# UV cathodes



## Paul_282 (Feb 16, 2005)

Does any1 know any decent UV cathodes and where to get them? as i have no experience with them, so i may well choose a lemon... also can anyone tell me if there are small 2 plug IDE cables with blue UV, and also any other stuff which is pretty cool in UV.... (except fans... i like a quiet case)


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## Sarkast (Sep 12, 2004)

Actually i have 1 Coolermaster Silent UV fan in my case (120mm). It runs a lot quieter than my TT 120 fan that i have to reduce to 5V in order to get the same low noise. I can really recommend these UV fans.

I bought UV cathodes from several companies and somehow they all seem the same (even though they sometimes have diffrent names printed on the boxes). My guess is they are all made in china - then just sent to diffrent companies that slap their name on it. The ones that worked good for me were "made" by Logisys. Nice and bright. In the past i bought from coolerguys, bestbyte, newegg, frozencpu etc. Too many to remember... 

I am not so sure about the IDE cables. Do you want them to be UV reactive ? If yes - they have them in diffrent lengths with just 2 plugs (1 device). I have 2 in my case... pretty nice.

Another product i like a LOT is the UV reactive cable wrap (bestbyte has it very cheap). Its not split loom where sometimes the cables show... it wraps around the cable and can be fit to any thickness. Its very easy to sleeve wires with it and looks great. It also glows like crazy under UV light - a lot stronger than my IDE cables.

Something else UV: UV reactive Vantec cable sleeving. I sleeved all my PSU wires with it and it glows great. Also not expensive (8$). But i have to say the kit was barely enough for all the wires that my PSU has. Good thing i didnt screw up or wasted any...


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## Paul_282 (Feb 16, 2005)

So you can get IDE with just 2 of the plugs? or can u cut them? I have some split loom blue cable sleeving but its not UV reactive and it didnt come with enough... It was extremely tricky to get the main power cable sleeved and it was basically imposible to sleeve the molex cables, so, this cable wrap, is it like an electrical tape that u wind round your cable or is it a heatshrink? Also is there a way to get the split loom over larger plugs like the molex and the motherboard power plug? because I had major difficulty... I like the sound of the UV reactive IDE cable and also the cable wrap. I'd probably like cable sleeve a little more if i knew how to use it properly... is there a technique to getting it on? do you have to take off the plugs with special tools?
Also the UV fans, do they glow in UV or do they have UV LEDs or something?


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## Sarkast (Sep 12, 2004)

Yeah you can get those "2 plug IDEs". Like i said i use them. I dont think you can cut 2 device ones though.... (because device one is always at the end)

Heres a link as an example:

http://www.coolerguys.com/840556014317.html

About the wire wrap i mentioned. The stuff from bestbyte is great. They have it in 3 diffrent diameters - but each is very expandable. Meaning that when you use the 3/8 inch you can wrap a lot thicker cables and it still wraps neatly around it. I sleeved my main power cable and it was easy and looks great (and glows like blue fire under UV). Just go to their website - they have some good pics. Its a bit like wireloom - but instead of being cut along its length its cut in a spiral. Works a lot better in my eyes.

If you use a sleeving kit then the ideal way to do it is to take off all the molex plugs with a special tool. Its a lot of work and you have to make sure you mark it all correctly in order to not wire something wrong when you put it back together. My PSU took several hours. If you dont want to do that the wire wrap is a great substitute.

About the UV fans. There some that are just UV reactive. Others have UV leds in them (my 80mm side fan is from PC toys orange UV + UV leds).

I had some pics of my case in the case mod contest thread in this forum but somehow the attached pics gone missing. I changed a lot since then anyways so i'll post a few newer pics in here later when i am back on my PC. Thats way you can see the wire wrap and how it glows. I dont have the pics on this one.


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## Sarkast (Sep 12, 2004)

*New Pics*

Here are the pics i just took.

Let me know what you think. One comment. The orange cables look like they have a little red/ pinkish tone in some areas. In real life they are bright orange though. Must be the digital camera pics it up that way.

I think you can see the blue wire wrap pretty well. Also the side led fan etc - basically everything we talked about.

I have some more pics - closeups but i can only upload 2. Hope it works...


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## Paul_282 (Feb 16, 2005)

WOW! thats genuinly impressive UV... the thing is i'm tired of having to hide my cables away, and i'd rather have them showing proud in a bright blue UV. Have u never considered water cooling or water chilling ur VGA and CPU and northbridge? Because thats another one of the factors pushing me to UV, as i think the UV water additives would look quality flowing around my case... have you never considered this as a viable option?

