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.
In mains applications with high voltage, high inrush currents, and nasty spikes, yes, driver failure is a significant failure mode. Inside a PC has less of that (though they’re still not immune to driver failure). Driver failures are usually near-total - a total failure or flashing/cycling are typical. These are very noticeable.
It’s not the only failure mode. Degradation over time is much less noticeable, because all lights located together typically have the same brightness. You only notice when one is replaced, or there’s a set of lights switched separately with a much lower hour count.
Many modern high-end LED drivers actually have programmable options to reduce the impact of this - for example, starting at 70% current and gradually increasing as the hour counter increases and the LEDs age to maintain constant brightness, or deliberately under-driving the LEDs when a replacement light is installed so as to match the older fittings surrounding it.
Operating temperature is one concern, but also simply current per die area. A 1W LED driven at 1W and heatsinked for 1W simply won’t maintain brightness as well as a 3W LED, also driven and heatsinked for 1W.
Different colours, chemistries, and manufacturing processes also have a big impact. A lot of R&D has gone into longevity and efficiency for white illumination LEDs - less so for each individual colour. Some colours naturally just don’t last as well - generally, shorter wavelengths (i.e. blue) degrade quicker. UV LEDs are often considered consumables due to their very short lifespans.
I’ve seen a number of routers and switches where the LEDs on ports that have been in use for years are noticeably dimmer than on mostly-unused ports.