It's Modding Time Again

[Fueler]

Fixing the LED's in my fans turned out to be a lot more involved than I originally thought it would be. Up untill now I usually used Antec fans (when I wanted LED's) or Panaflos for water cooling. The Antecs are easy to modify they have a flexable pcb that goes around the outside of the fan with surface mount resistors and LED's, the whole thing ties into the wiring for the fan with one set of +/- leads that can be easily cut and separated from the fan wiring.

 

These coolermaster fans aren't anything like that. Not that the way they did it is bad but it sure made things a lot harder to do. The reason I went with these fans for the case was because I liked the green color better than Antec's plus these fans are crystal clear not a matte finish like Antecs. They are also nearly dead silent at full speed.....no need for a 50ohm resistor inline to slow them down to a low roar....with pretty good airflow (at least as good or better than the antecs with the resistors in place)

 

I had to pull the fan blades off to get to the guts of the motor....coolermaster used one resistor per LED but at least they weren't surface mount which would have made things almost too hard. In order to separate the LED's from the fan circuitry I was going to have to cut each resistor loose from the board on the hot side going to each LED. I left the ground side alone and tied into the fan ground.

 

The resistor leads are marked in red where I'm going to make the cut (I had to map out the board from underneath first to make sure I cut the right lead

 

 

I pushed the resistors out to the edge of the board so that the leads hung over the edge about a 1/16" then striped about 3" of wire and solderd it (bare no insulation) to each resistor in a circle around the board with the wire lead exiting with the rest of the fan leads.

 

 

I know leaving a bare hot wire hanging out seems nuts but unless you want to shove your finger into a spinning fan it's about impossible to get to and is completly surrounded by non-conducting plastic.

 

 

 

I don't think I mentioned it before but the led's are glued inplace and there was no way to just remove and place them somewhere else in the case.

 

I hooked the LED's up to a SPST mini switch which has a center Off position.....so the choices are off, 5 volt or 12 volt.

 

 

 

I should have everything buttoned up again before too long and then I'll try somemore pics. B:)

 

 

Edit: I have a bit of sad news.....several weeks ago I posted in this forum that I was taking a break from the project so that my son and I could go the NHRA Gatornationals....and it was indeed a fantastic race, the weather was clear an cool with just a hint of wind and the cars were just loving it, Prostock cars, bikes and ProMod records were dropping like flies. But one of the more interesting races happened in Top Fuel Funny Car. Rooky driver Ashley Force won her first race in top fuel funny car in the first round and team member Eric Medlen took out his boss John Force in the first round. Things got a little hairy in the second round though..... with the race well in hand Eric Medlens car suddenly took a hard turn into the right wall at the big end of the track but other than losing the race because of a disqualification (for hitting the wall) Eric was fine. On the very next set of cars Ashley Force had the same problem only her car took a hard turn into the left wall, again other than losing the race because of a disqualification Ashley was fine.

 

Drag Racing is a violent sport especialy Top Fuel....consider this ....one cylinder in a Top Fuel car makes more horsepower than an entire Nascar race engine and Top Fuelers have eight cylinders.

 

On Monday the day after the race many teams stayed at Gainesville to make test runs and work out some of the problems they may have been having. Eric Medlen was one of those who stayed....on his practice run he hit the wall again only this time the results were tragic, Eric never regained consciousness and after several attempts to relieve the pressure on his brain Eric was finally taken off life support and allowed to pass away. Medlen

 

My heart goes out to the entire Medlen family, friends and the John Force Racing Team......Eric will be sorely missed

[Winkers]

um this might be to late but...the leds should of bine on 1 line on the outer edge of the circit...then all you had to do was cut the connection and put wire on each side to go to the switch.... but the way you did it will work im just scard of that wire...

 

EDIT: oh and you could of used wire from a IDE cable thay everyone have 100's of

Edited April 7, 2007 by Winkers

[Fueler]

um this might be to late but...the leds should of bine on 1 line on the outer edge of the circit...then all you had to do was cut the connection and put wire on each side to go to the switch.... but the way you did it will work im just scard of that wire...

 

EDIT: oh and you could of used wire from a IDE cable thay everyone have 100's of

 

Yeah..... they should have been on one line ....but they weren't so I had to do it this way

[Fueler]

My "KIll a Watt" meter showed up today and I couldn't wait to put it to use. I was fairly sure that I was going to be pushing the 510 atx PC Power and Cooling PSU to the ragged edge to power a pair of e6300 based pc's two hard drives and three led fans (especially running the SMP client at 100%) but I nearly fell out of the chair when I saw this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the main reasons for this build was to help with my electric bill (this rig did replace seven other folding rigs)......mission accomplished B:)

[ClayMeow]

nice

[Fueler]

Still not completely happy with the lighting but I think I'm making progress. This is at the 5 volt setting.

 

[hardnrg]

(229W)

One of the main reasons for this build was to help with my electric bill (this rig did replace seven other folding rigs)......mission accomplished B:)

i think that uses less power than my AXP rig!

[Winkers]

uses less then mine already <_<

[Fueler]

I'm sorrry guys......I went through $22.00 worth of batteries and nearly forty pics with every type of lighting I could think up but this was the best I could do for the final night shot ( a photographer I am not....this was harder than building the thing)

 

 

 

I do have a few final thoughts though. The magnetic side panels and front bezel are like a god send....I will never build another custom case without this feature.... they just work that good!! My next office computer will also be a dual pc single psu design.....I see tons of possibilities.

 

A office computer/gaming pc with a back up pc for the second unit.

A general purpose pc combined with a folding pc

Two all out gaming pc's for the lan party crowd

The list goes on and on, it's only limited by your imagination.

Surely the 1 killowatt plus psu's available now would be able to handle just about anything you could think of. (I think the power requirements that manufacturers claim are way over blown to cover their a**)

 

I hope you enjoyed the build....I certainly had a lot of fun (and some frustrations) bringing it to you.

 

Until next time B:)

[hardnrg]

I went through $22.00 worth of batteries and nearly forty pics

lol... you know, you could have bought a 1 hour fast charger, some highest capacity Nickel Metal-Hydride (Ni-MH) batteries and/or an AC adaptor for the camera for that much money... I usually switch to manual mode for taking tricky photos and then take a variety of settings for a shot, because invariably the light meter is slightly off...

 

though the accent lighting is very pretty (hehe) I think you made it like 100 times harder to photograph by having an intense light in pretty much pitch black darkness with a very feint glow from the subject... I'd have probably tried to create some very soft ambient lighting (maybe the accent candles lol) but out of the shot, so that only the rig was lit...

 

I dunno though, I'm no pro photographer, so I also find it very difficult for "night shots"...

 

the case lighting however, is a very noticeable improvement on the preliminary shots, being much more balanced, with no over-the-top exposure of the side fan and just looks much more what I'd see with the naked eye...

 

time to finish up the article I guess

[Fueler]

 

Actually I did have accent lighting......a lot of it....and I tried every material and reflective contraption I could think of to keep the light from reflecting off of the acrylic panels

 

Edit: You can see the ambient light just by looking at the wall that is lit up in the background. The batteries my camera uses are 2CR5's....the rechargables are $50 the charger which you can only buy from Canon is or was $75.

[hardnrg]

try typing "2CR5" or "2CR5 Canon" into ebay.com and you'll find the batteries+charger can be had for peanuts