Question Is Dragon Center that bad?

[JunkSniperJoe]

So I was able to get my hands on the MSI 3080 Gaming X Trio from my local Micro Center. Like any "rational" person, I did my research into MSI's products after buying the card. From what I understand, MSI makes pretty good GPUs and okay to good mobos, but their software isn't great. Specifically, it seems to me that a lot of people have issues with Dragon Center. The issues I've heard of include: locking CPU at a specific clock, causing crashes, not remembering rgb settings, accidentally deleting Mystic Light, overriding Afterburner's fan settings, etc.

I could just not install Dragon Center, but then I'd have the big rgb strip on the GPU set to rainbow. I've looked into some alternatives and workarounds: OpenRgb (not sure if it works on 30 series), Mystic Light 3.0 by itself (apparently doesn't work on x570 or 30 series), and this reddit post detailing how to maybe reduce the amount of bloatware.

I don't doubt people have had issues with the software, but is this a case of the vocal minority making the problem seem more prevalent? I'd like to hear the experiences, both positive and negative, of anyone that's currently using the software.

I hope this thread doesn't come off as whiny, because I realize how lucky I am. I'm just curious to see what the general consensus is.

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

you should be able to install the software, set your RGB options to a static color, and then disable the software from starting with Windows or possibly even uninstall it. your RGB setting should stick and you can continue to use Afterburner to control the fans and the Core & Memory clocks.

there's also a possibility that your motherboard control software could recognize the card and give you the option to control the RGB from there. more manufacturers are starting to include control for 3rd party components.

Corsair's iCUE software has also become very helpful for recognizing and allowing the control of RGB components from other manufacturers. when opening it for my keyboard, it shows options for my ASUS motherboard and Fractal Design case's aRGB options now. maybe checkup if it can help you without interfering with other settings & components.

 

[TheFlyingCelt]

@JunkSniperJoe Yes! Dragon center is awful! Once installed, it keeps my clock freq. to 4.7Ghz on idle, whilst when uninstalled the freq. goes down to 800Mhz. I'm in contact with MSI support but it's a waste of time.

 

[JunkSniperJoe]

@JunkSniperJoe Yes! Dragon center is awful! Once installed, it keeps my clock freq. to 4.7Ghz on idle, whilst when uninstalled the freq. goes down to 800Mhz. I'm in contact with MSI support but it's a waste of time.

Here's what I ended up doing:

I removed the bloat from Dragon Center and set all the rgb lights on the gpu to 0 for red, green, and blue using the now standalone Mystic Light to turn off all the rgb. For unrelated reasons I had to reinstall Windows 10 later, but the gpu still remembered to have the lights turned off. I no longer have Dragon Center installed at all and everything seems to be working out fine so far.

This thread may help you with uninstalling Dragon Center completely. Best of luck.

 

[TheFlyingCelt]

Here's what I ended up doing:

I removed the bloat from Dragon Center and set all the rgb lights on the gpu to 0 for red, green, and blue using the now standalone Mystic Light to turn off all the rgb. For unrelated reasons I had to reinstall Windows 10 later, but the gpu still remembered to have the lights turned off. I no longer have Dragon Center installed at all and everything seems to be working out fine so far.

This thread may help you with uninstalling Dragon Center completely. Best of luck.

Hi,
but this not fair on us who paid for the software as well that comes with the motherboard, is it?
It's a matter of principle to me. They must fix it, even though I'll choose to never use it again.

 

[MadsModsat]

For me, MSI Dragon Center was the cause of frequent BSODs I couldn't solve. I tried changing RAM, CPU, motherboard, many many clean installs of Windows 10 and experimenting wih different drivers. Still frequent BSODs.

(I had almost all Dragon Center features disabled, as I only wanted to control the motherboard RGB LEDs. So the overclocking tab was disabled, as well as network management and the driver updater).

Even having Dragon Center Installed, but not running, caused BSOD.


When investigating my frequent BSODs, I came across several threads mentioning MSI Dragon Center, claiming it was known for causing BSODs.



I uninstalled MSI Dragon Center, and I haven't had a single BSOD or any other type of crash since then.



I now use MSI Mystic Light instead. It says on the MSI website, that Mystic Light is only compatible up to Windows 8, but it works perfectly fine on Windows 10, in my case..

I have a couple of detailed threads about my problems on this forum somewhere, which mentions the specific problems I had in detail.