Why hardly any pink LED fans?

Pink Jazz

Senior member
Jan 30, 2016
228
8
81
I wanted to equip my desktop with Pink LED fans, and I noticed how few of them exist. I settled for two Rosewill RFA-120-RL fans, which have a pink frame but red LEDs. On eBay I also saw some generic pink frame fans with blue LEDs.

I wonder, why are there hardly any fans with pink LEDs on the market? I know early pink LEDs did have an issue with color degradation to blue or white, but in recent years that has greatly improved.
 

WackyWRZ

Senior member
Mar 8, 2014
211
16
81
Not enough demand would be my guess. I think some companies make RGB fans that you could make pink - but the fan itself is black.
 

JeffMD

Platinum Member
Feb 15, 2002
2,026
19
81
You can make a number of solid color LEDs, some can be a quick combo of 2 like orange and purple. PINK is not one of those colors. Instead you would need to get an RBG capable fan and simply dial in the color PINK.
 

Sheep221

Golden Member
Oct 28, 2012
1,843
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Most of the rigs with glass panel are build around red and blue theme, sometimes white and sometimes green or combination of these but I haven't seen the pink one yet.
Installing third party HUE LED strip instead and setting it to pink could be a solution.
 

Crono

Lifer
Aug 8, 2001
23,720
1,502
136
Yeah, RGB strips are dirt cheap and work well enough. There are ones powered by molex or USB for $5-$10 on Amazon or ebay, or you can get fixed pink ones. There are also RGB fans like Thermaltake Riing that you can get individually for around $25, or in a 3 pack for $65.

There aren't many pink LED fans because there isn't a lot of demand. Most gamers and custom PC builders are guys, and pink typically is considered to be a "girly" color. Or at least it's not seen as a cool design choice, as opposed to black, blue, green, red, etc. You generally won't see every shade of many other colors, either, as it's easier and cheaper for them to only offer a few standard ones.

Personally, I don't mind pink, but it's not my usual color for PC builds (though I did once custom paint a replacement laptop for someone whose pink VAIO died). It does, however, make a great internal LED color. I also do wish there were more nice cases and fans and other components in other colors and shades, including pink. I'd love to make a pink-themed desktop one of these days, just for the fun of it. But even a lot of girls/women don't like pink because it's seen as being too stereotypically, culturally feminine... at least bright aka "hot" pink is; nowadays even most guys will wear pink shirts or carry "rose gold" Apple products.

Pink is also a hard color to get in the exact shade you want. A build of mine from a couple months ago (ignore the slightly messy cable management - I fixed it later :D) with an RGB strip:

2mxl893.jpg


In pictures and from different angles it looks more purplish. Likewise, with purple LED fans and strips sometimes the shade can be off and they can look more pink. With the standard blue, green - and to a lesser extent, red - you don't see as much variation; if the color is "off" it's usually just lighter or darker than you want.

Mandatory Elle Woods GIF:
tumblr_n53zr0KLu21swsa1do1_500.gif
 
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Sheep221

Golden Member
Oct 28, 2012
1,843
27
81
The problem is that girls don't go for pink stuff that much either. You see a woman dressed in pink once in a while but that's all. And even then, they are much less likely to buy computers with glass panel and custom backlight.
And as mentioned before, pink is not that easy to create via RGB lights.
 

Jman13

Senior member
Apr 9, 2001
811
0
76
It's also a hard color to get just right in LED. My rig is purple and green on the inside (green front intake fans, purple exhaust fan with purple LED strip to light the main portion of the components). The purple has the same issue...it looks cool, but it's a bit of a bluish purple. I'd imagine pink will tend to red or purply as well in a lot of cases.

Good luck! If you go RGB or try those pink fans from Amazon, post pictures...it'd be cool to see.
 

Rubycon

Madame President
Aug 10, 2005
17,768
485
126
How about using light transmissive plastics (LISA) and some 400NM LEDs?
With blacklight LEDs you can really get creative with colors and such and have that so-called "nuclear glow". ;)
 
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Rubycon

Madame President
Aug 10, 2005
17,768
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What happens if you take a red LED and paint it with white-out?

You get a dimmer, diffused red light. LED sources are nearly monochromatic so covering them has little impact on changing the color. LED sources that allow for different colors will contain red/green/blue emitters and offer a wide selection of colors.
 

superstition

Platinum Member
Feb 2, 2008
2,219
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Color facts:

1) Boys and girls used to be dressed in identical white outfits.

2) A clothier decided he could get more business by inventing the sex-based color dichotomy.

3) Originally, pink was for boys and blue was for girls. This was justified with the argument that blue is gentle and calm and pink is forceful.

4) Gay guys used to be identified with the color green, such as by wearing a green tie. This was for meeting long before the hankie code. It was the Nazis who chose pink for their triangle, for whatever reason, that made pink identified with gay men. Gay women, for whatever reason, were labeled with a black one (making the Apple Lisa apparently a lesbian). Note that, today, green is usually the most popular color with elementary-age boys — probably because of its identification with camouflage, ninja turtles, and other military aspects.

5) Our eyes are the most sensitive to green, although men are rather commonly partially colorblind with green and red.

6) Despite being less sensitive to red than to green we have many more cones for seeing red.

7) Blue light is seen by very few (around 2%) cones but those cones are much more sensitive and are mostly located outside of the fovea. It is believed the brain amplifies the blue information to compensate for us having so few of those cones.

8) When we have green and/or red objects in clear focus blue objects are slightly out of focus (chromatic aberration).

9) "Magenta (fuchsia/mauve) is an extra-spectral color that does not actually exist in nature. It is a product of our brains seeing red and violet light at the same time. That's why there is no magenta in rainbows. The irony of "pink" not existing in a rainbow...

10) Our brains cannot see red-green and blue-yellow even though we can "see" magenta.

11) Pink is actually red made more pale by white — not magenta or fuchsia. It's just that our culture imprecisely conflates colors like magenta and fuchsia with pink.

12) There are no violet or truly green stars.