Introduction
Lately everyone has been throwing cold cathodes at their computers, but what about our old friend the Light Emitting Diode (L.E.D.)? Well today I�m going to be looking at 3 LED based products by �Lamps Electronics�.
The product:
Please click on thumbnails to get bigger pictures
Three products arrived on my doorstep, Blue �Lazer� LED�s, UV LED�s and a LED fan grill. As you may have seen I have recently reviewed quite a few CCFL (cold cathode) fan grills, so I was intrigued to see how the fan grill by lamps electronics would perform. The parcel was well protected so no damaged occurred. The products themselves come in fairly simplistic boxes, the back of the plastic boxes on the LED �clusters� denote the colour of the LED�s in the product. UV LED�s are in the round �cluster� and Blue in the other. The fan grill came with a piece of card which contains the Lamps Electronics e-mail address and some specifications (for a CCFL fan grill though). All 3 products have molex Y splitters, this means that you don�t have to �loose� a connection to the product which can be very useful.
Please click on thumbnails to get bigger pictures
The Fan grill comes with a switch, but the switch is not mounted on a PCI blanking plate, this may cause some switch placement issues for a non experienced modder. Screws are not provided with the fan grill with which to mount it, this could be a problem as not everyone will have screws handy to do the job.
Please click on thumbnails to get bigger pictures
The LED clusters do come with screws and a small piece of Velcro with which to secure the LED�s in the desired location. The casing of the products has a nice �chrome look� finish. The rectangular LED module contains 3 LED�s. The centre LED pointing straight ahead and two either side at 45� to the centre LED this ensures a wide coverage and viewing angle. When connected the cluster gives a wide area of a bright blue light.
Please click on thumbnails to get bigger pictures
The rounded LED module contains 4 LED�s unlike the other module they all point in the same direction, creating a highly focused beam of UV light but at the cost of having a small viewing angle. When connected the cluster gives a spot light effect, and shows up brightest on UV reactive surfaces, this could be handy in a case to shine only on a UV reactive item.
Please click on thumbnails to get bigger pictures
I mounted the fan grill to my CPU cooler using cable ties, unfortunately I was unable to locate suitable screws for the job. The centre of the grill has red SMD (surface mount diode) LED�s and the outer ring blue. SMD or surface mount diodes, are very small LED�s and until recently have been too low powered to be used in such an application as case lighting, their name comes from the face that they have no legs that �poke� through the PCB�s (printed circuit board) that they are mounted on and generally are small. The fan grill looks great when switched on the colours are very vivid and in my option are superior to cold cathode fan grills.
Conclusion:
The fan grill was particularly impressible, also where the LED�s but the fan grill would defiantly benefit from a few screws, the round �cluster� of LED�s would benefit form a little tweaking to make them point away from each other to increace the light coverage.
Pros:
+ Vivid colours
+ High Quality design
+ Screws for LED clusters
Cons:
- No mounting equipment for the fan grill
Recent Comments