3 ms·

It's a waste of metal, plastic, and electricity. Useless on every single aspect you can think of, except for the hardcore gamer pandering bullshit.

davesmith1983 7y ago
Some people like a bit of "bling" mate. Calm down.
vikramkr 7y ago
I mean, it's not wasting that much of any of those. It's probably less wasteful to just put LEDs on all those motherboards than create separate product lines with and without the flair - if some decent majority of the kinds of people that build their own PCs (gamers) want them, then it's easier to save on all the tooling and design and so on to create a new "pro" line of motherboards just for the people that don't want LEDs when they can just use an opaque case.
- shrimp_emoji 7y ago
  It wastes a lot! Unintuitively, for the things that do all the heavy lifting, chips are incredibly power-efficient. The stuff on the side, anything that glows or moves (LEDs and fans) takes up a disproportionate ton of power. I don't like that X570 needs a chipset fan, but at least cooling's useful. I can't have as much charity toward LEDs. Although I do like 'em. The æsthetic is sick. Although not this one: https://smile.amazon.com/G-Skill-Trident-3600Mhz-PC4-28800-Channel/dp/B07M8YGCMV/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Trident-Z+Royal+DDR4-3600&qid=1562984282&s=gateway&sr=8-2 https://smile.amazon.com/G-Skill-Trident-3600Mhz-PC4-28800-C...
  - effie 7y ago
    I saw this design on Youtube, it has to be the most senseless and tasteless thing ever sold in computer hardware.
  - vikramkr 7y ago
    I'm talking about the overhead involved in making the separate lines. But that's an interesting point - but counterintuitive as I don't need to build in coolers for the heat generated by LEDs. Do you have numbers on power usage?
  - kllrnohj 7y ago
    > It wastes a lot! Unintuitively, for the things that do all the heavy lifting, chips are incredibly power-efficient. The stuff on the side, anything that glows or moves (LEDs and fans) takes up a disproportionate ton of power. Not at all true. It's around 0.1-0.2 watt per LED. A RAM stick is going to have maybe a dozen at most, so that's an extra 1-2 watts. Similar for a motherboard. Maybe a fully binged out build is burning 10-20 watts on RGB, give or take. That's comparable to the power usage of just the VRMs or the X570 chipset (which is 10-15w), to say nothing of the CPU or GPU itself (both of which commonly blow past 100W under loads) LEDs are very, very efficient. They do not take a "disproportionate ton of power."
    - megous 7y ago
      2W is a power budget for an entire single borad computer I can run a desktop on. So it's quite a lot in absolute terms for a led inside the case that I'll never see. 10-20W is 10-40% of idle power consumption, perhaps, for a workstation. So it wastes a lot even in relative terms.
      - kllrnohj 7y ago
        > So it's quite a lot in absolute terms for a led inside the case that I'll never see. Then turn them off? The whole point of RGB lighting is it's controllable. That includes setting it to off.
        megous 7y ago
        Eh, point is 10-20W for a few blinkies is not efficient by any means.
        kllrnohj 7y ago
        You missed the "fully blinged out" part. If you just get RGB on the motherboard and RAM, the harder ones to avoid, it's going to well under 5W. More like 2W. This is a power cost that basically doesn't exist in the context of the entire system.
- close04 7y ago
  There’s no reason to not have a simple on/off mechanism (hw or sw). My 6-7 year old MB has some LED traces on the PCB for some reason. Luckily they are dim, static, and ASUS included an option to turn it off in the BIOS. Some other components on the market now don’t these “luxuries”. They are unreasonably bright, blinking, and can only be disabled with a soldering iron.

davesmith1983 7y ago

Some people like a bit of "bling" mate. Calm down.

vikramkr 7y ago

I mean, it's not wasting that much of any of those. It's probably less wasteful to just put LEDs on all those motherboards than create separate product lines with and without the flair - if some decent majority of the kinds of people that build their own PCs (gamers) want them, then it's easier to save on all the tooling and design and so on to create a new "pro" line of motherboards just for the people that don't want LEDs when they can just use an opaque case.

shrimp_emoji 7y ago
It wastes a lot! Unintuitively, for the things that do all the heavy lifting, chips are incredibly power-efficient. The stuff on the side, anything that glows or moves (LEDs and fans) takes up a disproportionate ton of power. I don't like that X570 needs a chipset fan, but at least cooling's useful. I can't have as much charity toward LEDs. Although I do like 'em. The æsthetic is sick. Although not this one: https://smile.amazon.com/G-Skill-Trident-3600Mhz-PC4-28800-Channel/dp/B07M8YGCMV/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Trident-Z+Royal+DDR4-3600&qid=1562984282&s=gateway&sr=8-2 https://smile.amazon.com/G-Skill-Trident-3600Mhz-PC4-28800-C...
- effie 7y ago
  I saw this design on Youtube, it has to be the most senseless and tasteless thing ever sold in computer hardware.
- vikramkr 7y ago
  I'm talking about the overhead involved in making the separate lines. But that's an interesting point - but counterintuitive as I don't need to build in coolers for the heat generated by LEDs. Do you have numbers on power usage?
- kllrnohj 7y ago
  > It wastes a lot! Unintuitively, for the things that do all the heavy lifting, chips are incredibly power-efficient. The stuff on the side, anything that glows or moves (LEDs and fans) takes up a disproportionate ton of power. Not at all true. It's around 0.1-0.2 watt per LED. A RAM stick is going to have maybe a dozen at most, so that's an extra 1-2 watts. Similar for a motherboard. Maybe a fully binged out build is burning 10-20 watts on RGB, give or take. That's comparable to the power usage of just the VRMs or the X570 chipset (which is 10-15w), to say nothing of the CPU or GPU itself (both of which commonly blow past 100W under loads) LEDs are very, very efficient. They do not take a "disproportionate ton of power."
  - megous 7y ago
    2W is a power budget for an entire single borad computer I can run a desktop on. So it's quite a lot in absolute terms for a led inside the case that I'll never see. 10-20W is 10-40% of idle power consumption, perhaps, for a workstation. So it wastes a lot even in relative terms.
    - kllrnohj 7y ago
      > So it's quite a lot in absolute terms for a led inside the case that I'll never see. Then turn them off? The whole point of RGB lighting is it's controllable. That includes setting it to off.
      - megous 7y ago
        Eh, point is 10-20W for a few blinkies is not efficient by any means.
        kllrnohj 7y ago
        You missed the "fully blinged out" part. If you just get RGB on the motherboard and RAM, the harder ones to avoid, it's going to well under 5W. More like 2W. This is a power cost that basically doesn't exist in the context of the entire system.
close04 7y ago
There’s no reason to not have a simple on/off mechanism (hw or sw). My 6-7 year old MB has some LED traces on the PCB for some reason. Luckily they are dim, static, and ASUS included an option to turn it off in the BIOS. Some other components on the market now don’t these “luxuries”. They are unreasonably bright, blinking, and can only be disabled with a soldering iron.