Software

The software driver for the CORSAIR K60 RGB PRO mechanical keyboard is iCUE and can be downloaded from their downloads page. Two simultaneous releases—version 3 and 4—are supported, with the former more for legacy devices. The latest public version at the time of testing was 4.14.179, and I actually decided against a clean install this time since I already had iCUE running from another recent CORSAIR review. A clean install is always the way to go, so don't follow my approach here in that regard. It did quite well enough, however, with the installer first downloading before a quick update based on existing preferences took place. The final install is still well over a gigabyte, so iCUE is not light on system resources, and you will sometimes have a few weird things (such as the iCUE for MSI motherboards process) take up more CPU and RAM utilization than necessary. Having multiple complex lighting profiles will do the same, so be aware of this lest iCUE not be for you.


When you do open the program, it is best to have the keyboard connected, although you can still play around and get familiar with it without any connected hardware. I also got a pop-up the first time around that asked me whether CORSAIR can collect personal information, which I promptly did not consent to. We now finally get a look at the brand-new iCUE, and with this redesign, CORSAIR has changed a lot of things. There are pop-up help cues that come up now, which can be toggled to appear again in the settings. Scaling with high DPI displays and Windows 10 worked flawlessly too, but I am starting to see iCUE become more of a platform to integrate game libraries similar to ASUS Armoury Crate that I'd rather all this be cut down to save on system resources. Though not perfect by any means, this is still the most polished keyboard software experience I have had in terms of UX design and product support.

The home page retains the ability to chose and create profiles, as well as a dashboard tab to customize previews for devices, which is useful for a quick look at your system's current status. Now in the form of "Scenes," instant lighting still allows for unified lighting across all connected devices, and we see a sensor module that is quite handy for quickly taking a look at system and device-specific information. We still get the global settings tab, and it is laid out better than before, especially on a high DPI display. However, unlike before, where we had device-specific settings here, including global brightness and polling rate, the only relevant item is a firmware update tool that I did go through to update the keyboard firmware prior to further testing.

Actions are still named in the keyboard's dashboard, but for the sake of better understanding, CORSAIR has renamed this section "Key Assignment." By default, the keyboard does what the keycap legends denote, but do not let that stop you. As the video illustrates, you can record a macro, edit it completely, and assign it to a key—make a key stroke input pre-configured text, assign mouse actions to keys, completely change the typing layout if QWERTY is not your cup of tea, etc. All these software controls make this a fully programmable keyboard within the limits of what is allowed for the device, and changing the language in the settings page opens up more options, too.

Gone is the three-column approach for lighting, and we instead see a similar approach to the key assignment section in that iCUE software-profile-based lighting effects are separated from hardware lighting effects, which of course have fewer options since they are saved onboard. The actual customization of backlighting is still similar to before with layers being the name of the game to create all the complex iCUE lighting profiles others have and that really would take me too long to create myself. The effects themselves are still split across three groups. Presets are for the dynamic and reactive effects, Custom for static and gradient effects, among others, and Lighting Link goes back to the "Scenes" on the home page. Each effect has associated sub-options, including brightness level, speed, direction, and the actual color chosen from among 16.8 M options (256 brightness steps per R/G/B channel).