I wish I'd realised the same thing before I decided it'd be cool to buy case fans with LED's in them [rolleyes]

Jack

I think it looks kinda cool with blue neon lights. The only thing is that I sometimes can't fall asleep because of it. [sad]

I have a WD external hard drive too, but since it's not my primary drive, I just turn it off at night since the glow usually annoys me.

Just imagine if all your LEDs were red, you would wake up in the middle of the night with an eerie red glow in the corner of the room, you'd think that the spawns of hell were coming to take you away.

Or maybe you'd think that your computer has too many red LEDs. Either one.

Quote:I wish I'd realised the same thing before I decided it'd be cool to buy case fans with LED's in them

Yea, when I was buying my case, I thought it'd be cool to buy these fans. And the case itself looked like a BMW car from the front, with headlights. I discovered that the "ornamental" headlights actually shed damn powerful blue lights that illuminate the whole room.

In the end, I disconnected the case fan and wrapped the front of my case with a thick, folded blanket.

I dunno about anyone else, but the next PC I get is going to just be dark. Back in 2002-ish, lights on a CPU were cool because basically no one had it. Now it's almost standard for most computer equipment it seems, which has severely reduced the coolness quality. [sad]

in the end, simplicity is bliss.

If it's any consolation, power consumption by the leds is probably negligible compared to the drive's. You could always put black tape over the leds :)

Quote:If it's any consolation, power consumption by the leds is probably negligible compared to the drive's. You could always put black tape over the leds :)

For the drive, it's not simply a LED: it's a whole frigging neon suite, you know, these kind with a transparent plastic box and 4 neons (2 pink, 2 blue) on the sides.. Okay, it's not exactly my version, but look at this:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B0000DK69V/ref=dp_primary-product-display_0/104-7662015-6984728?%5Fencoding=UTF8&n=172282&s=electronics

You're right that the power consumption is probably negligible compared to what it uses when the drive is "in use". However, what i'm criticizing is the fact that it still uses power when the computer is shut down (ie, 24h/24, 365d/365). This probably sums up over the year. Especially since other devices have LEDs too. I'd be very interested to see a rough estimation of how much it costs me "per year". 1 euro ? 10 euros.. ? 50 euros ?

bah, just cut the damn wires :P