Bling hardware getting old: Question about CCFL lights and their little ballast boxes

[BonzaiDuck]

Don't ask me how fluorescent bulb lighting works. I've only replaced them for the kitchen and bathroom overheads, and noticed how the very old clunky black boxes -- which I think contain some ballast device -- have been replaced by lighter, solid-state units.

Your standard CCFL light kit comes with a little 2"x4.5" blue plastic box, with the PSU connection coming in one side and tied to a mountable toggle switch, and the output ports for either one or a pair of fluorescent light bulbs -- white, red, blue, green -- sometimes yellow, but I like the green ones.

I've noticed with the oldest 12" Logisys unit, the bulb has now grown dimmer. In fact, the newer bulbs (also a Logisys but with 2x 4" bulbs), appear to be slightly weakened. I know from experienced that this happens to all fluorescent bulbs, because I have to replace them in the two overheads I mentioned.

Well, the original placement of those boxes was perhaps ideal, if you expected them to stay in place a long, long time. If I buy another kit, I suppose I could simply test the new bulbs with the old remaining hardware?

What am I likely to find? Between the lights and their little ballast-boxes, which part just diminishes slowly, and which one suddenly just stops working?

Well, I'm curious about other insights on this stupid topic. Those little kits cost about $8 each. I think they use about 3.5W of power each -- when switched on. I think that in the recent year-and-a-half with the lights of this discussion, I've just left them on for months at a time. I got used to having them "always on."

Either way, I should order either new lights or a new kit or two.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Logisys? Makes flourescent light ballasts? Pardon me while I laugh...

LOL....GUFFAW... ROTFL...

Serious? You have florescent light ballasts, from THE el-cheapo PSU maker?

Do you trust them? That's the question. If their PSUs are anything to go by, then the answer would likely be "no". (*)

(*) But I recently built a retro Core2Quad rig, using a $30 Logisys case / PSU combo. So I guess that they have their uses, on an insanely-strict budget.

 

[whm1974]

Why would anyone put lighting inside a PC in the first place is beyond me. Seriously, Blinging your stuff up is one of the most useless things to do that I have ever ran across.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wait... are talking about home lighting, or PC "accent lighting"?

I was about to move this thread to "Home and Garden".

 

[whm1974]

Wait... are talking about home lighting, or PC "accent lighting"?

I was about to move this thread to "Home and Garden".

I thought it was about PC "accent lighting". The OP should be clear to avoid confusion.

 

[corkyg]

I understood him to be referring to the vanity CCFL inside the PC case. What he says doesn't make sense for a laptop screen's CCFL. Should be clarified.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Don't ask me how fluorescent bulb lighting works. I've only replaced them for the kitchen and bathroom overheads, and noticed how the very old clunky black boxes -- which I think contain some ballast device -- have been replaced by lighter, solid-state units.

His opening sentence mentioned "kitchen and bathroom overheads", which made me believe that the entire post was about home lighting. I was slightly confused by the mention of logisys, as I didn't know that they made home lighting fluorescent ballasts. Now that mention of logisys makes more sense in the context of PC accent lighting boxes.

But I thought all the kids these days were using solid-state "LED RGB strips"? Some of my more recent-vintage (AM4 B350) motherboards even include headers onboard for controlling RGB strips.

 

[Mr Evil]

Those boxes aren't just ballast, they are inverters that take a low DC voltage and turn it into the high AC voltage the tubes need. This can be as much as a kilovolt, so don't be tempted to lick them.

CCFLs wear out just like normal fluorescent tubes, so you could probably fix them by just replacing those. However, I don't think the voltages are standardized, so unless you can get the exact same CCFL then you should replace the inverter too so they match.

Or you could use LEDs instead, which last longer (virtually forever if you run them well below their rated current).

 

[VirtualLarry]

Or you could use LEDs instead, which last longer (virtually forever if you run them well below their rated current).

That's basically what I was hinting at. If you're going to have to replace them anyways, why not replace them with something a bit newer, and longer-lasting.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

That's basically what I was hinting at. If you're going to have to replace them anyways, why not replace them with something a bit newer, and longer-lasting.

I agree. First, as to the "little boxes," -- yes -- they're inverters. Replacement lights should be for the same kit, or I should just replace the entire kit.

I always met the "Bling" phenomenon with a certain derision, as though I were a "mature person". But these kits were cheap (as also mentioned by others here), and I installed two kits in my Skylake box. If I didn't already say, they use about 3.5W each, although they're switched. It was always a point of pride or accomplishment that I could mod a drive-bay face-plate and install the switches in them so they were accessible from the case front-panel.

LEDs seem to be the better choice, either for power consumption or longevity. I can probably remove the bulk of the CCFL hardware and re-use the switches, since -- as I remember -- the LED strings simply plug in to a Molex. A lot of trouble for very little. But if they're switched, they can be turned off to save power. When they're on, they remind me that the computer is "awake."