Case Fan Led Setup on an Enthoo Pro

[Chass1990]

Hi,

I am thinking of doing a build with the Enthoo Pro, and given the windowed side panel, I am also thinking of adding some case fans with leds on them so that you can still see the components in a dark room through the windowed panel. I have never dealt with led case fans before or windowed case so I'm not sure what the best way to work this is. I'm thinking a led fan on the top and one on the bottom or perhaps on the drive cage mount. Do case led fans glow bright enough to illuminate the whole case or is it strictly limited to the fans themselves? Any advice and suggestions on parts are highly appreciated as mentioned, I have not dealt with case fans with led before.

 

[synphul]

The led fans will probably cast a moderate to faint glow but the way many people light their cases are with led strips. I recently got the enthoo pro and am looking to do the same thing. Many people use just a strip along the top facing down or strips along the inside of the case panel facing inward. I haven't had a chance to play with different locations yet.

All led strips are pretty much the same from what I've seen. Even the deepcool and logisys branded pc led lighting appears to use the same led strips and remotes as other brands available through ebay, amazon etc. (Likely they're all getting them cheap by the truckload through alibaba or something and just rebranding them with their logos). Nzxt has a set that includes a controller called a hue that allows color changing, dimming and flashing/fade effects. They're around $34 but compared to other led strips it looks like the leds are spaced twice as far apart as others (less even lighting, lower amount of light).

The most common smd 5050 led strips run on 5v dc supplied from a 12v power source. They either have a molex adapter to be powered off your psu or come with an ac wall adapter powered externally. Most led strips have certain places on them where they can be cut to size. I opted for a set from a place called supernight on amazon, has the rgb remote, external ac power adapter (plugs into the wall), 16.4ft of led strip lighting for like $28. It's a little different because it's rgb+w which means a mixture of alternating leds. Every other one is solid white and in between are 3 way rgb leds, allows separate white control for lighter pastel colors. No idea how well it's going to work, they all seem to share similar complaints like the 3m tape on the back being weak and sometimes the wires come connected wrong (colors switched). I took the gamble.

If you search google or amazon for rgb led kit it comes up with a ton of options. There are some that are music controlled as well and flash to the music if that's your thing. Maybe check out similar searches on youtube to get some video reviews and get an idea of how they look/perform.

Here's the nzxt hue (2 meters of led lighting, uses psu power)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811992011

The deepcool led (2x 12" led strips with remote, uses molex for power)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811980001&cm_re=deepcool_rgb-_-11-980-001-_-Product

 

[Chass1990]

Thanks for the input, I'm very interested in that Deepcool one as it seems to come feature packed with 2 strips for a cheap price. Seems bright from the youtube vids I've seen too.