liquidctl/docs/kraken-x2-m2-guide.md

Third-generation NZXT liquid coolers

Driver API and source code available in liquidctl.driver.kraken2.

NZXT Kraken X42, X52, X62, X72

The Kraken X42, X52, X62 and X72 are the third generation of Kraken X liquid coolers by NZXT. These devices are manufactured by Asetek and house fifth generation Asetek pumps, plus secondary PCBs specially designed by NZXT for enhanced control and lighting.

They incorporate customizable fan and pump speed control with PWM, a liquid temperature probe in the block and addressable RGB lighting. The coolers are powered directly from the power supply unit.

All configuration is done through USB, and persists as long as the device still gets power, even if the system has gone to Soft Off (S5) state. The cooler also reports fan and pump speed and liquid temperature via USB; pump speed can also be sent to the motherboard (or other device) via the sense pin of a standard fan connector.

All capabilities available at the hardware level are supported, but other features offered by CAM, like presets based on CPU or GPU temperatures, have not been implemented. Pump and fan control based on liquid temperature is supported on units running firmware versions 4 or above.

Monitoring and/or configuring the coolers is not possible with CAM running, otherwise you'll get errors such as OSError('read error').

NZXT Kraken M22

This driver also supports the NZXT Kraken M22. However, this device has no pump or fan control, nor reports liquid temperatures.

Initialization

Changed in 1.9.0: the firmware version is now reported after initialization.
Changed in 1.10.0: modern firmware versions are now reported in simplified form, to match CAM.

All devices should be (re)initialized after the system boots or resumes from a suspended state, or if there have been hardware changes.

# liquidctl initialize
NZXT Kraken X (X42, X52, X62 or X72)
└── Firmware version    6.2

With this generation of Kraken X coolers, it is especially important that (re)initialization happens before fan or pump speeds are adjusted.

The device should also be reconfigured, as previous settings may have been totally or partially cleared while device was off or by the initialize command itself.

Monitoring

Changed in 1.9.0: the firmware version is no longer reported (see Initialization).

The cooler can report the fan and pump speed, as well as the liquid temperature.

# liquidctl status
NZXT Kraken X (X42, X52, X62 or X72)
├── Liquid temperature     29.9  °C
├── Fan speed               853  rpm
└── Pump speed             1948  rpm

Fan and pump speeds

First, some important notes...

You must carefully consider what pump and fan speeds to run. Heat output, case airflow, radiator size, installed fans and ambient temperature are some of the factors to take into account. Test your settings under different scenarios, and make sure that they are appropriate, correctly applied and persistent.

Additionally, the liquid temperature should never reach 60°C, as at that point the pump and tubes might fail or quickly degrade. You must monitor this during your tests and make any necessary adjustments. As a safety measure, fan and pump speeds will forcibly be programmed to 100% for liquid temperatures of 60°C and above.

You should also consider monitoring your hardware temperatures and setting alerts for overheating components or pump failures.

With those out of the way, each channel can be independently configured to a fixed duty value or with a profile dependent on the liquid temperature. Fixed speeds can be set by specifying the desired channel – fan or pump – and duty.

# liquidctl set pump speed 90

Channel	Minimum duty	Maximum duty
fan	25%	100%
pump	50%	100%

Another important note: pump speeds between 50% and 60% are not currently exposed in CAM. Presumably, there might be some scenarios when these lower speeds are not suitable.

For profiles, one or more temperature–duty pairs must be supplied. liquidctl will normalize and optimize this profile before pushing it to the Kraken. Adding --verbose will trace the final profile that is being applied.

# liquidctl set fan speed  20 30  30 50  34 80  40 90  50 100

RGB lighting

For lighting, the user can control a total of nine LEDs: one behind the NZXT logo and eight forming the ring that surrounds it. These are separated into two channels, independently accessed through logo and ring, or synchronized with sync.

# liquidctl set sync color fixed af5a2f
# liquidctl set ring color fading 350017 ff2608
# liquidctl set logo color pulse ffffff
# liquidctl set ring color marquee-5 2f6017 --direction backward --speed slower

Colors can be specified in RGB, HSV or HSL (see Supported color specification formats), and each animation mode supports different number of colors. The animation speed can be customized with the --speed <value>, and five relative values are accepted by the device: slowest, slower, normal, faster and fastest.

Some of the color animations can be in either the forward or backward direction. This can be specified by using the --direction flag.

ring	logo	sync	Mode	Colors	Notes
✓	✓	✓	off	None
✓	✓	✓	fixed	One
✓	✓	✓	super-fixed	Up to 9 (logo + each ring LED)
✓	✓	✓	fading	Between 2 and 8, one for each step
✓	✓	✓	spectrum-wave	None
✓			super-wave	Up to 8
✓			marquee-<length>	One	3 ≤ length ≤ 6
✓			covering-marquee	Up to 8, one for each step
✓			alternating	Two
✓			moving-alternating	Two
✓	✓	✓	breathing	Up to 8, one for each step
✓	✓	✓	super-breathing	Up to 9 (logo + each ring LED)	Only one step
✓	✓	✓	pulse	Up to 8, one for each pulse
✓			tai-chi	Two
✓			water-cooler	None
✓			loading	One
✓			wings	One

Deprecated modes

The following modes are now deprecated and the use of the --direction backward is preferred, they will be removed in a future version and are kept for now for backward compatibility.

ring	logo	sync	Mode	Colors	Notes
✓	✓	✓	backwards-spectrum-wave	None
✓			backwards-super-wave	Up to 8
✓			backwards-marquee-<length>	One	3 ≤ length ≤ 6
✓			covering-backwards-marquee	Up to 8, one for each step
✓			backwards-moving-alternating	Two

Interaction with Linux hwmon drivers

New in 1.9.0.

Kraken X2 devices are supported by the mainline Linux kernel with its nzxt-kraken2 driver, and status data is provided through a standard hwmon sysfs interface.

Starting with version 1.9.0, liquidctl automatically detects when a kernel driver is bound to the device and, whenever possible, uses it instead of directly accessing the device. Alternatively, direct access to the device can be forced with --direct-access.