Also, what make of case is it? the large window in the side pushes me to believe its a lian li? is that the case?


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## Sarkast (Sep 12, 2004)

Not really. For one i dont need to because i am not an extreme overclocker and for what i am doing my XP-90 works fine. Besides - there are a lot of watercooling systems that dont even cool any better than a good air cooler.

And - know this is overly paranoid - but i just dont want to mix water and electronic components ! ;-)

However - i agree that water cooling with UV liquid can look great.

The case is a Logisys armor. I changed a lot in it to fit it my needs and i am not fully done yet. I am also gonna cover the drive bays cause i dont like the looks of all the mounts and holes.

The etched glass is also custom - doesnt come on the window when you buy the logisys. But its a very nice case - i like the fact that you can mount 2 120mm fans and the airflow is fantastic.


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## Paul_282 (Feb 16, 2005)

I use none conductive liquid, just incase, to minimize any damage... my case can handle 3 80mm fans, and i modded the top 2 5.5inch drive bays to be a shelf, with room for a 2x120mm radiator and pump. I need to dremmel in another fan hole though, to keep the air flowing over them. Ca you recomend any UV LED case fans? they can be UV reactive too... but they need to be quiet as i can get, while maintaining good air flow.

How do you mount the UV cathode tubes into your case? and how many do you need to ensure the case is lit up like a christmas tree?


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## Sarkast (Sep 12, 2004)

Well the only UV LED fan i have is the 80mm side fan from PC toys. Its not very loud but when ran on 12V it sometimes made this very low highpitched whine. Could be just my model though.
Now that i have it turned down somewhat its fine.

I think in the end its better to just light up the case with UV cathodes than trying to get the UV from the LEDs - because they maybe have 10% output of a 12 inch cathode.

The reason i used it was because i wanted this blue/orange color combo in my case and to find orange fans isnt easy... its all just red, green and blue. I bought 2 orange fans - this UV one and a "regular LED". The regular was more yellow so i chose to go with the UV fan.

To light up my case the way it is i used 2 x 12 inch cathodes and 2 x 4 inch. of course i lenghtened all the wires that came with the cathodes for:

1) so i can tuck the inverters out of sight
2) so i have more choice to where to place the cathodes.

The cables they come with are very short.

And finally the mounting - i used the double sided tape they came with. Its actually double sided tape + velcro. So you can pull them out if you want and then just place them back with the velcro. The adhesive on the back of the velcro strips also comes off fairly easy and doesnt leave glue marks.


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## Paul_282 (Feb 16, 2005)

Well I'll invest in some UV case fans, just for the style of it, but they'll have to be going damn slow, as silence is a gift. I was going to get some cathode tubes but... one problem... How do you lengthen wires? Do you need that complicated molex tool? And if so... where do you get it? as i can see i'm going to need it..

Where did you mount your cathodes? arround the case window or...? And this is going to sound like a really newbie stupid question, but how do i slow down a fan? the only one i can slow in my case is the PSU... as its got a lil adjustable dial thing...


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## Sarkast (Sep 12, 2004)

Well like i said you can easily turn down most fans to about 5V and the noise drops dramatically and aslong as your wires are picked up and your case isnt crammed full of stuff the airflow should still be good enough.

About the cathodes:

What i did was cut the wires and then just soldered longer pieces in between. That was the easiest way for me - especially seeing that the cathodes come with a switch that mounts in a PCI slot. But of course you can always take the switch out of the PC plate and mount it somewhere else.

So for that i didnt use a molex tool - just snippers/ soldering iron etc. Normally it would probably look bad because of the soldered area that you then have to cover with tape etc - but all the cables are sleeved so noone ever knows.

I mounted my cathodes like this:

1x 12 inch on the bottom of the case right next to where the window side panel comes off. The other one is on the backpanel going up and down parallel between motherboard and drive bays (lights up the IDE and power cables nicely). The 2 x 4 inch ones are mounted on top by the PSU to lighten up the upper area and the 2 UV reactive fans.

