Antec Sonata LED's

[luciddreams]

Hello,

I have an Antec Sonata, and I love the case--especially, the blue lights. However, I happen to have my computer at such a height that when I sit down to watch TV (I live in a dorm, use monitor as TV) the soft blue lights are at eye level, and at eye level and above they are piercing! Hurts to look at them, and hard to see the monitor. I do not wish to move the case to the floor.

Curious, does anybody have any good ideas as to how to dim these otherwise wonderful blue lights? I was considering maybe shifting the light bulbs to point down more if I can, or putting some kind of plastic or film in behind the plastic which the light shines out to dampen the brightness. But, first I wanted to know if anybody here had some better ideas.

Thanks for any tips!

Case w/lights on: http://www.virtual-hideout.net/reviews/antec_sonata_case/69.jpg
Closeup w/ lights off: http://www.procooling.com/reviews/assets/images/ph-ASC-thingys.jpg

 

[akseli]

I have a Sonata also, I've personally just installed a little switch to turn the lights on and off. But what I might to in the future is install the same kind of dimmed glass which is used in "soft" light bulbs. It shouldn't be hard to find at any hardware store. If not then get some white spraypaint, take a piece of glass that fits between the led and the case's pastic and spray paint the glass. Then place it there. (haven't tried either of these out, just the switch which works well, it is invisible as it's hidden behind the door and inside the removable floppy drive ( I have little switches popping out randomly from my case)

 

[Cheetah8799]

A resistor should help. If you figured out the supply voltage from the mobo to the LED, you could calculate how big of a resistor to use. Most LEDs draw .020 Amps (20mAmp). I believe the formula goes like this:

(start voltage - end voltage) / Amps = Ohms

Anyway, if you find that the mobo puts out say 5v or so, you could maybe try to drop it to 3v with a 100 Ohm resistor. That's just an example though, I'm not sure of how many volts the mobo puts out to the LED.......



OR, you could maybe put a light film of glue over the LED to make it dimmer, but still shine through.

OR, maybe take the front panel off the case and pull the LEDs back into the panel a bit, then re-glue them with a hot glue gun so that they are mounted back a little more. Maybe that'll help block some of the light.

 

[luciddreams]

Good ideas! I'll probably try something this weekend; most likely, tonight. Any more ideas or working solutions? I like the idea of pulling the lights back, and also the idea of stained glass/plastic.

A dial that could rotated to control the voltage so the brightness could easily be brightened or dimmed incrementally would be great; however, I do not know if such a dial exists.

 

[boomerang]

Take a black felt tipped pen and color them over. I've got the same situation with my Logitech speakers. Works pretty well. Tones them down and takes care of the majority of the glare.

It kinda "burns" off after a while so it will need to be redone from time to time. Nice too, in that it's not permanent.

 

[luciddreams]

Ah, I used good ol' paper to take care of the glare, and it is not noticible unless one looks dead into the lights. I am a tad bit frightened of a fire, though!

Boomerang, your marker idea sounds great. Curious, wouldn't "painting" the bulb black turn my beautiful blue lights to black? Hmm... perhaps a blue marker might be effective...

Also, I was considering putting white out on the underside of the plastic through which the light escapes. Don't know if I want to force that plastic piece out though, and the marker idea seems much easier!

 

[Nickc19]

Boomerang, your marker idea sounds great. Curious, wouldn't "painting" the bulb black turn my beautiful blue lights to black? Hmm... perhaps a blue marker might be effective...

Coloring the bulb black wouldnt make the light black (ha...I dont think its possible for the color of a light to literally be black). It'll just dim the blue light that shines out...actually sounds like a good idea. A piece of film like someone mentioned would also do the trick. or, i dunno where they sell them, but those gels that they put over spotlights on stages and things like that...cutting a little piece off of a black/gray one of those would work well.

 

[BillBright]

I am going to side track you guys here. I built the wife's PC in a Antec Sonata. Great case BTW - I highly recommend it - and yes the lights are THAT bright - but hers sits 4 inches off the floor, so not a problem - I added a Vantec Stealth 120mm fan up front for added ventilation.

What's inside:
Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro 2 motherboard
Athlon XP2800+
1GHz (512Mb 400MHz X 2)
ATI 8500 All-In-Wonder
2 80Gb SATA drives (RAID1)
CD/RW
DVD/RW
Internal USB 7-in-One Card Reader

It also has an Antec TruePower 430PS but I do not use its "Antec Low Noise Technology" for the two 120mm fans - that is they run full speed and that is still a remarkably quiet PC.

With 75 degree F ambient temperature, my case temp sits at an acceptable 35 degree C.

but

I don't like my CPU temp. It sits around 61-62C with AMD's OEM HSF but I like 'em 10 degrees cooler. The otherwise great motherboard does NOT have fan mounting holes for the CPU HSF (I'll never buy another motherboard that doesn't) AND there is a capacitor in close proximity that limits the size of replacement heatsinks. The fantastic Zalman CNPS7000 series coolers will not work for both of those reasons.

