Whats a good LED strip?

Xnitro67

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I currently have the NZXT blue stip and its okay but its not good when it comes to lighting half the time its just making the side window blue and not the insides
 
I use BitFenix Alchemy strips and they seem very good. Nice and bright (although I've noticed a slight dimming in them after about 12 months of 2-3 hours useage a day). they are good because you can plug strips into each other to get your required length. They also have nice strong adhesive for sticking inside the case, and they're quite thin and flexible so you can run them inside door panels etc..
 
It may depend on your case and where you have your light strips mounted. My case lights up pretty good inside using the enthoo pro with an aftermarket led light kit off amazon. When switched to just blue it does dim a bit, the blue color isn't all that 'bright'. It appears a bit brighter than red but nowhere close to as lit up as green. That's with a black motherboard, black cpu cooler and gpu along with psu cover are mostly black (carbon fiber). My light strips are run just inside the lip of the case where the side door closes over and start at the rear of the case roughly even with the i/o covers, up to the top and along the top to the front of the case and down. Not quite a full loop around the case (no leds on the bottom). My particular case gets a bit tricky because the side window is pretty well tinted. To the point I can barely read the silver embossed lettering on the side of my cpu cooler (close to the inside of the window) when all the led's are off. Any room lighting or daylight tend to reflect off the unlit tinted window more like a mirror.

So far been using them on and off (not always lit) for the past 5mo or so without any issue. This strip was a 5m roll cut down to length so if they start to go dim or led's begin to burn out, I can cut off another length of lighting strip. I'd have to solder the connector pins onto one end though. I wish I had a better camera that was capable of capturing the true colors. Snapped a couple cruddy pics to show a friend of mine but the colors are incredibly off. For instance the dark blue looks dark blue/intense (like emergency blue) to the naked eye but snapped with the camera it comes out a medium/light blue almost turquoise. The camera isn't the greatest and the color sensors on it must be thrown off. Same goes for the fans, the rear fan is white while the top 2 are light gray. They all appear gray through the tinted window but the camera almost doesn't 'see' the window tint. It picks up the rear fan color as stark white which is completely different than what the naked eye sees.
 


I know this is a older post but is there any possibility of damaging your psu when using a led strip via molex? I want to get some led strips to put under my pc case to have a bottom glowing effect. The led strips im wanting to get are fairly cheap so im a little skeptical.

 
That I don't know, I haven't heard of any specific cases of damage. More than likely an led (one or more bulbs) would fail. If the wiring is incorrect it could cause a short or if the wiring were to somehow make contact and form a bridge between pos/neg leads it would be like a direct short to the molex and I would think feed back to the psu. More than likely the psu would shut down in such a case but I haven't done any testing shorting a molex to find out either. Hate to say with absolute certainty 'nothing' would happen such as damage to the psu or other components but I would imagine the likelihood is low.

It just so happened that the lighting set I bought came with an external power brick and I tend to play things a bit safe being an unknown brand I used. I was personally more comfortable keeping the led's separate from my main system power. So far so good, no issues. There's always a bit of a gamble I think with inexpensive mass produced electronics in terms of power usage. Generic power adapters for things like laptops, generic 'cheap' rechargeable batteries and so on tend to exhibit more issues if/when corners are cut during manufacturing in my experience but given the low price it's part of the tradeoff. Many cheap electrical products people will find aren't ul certified either which means they may or may not meet certain safety standards taken for granted since just about everything is ul listed anymore.
 


Ok thank you for the info. I hate to ask but do you by chance have a link or a name of the leds you bought? I think I want to get the power brick instead of going molex
 
Sure. It's a company called supernight but after looking around the various sellers (including brick and mortar stores like home improvement centers that sell similar) I'm pretty sure they're reselling imported products bought in bulk. The controllers all look similar, similar sized sets and options.

I had to find a way to fit the power connector from the brick into the case to plug into the small controller unit (the box that plugs into the actual strip and has the infrared sensor for the remote). The barrel jack has a bit of molded plastic around it that makes it just slightly too big to put through a pcie slot on the back of the case. I fed mine under the case and using a pair of wire cutters I snipped out a small portion of the honeycomb grille beneath the power supply so it doesn't show.

This is the set I used, it's $28.99 and comes with a 5m roll of 5050 (the size of the leds) tape, the remote, power brick, controller etc.
http://www.amazon.com/SUPERNIGHT-Flexible-Non-waterproof-Controller-Adapter/dp/B00KILUYWA/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1440123081&sr=8-18-spons&keywords=supernight+rgb%2Bw

It's the waterproof set, only because the led strip comes covered in a clear durable plastic sheath that can be easily wiped (dusting purposes) rather than bare leds on a strip which might get snagged by a cleaning cloth. It's also an rgb+w which means every other led is pure white. The white/color can be controlled independently for brightness (aka bright white/dim color, dim white/bright color, color only, white only) and together can give more pastel colors. There's also straight rgb where every bulb is a multicolor (no pure white in between). There's also ones that apparently work with music though I don't have any experience with those.

Trimming the strip is easy, there's a marker every so often. It looks like an extra wide soldered area and you can cut it with scissors. Here's a pic of an led strip showing the oval shaped copper connectors where you cut. Cutting between them leaves a wiring solder point on either end of where you just cut.
http://img.weiku.com/waterpicture/2011/10/27/23/5050_100cm_led_strip_with_glue_cover_led_634571185339234196_1.jpg

The only downside, the 3m tape on the back doesn't work the best. It's such a thin strip it barely holds. I used hot glue to hold mine in place, just using a dab every so often. It's not hot enough to damage the led strip and it peels easily from the case if you don't like where it's at without making a major mess.
 
Sounds about right -HH-, seems to be one of the most common complaints regardless of strip brand/seller. Even my off brand ones came with actual '3m' tape (marked on the backing) but it was so thin that it was virtually pointless. Maybe 1/8" to 1/4" wide at best. That's why I went for hot glue. It still comes loose a bit easy and there are better adhesives but not trying to make them permanent or mar the case in the process either. Wish I could remember the brand/type of double sided carpet tape I used to use at work. It was too wide and would have to be cut but was a super sticky thin mesh for holding down area rugs and things. That stuff had serious holding power though might be a bear removing the residue later on if changing things up or replacing led strips.