To slow down fans there are plenty of products - fan controllers that you can put into a 3.5 or 5.25 drive bay. I didnt go for that because my case has a door in front of the bays and so a fan controller cant have knobs sticking out. And i really didnt want to spend 50$ ona fancy controller with screen / buttons etc and then have it sit behind my door.
So i used a fan controller that mounts in the PCI slot. Its one knob and can handle around 12W... which is plenty for about 5 fans.
So the 3 bright blue wires you see coming from the back are the controle wire for the fans and the 2 wires for the cathode switches. I couldve tucked all that away and get rid of the cables but i wanted something glowing down there... ;-)

And there really is no stupid question. Aslong as my rambeling is of any use for you i am happy to go on. LOL ;-)


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## Paul_282 (Feb 16, 2005)

I checked out the cable wrap yesterday and also a cable set thing... so u can remove all the connectors from ur PSU and replace them in UV blue. Not a bad investment for like... $10
I live in england, so really i need to get stuff that'll post to england, and i'm not sure if the UV wrap I saw is the right stuff :4-dontkno , can u point me in the rite direction? any help would be hot...
I now need a lil help with my colour scheme aswell, i love the blue colour u can get off UV... but i'm not sure what else... I was thinkin about maybe red? so i have red blue and silver in on and around my case... but i'm not sure... what u reckon?


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## Sarkast (Sep 12, 2004)

I got my wire wrap from bestbyteinc.com. I have to admit i dont know if they ship internationally. I also never really looked if any other company had that stuff because bestbyte had it so cheap. I'll google for it later when i have some more time.

About the color scheme - i think thats a matter of personal preference. Some guys like all colours mixed red, blue, green - and i dont. ;-) 
In the end you must be happy with it and if it looks cool in your eyes then who cares. Some might think my color combo looks weird but i love it - can stare at it for hours ! LOL


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## Rx79394 (Mar 18, 2005)

Well what do you do to install an Cathode light or does it just rest because I want one and never checked it out. ALso is the power a 3 pin power or 4


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## Sarkast (Sep 12, 2004)

Rx79394 said:


> Well what do you do to install an Cathode light or does it just rest


Sorry i dont quite understand what you mean. 

All my cathodes came with a 4 pin molex connector.


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## PDonahoe (Feb 4, 2005)

Sarkast,

I just finished putting together my first PC, and after a series of bland, generic machines, I thought I'd have a little 'fun' with the build. So, I got myself a case with a window (Antec 160W), so I could see the innards. And, the case has blue lights showing through the front grille, and a blue LED on the rear 120mm fan. So, to add to this, I got an Antec Trueblue PSU, with more blue LEDs. This wasn't enough, so I got a Zalman cpu cooler with another blue LED and a copper heat sink. And, finally, since I use the machine a lot for music, I got an Antec light tube that has 6 blue LED's that throb to the beat of the music. I named this contraption, "The Blue Streak", and I thought that was pretty cool.

That is, until I saw the photos you posted of your PC. Oh my gosh! That is really great!

So first of all I just wanted to say how much I liked the work you have done colorizing and lighting your machine!

Second, any advice for me as to what I might try next? Remember, I'm a rank beginner at all this, so nothing complicated, please! In particular, would any of the UV cables or wraps work with my blue lights? Or do I need to install a cathode tube like you were talking about. Any instructions about how to do this? I don't think I'm ever going to be a 'modder', but I wouldn't mind playing around a bit with lighting.


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## Sarkast (Sep 12, 2004)

Thank you very much - i appreciate your comments.

The kind of UV cables or sleeves/wrap i used will work with your light but NOT without UV cathodes. The sleeves look plain orange under regular light, the wire wrap is a darkish blue and the UV IDE cables are clear - BUT when placed under UV light is when they start to glow. Of course you can get all these products in a variety of other colours.
SO if you want this glowing effect you need to add some cathodes. What exactly i used i already mentioned in the previous posts. (i think they were made by logisys and werent expensive at all)
Like i also said i modified them a little because the cables the cathodes come with are a little short and that didnt give me all the options on where to place them. I also wanted to be able to hide the little inverter boxes that come with them.
The installation is very simple - they come with double sided tape/ velcro and you basically just place the cathode where you want it.

If you have any other questions - just ask and i'll try to answer them.


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## PDonahoe (Feb 4, 2005)

Thanks Sarkast,

Given my hectic life right now, it will be about a month before I can proceed with the lighting mods. But I've gotten a concept in my mind that I will work on. It will involve having the cathodes "keep time to the beat." I will let you know how it works out and get back to you if I need any technical help.

Thanks again for the inspiration!


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## Sarkast (Sep 12, 2004)

I look foward to seeing your mod....
i mean... looking at it is great but i actually had the most fun putting it all together. :sayyes: 
Either way i am not completely done yet - i still want to cover the drive bays with some kind of panel because i dont like those ugly slots and holes ... 
I'll probably get some custom paintjob for the panel....


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