I'm gunna start toying with led's in my case, as well as replacing the ones in my keyboard etc. As Im pretty much a knob (yep thats right not a noob...) when it comes to electronics but can follow instructions like the best of em.... a couple of questions: Is there a preferred voltage u run leds off? 12v 7v etc (taking into account diff res values) keyboard leds, should they just be able to be replaced or would you find out the current to the existing leds first? many thanks although this has probably been asked many many times b4...
most led's run off 3.3 or 3.6v, if you put 12, 7 or even 5 into them you would fry them. as for replacing led's it gets tricky now - because although almost all led's are 3.x volts superbright ones pull a lot more current so sometimes replacing them will reveal little or no light because the voltage line that you are trying to tap cant give enough current. eg. when i put superbright blue and red led's in my Lian Li the blue one on the power led header would give off a tiny amount of light coz the power led header on my mobo couldnt offer enough current (milliamps), however this is partially an issue with epox motherboards but it can be solved by hooking the led up to the 'turbo led' header instead for those interested, but you may encounter this problem especially when replacing keyboard led's.... as for wiring them up if u wanna have just one then hook it up to the 5v line on ur molex (red wire) and run a resistor off the positive leg (it actually doesnt matter which leg the resistor is on but +ve is convention) to get 3.3/3.6v (doesnt have to be exact, 3.2-3.7 will work fine for most) but if you cant be bothered with that the easiest thing to do, if u are using clusters of leds for case lighting, is to wire up sets of 4 led's in series then u can run them off the 12v rail with no resistor Cheers
thanks freak, hadnt though about high brightness ones drawing more power....and as mappers only had the hi-bright ones in i'll have to just try and see in my keyboard im gunna run a couple off 12v inside the case, only coz i got resistors for 12v though! i used the led calculator, however just as a check i compared the results with the resistors that macroman recommended in his fanbus article (which i know work fine coz they're in me case!) but i showed 220 ohm for then 5mm mappers leds, whereas he recommended the 390 (the fanbus runs 12v obviously). Now i know that macroman isnt wrong but am intruiged as to the difference, any ideas?
