator, which is used to synchronize compatible AURA lighting effects across ASUS products. This results in several installed programs in Windows, a total of seven even, for ~950 MB combined, and more used CPU and RAM resources than I would like with everything running. On the plus side, I did appreciate the helpful tutorial and tips, which can be skipped or pulled up at any time. I had to also update the keyboard firmware first before I could use the software customization features for it, and updating it was smooth and quick enough wherein you have to plug in the keyboard with the cable in addition to inserting the 2.4 GHz dongle, before simply allowing the drivers to do their job.

On the plus side, Armoury Crate responds quite well to high DPI displays, which makes the user experience better than many other keyboard drivers I have had my hands on recently. You will also see ASUS has a lot of bloat in Armoury Crate, which is one of the main reasons people are not fans of it. It not only takes up more system resources than is necessary, I fail to see why I would want ASUS to try and optimize game settings or fetch me news. It also prompts you to have a user account multiple times, and there are some keyboard features which are placed under different tabs/menus as opposed to having them all collectively together. The settings tab can be handy though, especially if you want to change the skin/theme of the program, but otherwise just head to the keyboard page to better customize your ROG Azoth Extreme. I noticed Armoury Crate continuing to have sync animations lasting 1–2 seconds each time you do something, which again gives me a feeling of sluggishness despite the program generally running quick and being responsive outside of this. The keyboard customization options are quite rich here including not only key mapping and profiles but also lighting effects, macro recording, and a specific menu for both the control knob and the OLED display you can fine tune for a plethora of options as seen in the video. I also appreciated the power settings controls, allowing you to, say, fix the battery to a max of 80% capacity to prolong battery health over time in addition to keeping track of the keyboard's connection and battery status.


ASUS AURA Creator is a separate program for more advanced lighting effects and works fine enough even if it feels there should be more customization options if you go through the trouble of having a separate program installed. You do get the ability to stack lighting layers now, with each layer chosen from those separately available before. It also allows for per-key lighting, and you can import/export the lighting profiles as well. I am not sure why this is not included in Armoury Crate itself, even if it's a separate menu as with macro recording.