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?? about LED case fans

R

rage4order

Gawd
Joined
Oct 4, 2004
Messages
795
Is there any way to adjust the LED brightness on LED case fans? Or are adjustable ones available? I have one mounted on my computer, which has a see-thru side panel and I love the lights(I'm considering adding internal case lighting also). The only thing I don't like is at night, I see this pretty bright glow in my bedroom coming from my computer in my study. I really don't want to shut it down but would like to be able to adjust the lighting. Or should I just buy a couple of simple pots and solder them in?
Also, should case fans be blowing air IN or blowing the warm air OUT of the case? Just wondering :D .
 
buy a pot, solder that biatch inline with the power and mount it in an empty drive bay (if you have one)

just remember, you will also be lowering the power that the fans use to spin, so you'll lose air flow
 
fans go both ways. you got the blowhole on the top which shoots warm air out and same with the window fans. well window fans can vary, i have mine blowing out. i have the rear fans blowing in and the front fan blowing out. :D hope this helps.

EDIT: this was my 100th post. YAY ^_^
 
shock- I hadn't even thought about losing the fan speed :( . I forgot all about that. I may be adding another case fan anyway so if I do add the pot, I won't have to worry so much about airflow.
MONST3R- that's a good idea. I believe all my fans are blowing in right now. I may turn my side-case fan out to pull some of that air out instead.
Thanks for the replies.
 
Hmm, fan speed is voltage/duty-cycle controlled, while LED brightness is current-controlled. Unless you want to pick apart the leads going to the LEDs, and soldering in a potentiometer, you're pretty much stuck with controlling the LED current by lowering the entire fan voltage with a potentiometer connected to the feedback loop on an op-amp or something. You can't just stick any pot in series with the positive fan lead, because you'll burn out the pot from excessive current flow going into the fan.
 
yes you can hook them upto a fan controller and it will dim them n slow fan speed. and wow monster you have over 100posts in 12 days!
 
I wouldn't think the current going to one of these fans is high enough to burn out a pot.
When you say "fan controller" are you talking about the thermal adjusting fans? Or is that something else? This may turn out to be a little more hassle than I was hoping.
 
Zalman makes a very nice one. It has 4 "pots" and 2 Hi-OFF-LO switches on it, to control a total of 6 fans.

There's tons of other ones out now.
 
rage4order said:
I wouldn't think the current going to one of these fans is high enough to burn out a pot.
Click to expand...
Oh, there is, for a lot of pots. Let's say you set the pot so that the fan (0.10 A, a conservative figure) is running at 7 volts:

Current draw through pot ~= [12/(12-5)](0.10) = 0.50 A
Power dissipated by pot ~= (5 V)(0.5 A) = 2.5 W

which is more than many pots can take.
 
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