TDN1979

Hello everyone. I have searched and I found a couple threads on this but not exactly. So, I'm making this one up to show you how to install LED's into your fans that do not have them.

The fan that I'm working with today is the Big Boy fan on top of the Antec cases. The one that I have didn't have any lights in it so this is just a fresh install.

For those of you that are worried about it, this is not a hard mod to do. On a scale from 1-10, I would put this as a 5 just cause you are playing with electricity and drilling holes.

The tools that I used for this mod are listed below. One thing that you may need is a hot glue gun. I didnt' need it cause there is no chance of the wires touching and the LED's fit into the hole really snug. But you may need it to hold the wires down or to hold the LED's in place. But please don't use too much as it can make it look like crap, even if you will never see it lol.

Tools Used
Small wire (Mine is from an old display, it's very small but we are only working with 80ma max)
Soldering Iron
Solder
3/16" Drill Bit
Drill

Now, I didn't show drilling the holes cause I'm sure you know how to do that. I just found a place that was thick on the fan and drilled then in the direction that I wanted them to go. One thing to keep in mind though is how the light will hit the fan. If you make it to where the light hits the side of the fan you can't see, then why do it? You want the light to hit the blades on the side that is facing the way you will be looking at it. I hope that makes sense lol.

So lets get started.

The first thing that you will have to do (on this fan anyway) is run the wire along the other wire that goes to the PCB. You will notice that there are 5 wires. Two on the left are powder (+12v) and the three on teh right are for the fan controller that is built into these fans. Now I don't know about you, but I don't like my lights to dim when I turn the fan down, so I just wired it to the power wires for constant +12v no matter what the fan is at.

Here is a pic of the fan that I'm using. You will notice that I have taken the paper backing off of the fan.


Here you can see the wires and the PCB



Now here you will see a small clear plastic clip. I tried to take this out but it felt that I was going to break it, so I just left it in there. You can see that I just fished the wires through there.


Here is the wires that I will be connecting to the PCB


I'm not sure if you can tell, but I tinned the ends of the wires and cut them to the length for what I needed.


With a small tipped soldering iron, solder them on to the PCB. Be careful not to connect the two + and - leads, it can happen quite easily


Then just make the wires neat and you are done with that part.


What you need to do now is drill your holes for your LED's. It would be a lot easier to install the resistor with it on your desk or where ever, but I did it all after pushing the LED into the hole. Here you can see the + wire soldered on with the resistor. Do this for al 4 LED's. The wire that I used is one single wire that will connect to all 4 LED's.


Then do the same thing for the - side.


After you are done, plug the fan into a test port that is not connected to your computer. The last thing that you want to do is blow something out on your rig if something went wrong. Here is what my fan looks like after all the LED's are installed and wired. You can see that I will need to do some aiming on a couple of them to get them all to hit the same spot on the fan.


Now this fan will be going into the Antec 900 that I have and it will have a green theme, hence the green LED's. I don't know about you, but I can't stand how Antec only uses 3 led's on a fan that has 4 braces. It just doesn't make sense to me lol. So, I installed 4 in mine cause that is what I think looks the best.

Let me know what you think and ask any questions that you may have.



If you have LED's already installed in your fans, click this link to see how to replace those.
Added 4 More LED's

SLeeZeY

Good clean and simple.

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TDN1979

Thank you sir

Cepheus

Very nice simple guide.
I like the effect on the pic of the leds installed.

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TDN1979

Thank you. Like said above, you just have to figure out what way you want light to hit the blades so that you get the light on the side of the blades that you will be looking at.

TDN1979

Installing Different Color LED's into a fan that has them already installed

Now that you have read how to do a fresh install, lets talk about doing a swap out on a fan that has LED's already. The fan that I'm using is an NZXT Stock fan that came in the front of my Guardian case. The LED's in mine are blue, but you can put any color that you wish in there. With my fans, I did not have to install any resistors cause the PCB has them already installed. The LED's in your fan may be higher or lower voltage than mine, so be sure to check that with a volt meter.

Here is a shot of the fan that I will be using. This is a stock fan, quite slow but very quiet. It keeps my case cool enough for me and without me hearing a thing.


Here you can see the stock LED that is installed into the fan.


Be careful and pull it out of the socket. It's not in there real tight but you could still damage it taking it out if you use too much force.


The LED is soldered on so all you have to do is heat it up with a tinned soldering iron and it will come right off.


Now, get your LED that you are going to replace your stock one with. As you can see, there is one lead that is longer than the other. The longer lead is your + lead or the Anode. The shorter one is your - or your Cathode.


Now, you need to cut them off.


Now it's time to solder your LED's onto the stock wires. You need to do this one wire at a time. If you take both of them off at the same time, you will have to figure out with a volt meter what one is + and what one is -. If you hook these up backwards, it will burn the bulb out in a matter of seconds.


Now, take your new LED and attatch it to the wire that you just took off. What if you don't know what side to hook to the wire you took off? It's easy to figure this out as long as one of the wires is still on the old LED. Look in the LED and figure out what wire is long, and what wire is short inside the LED. The smaller of the two will always be the Anode or +, the bigger one will always be the Cathode or-.


Now, take the other wire off the old LED and solder it to the new LED. It should look like this.


Then just reinstall it back into the hole.


And here is a pic of the 3 colors installed that I have here. The top right blue is the stock LED.


Now, I know that you are going to ask me why I didn't put any heat shrink on the bare wires that are in the fan. Well, they have a clear sleeving on them that protects them.

If you have any questions, just ask. I hope you enjoy this article

wiggy2k7

Great guide, rep+

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TDN1979

Thank you sir

Silverlight

Awesome guide, i'm going to add some blue leds this weekend to the zalman fan that's on my cpu cooler

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TDN1979

Sweet, be sure to post pics in here so that I can see