I’ve had an NZXT BLD computer for 2 years now and I started noticing my case lights are going bland. I have LEDs on my ram and motherboard and they look correct.
I have tried going through each color in turn in CAM and the blues are a tad dark.
A quick web search seems to indicate my cooler might be going bad but that doesn’t make sense because ALL of the NZXT lights are doing this. I think it might be the case controller. Does this make sense?
I have tried removing other RGB apps to see if anything was interfering but no change was observed.
LEDs have finite lifespans, especially when operated at high brightness for hundreds or thousands of hours. This generally results in progressive dimming.
It depends on the LEDs chosen and how hard they’re driven.
White LEDs used for commercial illumination in good light fittings are generally designed, selected, and driven to deliver something like 70% output after 50k hours. The same probably doesn’t apply to RGB products.
Don’t run it at high brightness for hundreds or thousands of hours.
I get that but it’s really weird that all of my NZXT controlled lights would have perfectly equal “wear”. It really seems like something else is going on.
That’s what you expect from usage-related wear. If they’ve all displayed the same colours for the same time, and they’re the same type of LED, each LED will wear the same, but the different colours can definitely wear differently.
One option to prove whether it’s the controller or the LEDs is to connect up an unused new NZXT RGB item - something like a fan.
LEDs can outlast a human life. And it doesn’t need to be an expensive LED.
What usually dies is the driving circuitry, but that’s really unexpected from a good brand. Looks like this one is cheaping out and overdriving their LEDs without the heat dissipation or quality control to handle it.