Gadgetory

excellent what's up guys if you watch my channel last week then you saw my garage were clogged where I did a bunch of cleaning and organizing but one of the up shots was that I ended up with this box labeled LEDs that is now full of LEDs conveniently enough so today I'm just gonna kind of play with LEDs for a while that's really the long and short of it I'll talk a little bit about LEDs and what I know of them I'll do a journey of discovery for stuff that I don't know about them and I will ideally be actually doing some LED lighting at least in the top shelf here I'm probably not gonna get everything done today because what I want to do is try out different solutions for setting up LED lighting whether it's inside a case or whether it's like LED accent lighting on a desk I'm doing the desk version today but what I originally planned was to get the NZXT hue and actually set it up connected to my computer so that when I turn the computer on like all of the lights lit up at the same time and then I can go in and change the RGB settings on them and everything I was gonna use an NZXT hue plus for that I had actually been in contact with NZXT about that but I kind of dropped the ball and I didn't request my sample in time and they ran out and now even though I'm willing to just buy them I can't find the damn things anywhere so anyway point being that today I'm just gonna kind of take LEDs that I already have on hand I've got some from cable mod although that's an empty box but cable mod we've got some BitFenix and I even have this right here which is somehow the original NZXT Q which is still not even been opened before so I'll do some messing around with that too and you know maybe I will there'll be a resurgence of interest in the original Q out of the box again this is the old hue not the hue Plus which means it's got a five and a quarter inch bay adapter thingy up on here you can use the three knobs red green and blue to adjust the actual color so turning the green knob will make there be more green or less green for example same goes for blue and red so like if you turn the blue I imagine if you turn them all all the way up it should turn white right the strip it comes with is also like super long it's probably a good six feet long total and then you can also do stuff like is this deal Oh pressing and hold the center button to turn it on and off and then this button here will cycle through different levels of brightness so you can make it pretty bright too or it goes back to dim and then lastly this one you can tap to like I go into like it's like crazy have a heart attack mode oh that's nicer fade in and fade out you can do a color cycle just by switch or a color cycle by fading as well so you got all the basic kind of color modes you have in there although honestly all I really want to be able to do is just do solid color lit up in the background there and then be able to change that color when I want to so this could be also a viable option for that provide just need to mount this unit like underneath the desks at the edge so I can actually have access to it let's begin by answering a long debated question which is when you have an RGB LED strip like this one this is a cable mod one by the way and you plug it into a non RGB LED source what happens it turns red most of the time when you have LEDs at least most LEDs that are designed to go in computers are going to be 12 volt because that is the typical voltage that most computers provide they're able to provide 5 volts as well but most of this stuff internally that you see does use 12 volt but you should check one way or another the easy way to check if you have a 5 volt source it's just to plug in the LED and turn it on if you have a 12 volt LED plugged into a 5 volt source it will simply be dim however if you have a 5 volt LED and you plug it into a 12 volt source it will die so that is something you should definitely be aware of again most of these LEDs are 12 volts but if you buy off the like stuff from a store like IKEA has an LED set that you can buy those run on lower power 5 volt so trying to interchange the two and the same system will not work and that's just something you should watch out for the nice thing about other nice thing about LEDs as you can daisy chain them together although how many you can daisy chain 2 there's gonna be based on well LED strips themselves as well as wherever your sources your source of power but I could even do stuff like this now that's interesting this one is now trying to be white or something I don't know what color it's trying to be it's definitely not white because that I can see maybe just trying to be white it looks kind of red and blue in there but that's it that's an interesting that's interesting see I'm learning things I don't know what I'm learning but I'm learning something so if I plug this in directly is it still gonna be white this is an RGB one again by the way nope plug it back in just nothing's gonna happen that or I broke something all right so I've got all not all but a nice representation of the LED strips that I have out here in front I'm gonna go over each one from the bottom of the top starting with this one this is a longer one 60 centimeters long and this is the cable mod RGB LED strip that they sent over for me to use along with the ASUS Maximus 8 formula which has an RGB LED header now you'll notice apart from this one being longer than the others it well it's RGB although I'm not plugging in an intern RGB source right now so it's just gonna be red you also know this like the spacing of the LEDs you know they're fairly close together that's something else you might look at and then as far as connection goes this one uses an adhesive strip so it's got 3m of material on the back you peel that off to stick it to wherever you're gonna stick it which works pretty well because you can you know attach it to pretty much