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Lighting it up.

J

Jordan1

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 1, 2005
Messages
1,733
My blue "Spire NeonBar II" Cold Cathode light went dim (not all the way out) all of a sudden only after a month 1/2 of use. Is there a better option to light up my clear side panel case? I've seen led lights but are they any good for lighting up a case? Before my current cathode I had a Ultra-branded cathode that probably lasted for more than a year until it got broke from sitting out. Any other options? What have you used that has lasted? Thanks.
 
probably just a piece of shit cathode, try to buy a new one and no problems!!!
 
Well, I have had good success rates using the "super bright" CCFL kits from SVC.com.

And also the CCFL kits with sealed all metal inverters from here. They even have a high power inverter
to increase the brightness by 50%. (30,000 to 45,000cd/m2)
 
The lazer leds work pretty good for lighting up certain sections of a case.. but other then those cathodes are pretty much the best way to go.
 
While CCFLs are a good way to go, they are very fragile, don't last very long, usually have crappy invertors, and don't emit a true blue (or whatever color you are looking for) light.

I would suggest getting the LED tubes. They can have varaible flash patterns, automatically fade on/fade off, and have a sequencer built-in. Also, there are no high voltages or invertors required to run them. They have 2 switches. 1 switch turns them on and off, and the other switch cycles through the light patterns. They also emit a true blue (or whateveer color) color, and are MUCH brighter than CCFLs. They will last literally forever, since LEDs do not burn out (unless driven with too much voltage). They do not dim over time either.

The only draw back to the LEDs is that the light is directional. They need to be "aimed" at what you are lighting up.
 
I suggest SVC over Newegg for ANY modding shtuff. Newegg is a major ripoff on shipping.
 
Yes. Just keep pushing the button until you are in that mode. It'll remember what mode you were in when you turn them on and off.
 
I thought I would post a picture of my case lit up with cold cathodes. In this picture I have 10 RED cold cathodes on and 8 white ones. There are also 2 LED tubes which I must say are brighter then I thought they would be. If you really want to make it look cool get a sunbeam light controller. With the light controller running the lights I can have them blink to sound, blink to HDD activity, pulsate (fading out and then on again) and there are also 2 cycled patterns. One pattern cycles through each light, the other cycles each light on until they are all on and then starts over. When set to the sound you can adjust the sensitivity. Say you are playing a game with some automatic weapons, everytime you fire at someone your whole case will strobe to the sound of your gun. It is very kickass to watch. There are 4 independant channels so you could have one set of cathodes dedicated to HDD and another for sound, and have another pulsate. It seems to have no problem running 2 inverters, it may even run more.

This picture is actually 2 overlayed on top of each other. One is with the flash and the other is not. This allowed me to capture the detail of the case while still getting the effects of the cold cathodes without oversaturation.

storagesidenewpaint14my.jpg
 
Very cool case.

And the reason I'm posting vs. just admiring from a distance, is that I like the technique you
used to photograph it. I hadn't thought about doing a double exposure (in effect) to show the case, and get the ligthing effects. Very nicely done!

-Jeff
 
Thanks guys, been working on this thing for a long time trying to figure out what I wanted to do with it. I think I am pretty close now. I guess I should attempt an animated gif to show the lights in action. As far as the double exposure I learned it from one of the tutorials posted in the photography section of these forums. There is a link to some nice photoshop tutorials.

On a side note I am getting a new lens for my Canon 20D tomorrow so I plan on getting some updated pics with the new PSU installed. I'll probably get some more detailed shots of how I did the wiring also.
 
while it may sound tacky, i bought very good case lighting on eBay. maybe i just got lucky. YMMV
 
Just today I replaced my 4 CCFL's with 4 lazer LED's, and I can say that put in the right spots they are really nice, They really cleaned up the wiring in my case too without having all those wires that go with CCFL's. BTW, very nice job Jiggaman, very nice looking case, what kind of paint is that on there?
 
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