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front panel LED voltage

M

matman

n00b
Joined
May 30, 2013
Messages
59
I'm building a case from scratch and have a question about the power and HDD LED outputs on the motherboard. I've inspected a few cases and and I don't see any inline resistors on the front panel LEDs. I was assuming the power and HDD LED pinouts provide 5V so are these special 5V LEDs? Can anyone confirm the voltage provided by motherboards for these LEDs?
 
easy solution/answer to that: got a motherboard and a multimeter?

I can check mine later this evening assuming
a: I remember
2: you still need it by then.
 
Some googling tells me that the LED outputs are 5V and have a current limiting resistor in the motherboard. That apparently means you can plug in any LED and it will be fine but maybe not optimally bright. I'm not entirely convinced because a very long time ago I once melted the insulation off a reset switch by plugging it into a power LED output...
 
Sorry to bring up this old thread–– I'm interested in using custom LEDs off the motherboard headers and was wondering if the output has a current limited resistor. Can I use a 3V LED without needing to use another resistor?
 
workshop35 said:
Id check the pin output voltage with a meter first to see what its really providing
Click to expand...

Got it, yeah I could check this. If there is a current limiting resistor wouldn't that affect this though?
 
If there's a current-limiting resistor on the motherboard, but no LED connected, then you'll see the full 5V at the pins.

In every computer I've seen, the LEDs are connected directly to the MB, so there's gotta be a resistor on every MB. You'll be fine hooking the LED straight to the MB.
 
Mohonri said:
If there's a current-limiting resistor on the motherboard, but no LED connected, then you'll see the full 5V at the pins.

In every computer I've seen, the LEDs are connected directly to the MB, so there's gotta be a resistor on every MB. You'll be fine hooking the LED straight to the MB.
Click to expand...

Great, good to know. I figured this would be the case... Hopefully I don't burn out the LED! ;)
 
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