Software & Lighting
The K55 Core RGB will work no problem out of the box, but if you want to do any customization you’ll have to download Corsair’s iCUE software. When you open up iCUE you should see the K55 Core RGB listed.
The first thing you can change is key assignments. Every key on the keyboard can be completely reprogrammed, including the multimedia keys. You can select a number of different things from another keyboard button, launching a program, and there is even a full macro editor.
After key assignments there is lighting effects. Here you can add different lighting layers. In each layer you can select an effect, select which zone, and the speed and direction of the effect. There are 10 different lighting zones on this keyboard so no per-key RGB backlighting.
The lighting on the keyboard looks quite good. There is good shine-through on the legends on the keycaps and since Cooler Master is using a diffuser on the top plate the lighting looks very uniform.
There is also Hardware Lighting. This is the lighting effect that turns on if you plug the keyboard into a device that is not running the iCUE software.
Under performance you can set which keys are disabled when you press the Windows Lock button.
Finally under device settings you can check for firmware updates, set the polling rate, brightness, layout, show tutorial tooltips, and turn on PlayStation mode.
