7 ms·

I recently built a new PC so I had to wade into this space again. The main difference I believe is that many components themselves now have their own LED light

I recently built a new PC so I had to wade into this space again. The main difference I believe is that many components themselves now have their own LED lighting. Before, it was primarily LED fans or light strips. Now, motherboards have their own LED line traces. Ram has it's own LED lights. There is also support to control the colors of these components from software.

caretStick 9y ago
> There is also support to control the colors of these components from software This is the definitive characteristic. You have customizable color on "RGB" hardware. If you have three LED's to support changing color, you might as well go with RGB and use a software-defined color. There is sometimes support for running all of the color changes from one piece of software but other times, you must reverse-engineer the commands yourself and write a central controller for it all. Could be a great pass-time. There's a tool for emitting the motherboard's bus commands along whatever standard, so if you figure out how to use the optional bits, you can make RAM glow in sync with the graphics card on an unsupported motherboard.
monochromatic 9y ago
It’s also essentially impossible right now to buy a motherboard that isn’t tarted up with a bunch of stupid LED nonsense. (Unless you buy something low-end or server-grade.)
- nickpeterson 9y ago
  Yeah it really ruins it honestly, back when I built machines I always went with black aluminium Lian li cases with no windows since they had a nice professional look. I just hate useless lights on anything.
- sp332 9y ago
  You know you can turn it off right?
  - monochromatic 9y ago
    On my board, I'd have to install some Windows application to do so. No thanks, I'll just close them up inside my windowless case.
- socialist_coder 9y ago
  Not true. Asus and some other brands have Workstation class motherboards without the LEDs. https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Workstation-Products/ https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Workstation-Products/
  - monochromatic 9y ago
    Fine if you want old stuff. None of those boards support Coffee Lake chips though.
krylon 9y ago
I just wish the lighting told me something useful. If the CPU fan changed color to indicate temperature or CPU load, that would be really cool. Likewise, if RAM lighting indicated the rate of data transfer. That would be pretty awesome. But all this fluff just to make PC more pretty seems pointless to somehow. (Don't get me wrong, if you like that sort of thing, by all means, enjoy it. My sister's boyfriend has a gaming PC with a big glass window in the case so one can see all the pretty lights quietly shifting around. It is pretty, and I bet it's boatloads of fun to look at when tripping.)
- badlucklottery 9y ago
  >If the CPU fan changed color to indicate temperature or CPU load With Asus's "Aura" application that comes with their new boards you can have the LEDs change color with CPU temp. The default was to set everything to green/yellow/red depending on range but it might be capable of something more complex. The lights are addressable so your CPU idea might be doable I haven't really played with it yet.
  - krylon 9y ago
    That would be cool. I am a little OCD when it comes to monitoring. I can be perfectly patient with a slow computer as long as I know why that machine is slow. But if a computer goes slow on me and does not offer me any way to find out why it is so slow, that drives me mad. So if the lighting in the PC reflected the components busy-ness, that would be really cool. "Why is my PC so slow today?" - "Aaah, the hard drive is shining white - I/O overload!" Anyway, my PC has a window-less case, so all that beauty would be lost like tears in the rain...
- Asooka 9y ago
  That would be really cool but the wiring might get a bit too complicated. Also the lighting is slapped on to readymade parts, so it's not like you can do alterations to the silicon that would be necessary for those features. With that said, since we're seeing programmatically controlled RGB lighting getting released, maybe someone could write a lightweight daemon to control it based on those parameters.

caretStick 9y ago

> There is also support to control the colors of these components from software This is the definitive characteristic. You have customizable color on "RGB" hardware. If you have three LED's to support changing color, you might as well go with RGB and use a software-defined color. There is sometimes support for running all of the color changes from one piece of software but other times, you must reverse-engineer the commands yourself and write a central controller for it all. Could be a great pass-time. There's a tool for emitting the motherboard's bus commands along whatever standard, so if you figure out how to use the optional bits, you can make RAM glow in sync with the graphics card on an unsupported motherboard.

monochromatic 9y ago

It’s also essentially impossible right now to buy a motherboard that isn’t tarted up with a bunch of stupid LED nonsense. (Unless you buy something low-end or server-grade.)

nickpeterson 9y ago
Yeah it really ruins it honestly, back when I built machines I always went with black aluminium Lian li cases with no windows since they had a nice professional look. I just hate useless lights on anything.
sp332 9y ago
You know you can turn it off right?
- monochromatic 9y ago
  On my board, I'd have to install some Windows application to do so. No thanks, I'll just close them up inside my windowless case.
socialist_coder 9y ago
Not true. Asus and some other brands have Workstation class motherboards without the LEDs. https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Workstation-Products/ https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Workstation-Products/
- monochromatic 9y ago
  Fine if you want old stuff. None of those boards support Coffee Lake chips though.

krylon 9y ago

I just wish the lighting told me something useful. If the CPU fan changed color to indicate temperature or CPU load, that would be really cool. Likewise, if RAM lighting indicated the rate of data transfer. That would be pretty awesome. But all this fluff just to make PC more pretty seems pointless to somehow. (Don't get me wrong, if you like that sort of thing, by all means, enjoy it. My sister's boyfriend has a gaming PC with a big glass window in the case so one can see all the pretty lights quietly shifting around. It is pretty, and I bet it's boatloads of fun to look at when tripping.)

badlucklottery 9y ago
>If the CPU fan changed color to indicate temperature or CPU load With Asus's "Aura" application that comes with their new boards you can have the LEDs change color with CPU temp. The default was to set everything to green/yellow/red depending on range but it might be capable of something more complex. The lights are addressable so your CPU idea might be doable I haven't really played with it yet.
- krylon 9y ago
  That would be cool. I am a little OCD when it comes to monitoring. I can be perfectly patient with a slow computer as long as I know why that machine is slow. But if a computer goes slow on me and does not offer me any way to find out why it is so slow, that drives me mad. So if the lighting in the PC reflected the components busy-ness, that would be really cool. "Why is my PC so slow today?" - "Aaah, the hard drive is shining white - I/O overload!" Anyway, my PC has a window-less case, so all that beauty would be lost like tears in the rain...
Asooka 9y ago
That would be really cool but the wiring might get a bit too complicated. Also the lighting is slapped on to readymade parts, so it's not like you can do alterations to the silicon that would be necessary for those features. With that said, since we're seeing programmatically controlled RGB lighting getting released, maybe someone could write a lightweight daemon to control it based on those parameters.