Illuminating a Water Loop

Wylis

Wylis

Wylis

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Joined
28 Nov 2010
Posts
12
Location
Cockermouth, Cumbria
Howdy.

Some of my watercooling loop is going to be external to the case, I wondered if anyone had any suggestions to make 4-6" of tubing glow? (blue, if poss!)
How would I "inject" the light to it, and what would you suggest I use??

Thanks in Advance. Wylis :p
 
Are you just trying to make that section glow? because if so that might be more of a challenge.... If you're happy for the whole section to glow just use a UV liquid or something...

If you only wanted that part to glow it might be more of a challenge, but if you could find a way to cut your tubing and rejoin two sections of tubing, maybe you could get some blue tubing and attach it to whatever the tubing is in the rest of your loop. This shouldn't actually be too hard I think - might be a bit fiddly and higher risk of leaks, but if done properly may well work.

Never tried watercooling myself, so not too sure, but these are just ideas I'm coming up with :D

As for the glow, in theory if you get lighting correct inside the case it can refract through the water, and this would help you get the correct look possibly, again it may take a lot of fiddling though!

Hope this helps, and good luck, sounds like it'll look good :)

kd
 
Cheers, mate.
I am more than happy for it all to glow... but I wanted the exposed pieces to REALLY glow to set off the look.

I think with correct fiddling some light could be injected. I'm toying with gluing some LEDs into a tube, but would, obviously, test away from computer first.

Hope I'm not trying to run before I can walk here!
 
Yep, to make it glow there's basically 4 ways you can do it:

LED
UV Tubing
UV Fluid
CCFL (cold cathode)

For the two UV ones, you'll need to get some sort of UV source, either a UV LED or a UV Cathode. Why not stick 2 cathodes on the part of the case where the tubing is and seeing if it will glow?
 
Personally I'd use UV reflective (or reactive I forget what you'd call it) tubing and some SMD UV LED tape. Not sure if I'm allowed to link to it, the company sells nothing but LEDs and related gubbins

SMD tape is awesome - best of all it is pre-wired for 12v, so you can run it from a molex plug. Only minimal soldering involved, the stuff is self adhesive and very easy to hide. This UV type comes in 5cm/3 LED strips or a continuous length in multiples of 5cm.
 
if you're thinking of LEDs, talk to Teal'c - he's the LED master...

Maybe you could hot glue some suface mount LEDs onto the outside of the tubing so they glow through the tube... obviously would need to be really well done as it would be all visible...

Teal'c will advise :)

C.K said:
You must be mad to try this lol
Click to expand...

+1

With the pump running, everything is under pressure - no matter how low - any little imperfection in the seal would be a huge leak hazard!
 
I think you'd need just to shine a couple, or more ultra bright blue (or better still Orange) LEDs onto a tranlucent tube, pointed towards the outgoing tube direction. The tube will refract the light and carry it outside through the tube. They'll throw a lot of light into the case too I'd imagine.
 
Defo use reactive paint on the outside. Under no account try drilling holes and resealing. This is just asking for trouble and you will end up lunching the whole system.
 
The paint sounds like a great idea -thanks, chaps.
I have bought a blue cold cathode (or 4!) already, so I'm going to see what I can acheive with some creative positioning... if no joy, I'll try the paint/tape. Many Thanks. Wylis :D
 
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