So, 2 things:

1. What are your temps? And,
2. Know of a small base (65mm max), highly efficient, but relatively QUIET Heatsink Fans (kinda defeats of the purpose of the Sonata if you fill it with noisy fans)? It will need to accommodate a XP3200+.

-bill

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: BillBright
I am going to side track you guys here. I built the wife's PC in a Antec Sonata. Great case BTW - I highly recommend it - and yes the lights are THAT bright - but hers sits 4 inches off the floor, so not a problem - I added a Vantec Stealth 120mm fan up front for added ventilation.

What's inside:
Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro 2 motherboard
Athlon XP2800+
1GHz (512Mb 400MHz X 2)
ATI 8500 All-In-Wonder
2 80Gb SATA drives (RAID1)
CD/RW
DVD/RW
Internal USB 7-in-One Card Reader

It also has an Antec TruePower 430PS but I do not use its "Antec Low Noise Technology" for the two 120mm fans - that is they run full speed and that is still a remarkably quiet PC.

With 75 degree F ambient temperature, my case temp sits at an acceptable 35 degree C.

but

I don't like my CPU temp. It sits around 61-62C with AMD's OEM HSF but I like 'em 10 degrees cooler. The otherwise great motherboard does NOT have fan mounting holes for the CPU HSF (I'll never buy another motherboard that doesn't) AND there is a capacitor in close proximity that limits the size of replacement heatsinks. The fantastic Zalman CNPS7000 series coolers will not work for both of those reasons.

So, 2 things:

1. What are your temps? And,
2. Know of a small base (65mm max), highly efficient, but relatively QUIET Heatsink Fans (kinda defeats of the purpose of the Sonata if you fill it with noisy fans)? It will need to accommodate a XP3200+.

-bill

I've got an Athlon XP mobile 2400+ @ 2ghz, and it runs (according to the motherboard or the chip or whatever): ~50C IIRC.

Asus A7N600-X (or something close to that- I'm such a bad geek for not remembering this stuff )
512MB PC3200 @166mhz
40GB 7200 drive
20GB 7200 drive
SB Live!

 

[S4M33R]

Originally posted by: Nickc19

Boomerang, your marker idea sounds great. Curious, wouldn't "painting" the bulb black turn my beautiful blue lights to black? Hmm... perhaps a blue marker might be effective...

Coloring the bulb black wouldnt make the light black (ha...I dont think its possible for the color of a light to literally be black). It'll just dim the blue light that shines out...actually sounds like a good idea. A piece of film like someone mentioned would also do the trick. or, i dunno where they sell them, but those gels that they put over spotlights on stages and things like that...cutting a little piece off of a black/gray one of those would work well.

If only making a blacklight were that easy

 

[luciddreams]

BillBright

I had a similar problem as you regarding temps. I am running:

MSI K7N2 Delta-L
Athlon XP 2800
Thermaltake Silent Boost
256Mb PC3200 X 2
ATI 9800 128MB 256-bit
200GB 8MB Seagate
120GB 8MB Western Digital (slave, in case, usually not hooked up though)
CDRW, TV Card, Modem

When I first built my computer, I noticed via PCAlert4 (came w/my motherboard) that my temps were the same as yours, always sitting constant at just above 60C.

(1) I noticed that, on Artic Silver 5's instructions, http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm (which is what I used), ", it will take a up to 200 hours and several thermal cycles to achieve maximum particle to particle thermal conduction and for the heat sink to CPU interface to reach maximum conductivity." "the measured temperature will often drop 2C to 5C over this "break-in" period. This break-in will occur during the normal use of the computer as long as the computer is turned off from time to time and the interface is allowed to cool to room temperature."

So, I turned my computer off every night for the first week.

(2) A moved the wires inside the case for better airflow. Also, that thick wire for the PSU happens to hang directly above my heat sink and in front of the fan blowing air out to the case! Obviously, it impaired air flow, so I duct taped it firm against the case!

Now, my temps hang out at about 49c to 55c via PCAlert4. and 4 degrees cooler if I use SpeedFan (the two tell me different temps even when running at the same time).

Hope this helps!

 

[BillBright]

I use Motherboard Monitor 5.3.6. I used AC5 and broke it in as prescribed - only settled in about 1 degree cooler. I already dressed up the cables - using round cables where possible and tucking the cables away from fans and airflow. There are 4 other computers in the same area and they all have temps 10C cooler. They are not in Sonatas though. I have a 3000XP system in the room, under similar loads, and it sits at a comfortable 47C. I would settle for 55C. I'll hunt down a good Gigabyte Forum - someone there must have dealt with this motherboard's HSF size limitation.

 

[mynewrigissick]

i love my antec sonata