any surface that would accept that type of you know adhesive material however you do have other options as well so this one is also from cable mod and this is one of their newer ones that is part of their magnetic series so this one's also RGB alright so again here you got pretty much a 30 centimeter version of this longer one here that I showed you at first except you might notice spaced out here they're actually magnets that you can see through the films so if you take something metal like my knife right there hey it just it's it sticks on to it that's it's pretty nice magnetic LED strips are super handy if you have a steel case don't use them aluminum because they won't work with aluminum but I definitely like them guilmon is not the first ones to come out with an RGB or with it well I don't know if they're the first with an RGB LED magnetic strip but this one here is from BitFenix this is part of their alchemy 2.0 series and I've had this one for a little while though I haven't really done much with it so far but this one also has LEDs and well LEDs of course this one also has magnets added in there every so often this one happens to be purple although that's available in red green blue white and I think some other colors as well but again this one has the magnet so you can stick it in whatever you want if you have something metal you know it sticks to it so easy to position in your case and move around and all that good stuff Kyle actually on his channel on us obsessed Network did a pretty nice comparison between the BitFenix and the cable mod RGB LED strips the nice thing BitFenix did was the actual cable extensions that came with it they put in our they put a magnet on that too right on that point where it connects so that helps with your cable management's as well which yeah nice little bonus feature anyway though that's the purple one from BitFenix alchemy 2.0 now we're moving on to more obscure ones that you probably can't just get so we're moving into my type a collection that I have curated over the past couple years because I go to Taiwan I wander into the electronic stores I see LEDs and I might go LED strips I should buy them this one is blue although it is looking fairly white on the camera so I don't know I don't know what the deals with that it's fairly bright as well the nice thing about these is they're cheap they say like three or four bucks each two to four bucks I mean depending which shop you go into in that kind of thing you might notice though that you know they don't look quite as nice just looking at them they have that white backing and then I have a couple other ones here that one was blue but else I have a couple other colors and these other colors you know that since they're white in the back and they're just getting older they started to kind of fade and discolor a little bit so if you haven't positioned somewhere in the case where you know that's not very visible then you know that be an issue but some to bear in mind and you can tell why the company is selling in the US have gone with this black backing more recently but these of course also available in different colors and I've gotten a variety and I've used them in a few different builds and that kind of thing but there's a nice green one one thing you might notice if you're comparing these strips they say for instance to this BitFenix trip is going to be density of LEDs so this one if you count them has 15 LEDs going all the way across whereas these only have 12 so that's another thing you know where as you get what you pay for you're paying a little a little bit less money for these you get fewer LEDs but they're still nice and bright and they still work just fine so you know I'm happy to have them however now that I'm doing the RGB LED thing I'm gonna probably find less use for them here's a couple more kind of unique ones that I found there that I picked up just last year so you notice these do have the black backing on them so you know most of these are probably also manufactured in Taiwan but so you know those those places do have the cool manufacturing techniques that give you the more stealth looking background this one is a double wide so it's pink which also hopefully is showing up okay on camera and you get two LEDs going on the whole way so I mean that's kind of unique although one of them is out there's one out that's right there you see lastly we have another black actually I have more than these I have like stacks of these bags here these are in the bags they come in and stuff and I've tried to like label them if you go into this I don't know how many of you are gonna be in Taiwan anytime soon but if you go into the store most of the little electronic stores have stations where you can bring the LEDs you're gonna buy up to them and plug them in and test them that way you can verify what color they are and everything but here's a nice green one that I got which maybe I'll use in my wife's build actually because I your build might end up being green soon or it might be orange in which case I can't use this but um again that's just an example of a very similar LED strip say for instance to like the BitFenix very close this one actually even has a higher density of LEDs it's got one two three four five six seven eight nine so I'm so excited for 15 - 17 18 it says 18 LEDs so long that 30 centimeter strips so obviously there's huge variety available you just gotta pick your poison so I think what I've decided to do for now is use the NZXT original huge it's got this really long LED strip that I think will work perfect at least for the top shelf back there it's also got I need a dependent control unit so I can easily you know turn it on and off and adjust the LEDs granted there you know remote control units and that kind of stuff but hey again I was trying to use what I have here to get myself going rather than having to go out and buy anything or