In planning my future mod, I've decided that I want NO LED lighting visible, my old case had LED fans, they irritated me to no end. However, I do like lights in my case, so I was contemplating building an LED illuminated lightbox in the bottom, between the powersupply and mobo (building in a PC-K62 with bottom mounted PS). I have about 3/4" to work with, and honestly, I have no idea how to go about this. Ideas- Use the bottom PCI slot as a mounting point, screw through the plate into whatever light diffusing material I use, in addition to mounting brackets around the edges to mount on the mobo tray and HDD bay. Where I need help- LED or cold cathode lighting? which would give the best light with a minimum of heat and warm/cold spots (best choice for even light), I'm guessing CC, but I'm worried about the flickering that some of them tend to start getting. What kind of material should I use? frosted plexi, High Density polyethelene (think white plastic cutting boards), or something else? I found this stuff, still waiting for word back from the company on pricing, probably way to much for my budget, if they will even sell me a piece small enough for my project.
There's a certain type of plexi, that spreads light evenly across it's surface, can't remember the name tho. But the best would be to build a sort of frame underneath the plexi, and placing LEDs along the sides. Otherwise ask some people on the forum that have actually done it .
Not many people have from what I've seen. The best example of what I want to do is Daniel's Murderbox, but the boys at murdermod are being very close-lipped about how they built it, as they are working on marketing them to PC modders through their store.
maybe some kind of electro luminescent (not sure if thats what its called, i dont remember the exact name) would work well with some plexi over the top. i imagine the light would be spread more evenly than it would with leds.. only problem is sometimes the inverters used to power it have a high-pitched whine. this stuff
Easy DIY that is most beautiful. I also Had that idea from murderbox. 5mm white acrylic 2x 30cm or 20cm white cathodes and you get this, now I know my camera sucks, it looks purple cos my 20cm white cathodes hadn't come in yet I only had a 30cm one and didn't fit in the area on the pics. But is looks amazing in person and is pure white ambient white light like the murdermod guys make nothing too scary or high tech. The best part very cheap to make. $5.00 for acrylic and $20 for cathodes form any modding supplier. 5mm acrylic diffuses the light really well too so it doesn't look brighter just where the cathodes are. hope this helps.
That helped immensly, thanks a lot. do you have any issues with buzzing from the cathode inverter? looks like $10 plus shipping for the acrylic (with extra for other projects), and 14$ for the cathodes, excellent EDIT- semi- related question, what gauge wire should I use for re- doing power supply leads? specifically molex and SATA.
Bumping this with 3 questions. 1- What gauge wire should I use for making custom length molex and SATA leads (Corsair 850HX Power supply) 2- I'm looking for a cheap 5" to 7" LCD monitor with touchscreen capability, any suggestions? I've been looking at the Lilliput EBY701 and the MIMO LCDs, but all of those are over $100, which kind of kills the budget of the build... 3- Is there a piece of software that will allow me to restrict programs to certain monitors (looking towards using that small monitor for music software), so that certain programs always open on that monitor, and are automatically locked depending on settings. thanks all
