Using case lights for car / room lighting....

VigilanteCS

Senior member
Dec 19, 2004
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Hi, I never use the desktop in my sig anymore so I'd figure I'd use the UV lights in it in my room, but I don't know how to power them. The computer has to be running for them to light up, so I can't just pull my power supply out and power them that way.

How can I? Are case lights 12v? If so, I'll use the lights as underglow in my car since car batteries are 12v.

Thanks!
 

Fullmetal Chocobo

Moderator<br>Distributed Computing
Moderator
May 13, 2003
13,704
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I don't even want to guess on the car part (although yes, the lights are 12V), but for your room, you could find a 12V charger, and power them that way. You would have to do some splicing / soldering, but it would work.
Tas.
 
Jan 31, 2002
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Originally posted by: VigilanteCS
Hi, I never use the desktop in my sig anymore so I'd figure I'd use the UV lights in it in my room, but I don't know how to power them. The computer has to be running for them to light up, so I can't just pull my power supply out and power them that way.

How can I? Are case lights 12v? If so, I'll use the lights as underglow in my car since car batteries are 12v.

Thanks!

Car batteries are 12v when idle, 14.4v when charging. Unless your lights can tolerate that, they're gonna just go *pop* *fizzle* *flame* :p

And seriously, what kind of lighting are you expecting from a 12" tube? You'd need at least a dozen to get any appreciable effect, at which point you're probably well over the cost of a real kit.

- M4H
 

robphelan

Diamond Member
Aug 28, 2003
4,084
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i bought a wall plug to 12V molex cable (make sense)? anyway, one end plugs into the wall, the other terminates as a molex 4 pin connector.

nice because it lets me test before i install. not sure where I got it from, though.

also, I just picked up a baybus that has 1 USB + 1 external molex connector - i think from svc.com or performance pc.com