that kind of thing in the same vein if you guys are looking to set up LED lighting yourselves and maybe you have already got the LEDs but you're like I have the LEDs now what but you're gonna need a power source so I've got an old power supply here and this is my ex-roommate's old systems power supply that I pulled out it's a Z sonic it's actually even 80 plus bronze rated so I'm just have no problems here what I would want coming off this is a molex plug I don't have one but I do have SATA plugs that's fine it's gonna work for me because that's what the Q original hue uses you would want to if you're doing this run a molex plug off of there and then you'd want to set up a basic little solution kind of like this you get a molex fan adapter these are very very common to get along with computer cases or just as accessories or you can you know buy one online for a dollar or something this has a lead coming off of it for fan power just the red and the black here the red is connected incidentally to the yellow cable which is 12 volts by the way on the molex plug the yellow is 12 volt the red is 5 hold the black sir ground anyway those two are coming off that I had the 12 hole in the ground and then I just splice them together like I showed you guys earlier splicing that and making sure I connect the red to the line with the stripe on it to connect the black to the ground and then you should be just be able to plug that in and run your LEDs at full power full brightness power supply you're going to need two jumper or hot wire so to speak which is a fairly common practice if you do PC building but not all of you are probably familiar with how to do it but you get a standard power supply make sure it's not plugged in unplugged and turned off ideally you want to look at the 24 pin cable here and you will notice a green wire and look next to it there should be black wires I usually the black I usually use the black wire right next to it but all the black wires are grounds so any of those should work so in my hand here I have a simple little piece of paper clip I have clipped it down to a very small size and I've kind of crimped it into a little v-shape and I'm gonna use that to basically jumper between that green cable that I've already located and one of the black ground wires next to it I usually use the one just to the right if you're looking at the clip side and that's how that works and then we will be safe and we'll put a little bit piece of electrical tape over the top of that just to hold it in place and make sure we've got some insulation at least a little bit insulation over the top now where your jumper now this power supply is hot so to speaker it will be hot when it's plugged in and turned on anyway fan spins up power supply should be on unless it's one of those fancy power supplies with the fan doesn't spin up unless you've unless you've actually done something to it like making it get hot all right so then I can just connect my meseta power here tada and now I have power for my LEDs right so I think last thing I'm gonna do here is install these back here and give you guys a look at how it how it turns out installation for the NZXT Hugh was dead simple and I must say it's extremely cathartic after having spent so much time with these 3m strips like protecting them and not using the adhesive and be like I have to protect the adhesive for when I actually use it actually peeling it all off and sticking it to the back of that shelf was pretty nice it's working for me for now but I'm definitely not like sold on it for sure I will go over a few of the things that I still want to do just looking at how everything looks and I would have done this all today but in all honesty it is yeah I have to do my taxes this week and my friend is getting married in a couple months and his bachelor party is also this week so I'm pretty packed in as for our stuff goes but don't worry I will be back on over the weekend most like on Saturday with a probing Pole episode so send me some questions if you guys are interested in that and in the meantime what I will be doing in the future is first off of course repositioning all this foam back here it's not terrible but it's not straight on this side and I think I'm just gonna go all vertical with all of it I think that'll look kind of cool with the lights behind there not sure what to do about this hot spot right here on my metal wood protector cover piece that's you know I don't know I'll figure it out the NZXT hue itself is sitting right there which is not the best place for it but it's there for now and I'm super embarrassed that you can actually see some of the ketchup and mustard cables from the power supply there I'd like to maybe undermount that whole thing down here something like that and then of course I do want to do lighting along this lower shelf in the back as well but this was kind of a tester and just playing around with LEDs and having a good time that's all for this video I had a ton of fun I hope you guys did as well if you did do me a solid and hit the thumbs up button down there also down in the section down below you can leave me a comment let me know what you thought of this video and if you have any ideas of what I should do with my RGB or LED solutions in the future also you can check out the links in the description for my amazon link which you can click before you shop at Amazon that is an awesome way to help me out or you can check out my store store that pulls over at net where you can buy shirts mugs print glasses else oh now have a zip up Hoodie as well as some polo shirts and have a brand new shirt coming out next week so I'm very excited about that one thanks again for watching everyone and we'll see you next time and that will allow me to look at the pennant the min itself also it allowed me to snap things off and hit myself in the eye I'm gonna leave that in because that was unplanned