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I've bought and installed a Gammaxx 400 CPU cooler:
It works well enough, but there's a problem - on its four corners are annoying shocking-blue LEDs. I want to turn them off! Yet - there doesn't seem to be a straightforward way to do that. I don't mind disabling them permanently, but I don't want to harm the fan or the heat sink structure.
What can I do to stop that infernal blue light disrupting my sleep at night? :-(
einpoklum
Posted 2017-03-20T18:04:54.340
Reputation: 5 032
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You should be able to just get a pair of side cutters and disconnect one side of the wire going to each of the LEDs. Make sure that the wire cannot simply contact with any exposed metalwork or other wire.
What you are looking for is these:
image from 3DNews
It looks like they've simply bent the pin down and wired it in, so it should be quite easy to break the connection on one side of the LEDs.
It would be an incredibly poor design if they made it so that a broken LED caused the fan to stop working so I would not worry there. They're all probably in parallel with the fan so it's not going to be a problem.
As I say just make sure that any loose wires that result are secured.
Apart from completely dismantling the entire fan assembly to pull them out and disentangle the wiring this is the absolute easiest option. The fan is held on by those spring clips so you could do the job properly and remove the led wiring if you wish to go down that route.
Mokubai
Posted 2017-03-20T18:04:54.340
Reputation: 64 434
It's the parallel vs serial question I was most worried about. How can you be so sure? – einpoklum – 2017-03-20T18:27:34.750
1Partly because it would be the height of poor design, if just one of the LEDs die then the fan is useless and you get a customer complaint about a destroyed PC. Wiring in parallel isn't that much more difficult and isn't a risk at all. It could actually be that the LEDs are in series with each other while as a group they are in parallel with the fan, but its difficult to know. I'd be happy to do this mod with a fan I owned, but there is a slight risk here I will admit. – Mokubai – 2017-03-20T18:33:57.890
3I hate societies current obsession with putting blue LEDs on everything. – Mokubai – 2017-03-20T18:36:32.697
Ok, here goes nothing... – einpoklum – 2017-03-20T18:40:13.750
Puts fingers in ears – Mokubai – 2017-03-20T18:41:14.067
The LEDs were all wired in parallel. I guess I mostly need someone to tell me to gather my courage and cut this Gordian knot. – einpoklum – 2017-03-20T18:59:02.053
Can you show a close-up of the actual leds themselves? Preferably not lit. You can probably just detach or remove them. – Mokubai – 2017-03-20T18:09:53.427
@Mokubai: I'll turn off my PC and photograph it later this evening, but for now, here's this.
– einpoklum – 2017-03-20T18:12:47.133@Mokubai: Wait, this is even better. More angles and a design schematic too.
– einpoklum – 2017-03-20T18:13:57.613