A few days ago, against my better judgment, I bought an LED case fan. It's an Antec TriCool, and I bought it because I was desperate to replace a noisy but important fan in my case. I hate glowing computers but I can't actually complain about the fan. As a result, I'd like to disconnect the LEDs without changing the operation of the fan. The problem is, I don't want to replace the fan - I can get at the wires running to the LEDs, and cut them easily enough, but I want the fan to keep spinning. Although there is only one power lead going into the fan I think the lights operate separately, because the fan has a 3-speed switch which has no effect on the LED brightness. Has anyone done this? Am I right to assume the lights are on a separate circuit? Other advice/comments/flames welcome.
do a search - pretty sure this has been sorted before http://www.turbokeu.com/mycomputer/antecfan.htm http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=25370&highlight=led+fan+disconnect as for disconnecting it while the power is on I would not suggest it. you choices for disconnecting the led's will be to cut a track of the ribbon powering the led's or remove the centre cap and disconnect/seperate the wiring thats powering it from there.
Thanks for the links. I did some searching but couldn't find anything good. And don't worry, I don't intend to cut wires while the computer is on. I just meant I'd rather not have to replace the fan entirely, since that would defeat the purpose of cutting the wires in the first place.
If you power it down you should just be able to use a razor blade to cut one of the copper tracks around the fan to kill the LED's. I used to have all my led's controlled by a single switch that looked after a ccfl too.
I've seen two types of LED fan. A gigabyte cooler (which was terrible, the neon 8 'pro') which had a set of wires and a circuit board to sort everything out, and a casecom blue fan whihc had a copper track around the side housing taped on. The gigabyte one was easy, the LEDs protruded form the centre. That just meant desoldering the leds and shorting the two connectors for each LED. bit of hot glue over the top to stop short circuits. (even though the LEDs we'ren't heatshrinked!) The casecom is a little bit different, cutting the copper tracks is one method. but it's a pretty final one. If it runs in series though, you're stuck. 3 three speed switch doens't nessecarily mean the lighitng and fan are spearate. the circuit could be: LEDs-speed switch-fan However, then 12v would be spread across it all. So you're probably right, they are probably separate.Can you get at the LEDs to remove them?
I actually managed to do it without even removing the fan from my case. The Antecs are wired in parallel, and although there isn't a track around the outside there are leads running across the backside of the arms that hold the fan motor in the middle of the housing. I just reached in with a pair of tweezers and pulled some slack out, then cut a small section out of one of the wires and tucked the ends back in. Took maybe five minutes and no more light. However, for some reason that fan's been reading a lower RPM than it was with the LEDs. How does the RPM sensor work? Is it current draw or is it a pulse with each rotation? If it's current draw, I can understand the LEDs changing it.
