RGB Lighting as Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2017-05-06
·
999 words · ~4 min read
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there are plenty of things in the PC Enthusiast space that people love to
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argue about AMD versus NVIDIA AMD versus
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Intel AMD versus the 1980 US Olympic
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hockey team okay but seriously aside
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from these more practical concerns Aesthetics are just as important to many
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people with there being no real consensus as to what looks good after
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all what's tacky to one you proder might be Michelangelo's David to another so in
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the past few years many component manufacturers have decided hey why not
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just give people the ability to customize the look of their battle
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station on a whim by adding RGB lighting
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the RGB craze mostly started out on keyboards and mice but these days you
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can pick up motherboards CPU coolers and
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even RAM sticks that claim to offer Millions of colors but how does all of
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this work and what features should you be looking for if you're going to trick
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out your rig like The Griswalds Christmas tree well if you think back to
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kindergarten you might remember that the three primary colors that combine to
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form all the other colors are red yellow
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and blue but this is true only for pigments
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light works a little differently with the three primary colors of light being
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red green and blue hence the name
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RGB so when you fire up your favorite RGB device what's happening is that
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separate red green and blue LEDs are
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lighting up at different intensities to produce different colors as there
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currently isn't a single LED bulb that can cycle through different colors on
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its own so there are a couple of different ways that you can see this
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principle in action if you set your favorite RGB device to White you might
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be able to see all three colored LEDs
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lit up if you look closely enough this is the same reason that when you get a
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drop of water on your phone screen you can see a rainbow like effect on white
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spots neat huh but how do these devices
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adjust the brightness of each led to produce the color you want well usually
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RGB gadgets work with a technique called pulse width modulation or pwm which you
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can learn more about here although you might be more familiar with pwm as a way
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to control your fan speed in your computer the same concept can control
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colored LEDs so when you want to tell
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your Control software boom I want yellow
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it sends a signal to your device that tells both the red and green LEDs to
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light up and blue to sit down and shut up and PW w m also controls something
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called the duty cycle essentially how long the light is
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on during each refresh a shorter duty
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cycle means that specific color of LED
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will be dimmer so if you want your keyboard to be a highlight or yellow
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sort of color your green and red LEDs will have longer Duty Cycles while your
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blue LEDs will have very short Cycles or just be turned off completely but
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depending on its imp M mentation especially if the LEDs are refreshing
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too slowly using pwm control with equal
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parts of red green and blue to achieve white can result in a distracting
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rainbow effect similar to what some people experience when watching a single
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chip DLP projector to compat this some
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manufacturers are introducing rgbw
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strips that have entirely separate white
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LEDs but enough about the nuts and B bolts what should you actually look for
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when buying RGB gear well perhaps
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unsurprisingly this depends almost entirely on your personal preference as
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long as you buy something of good quality an important thing to research
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is what kinds of customization a certain RGB product offers as many manufacturers
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bundle software that can control RGB
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effects which may or may not be to your liking Hardware Solutions also exist
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such as NZXT Hue plus which serves as a
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central hub for your systems LED strips and the RGB headers on certain
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motherboards which provide similar functionality through software to take
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things a step further unified RGB ecosystems like ASUS Aura and Razer
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chroma are starting to become popular allowing you to sync up RGB effects on
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your lighting strips your motherboard your memory your fans or even supported
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peripherals and room lighting and
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considering that RGB LEDs can often be configured to change colors depending on
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important variables such as system temperatures your perfectly harmonious
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RGB setup can actually be functional as
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well just make sure you don't go too crazy want to browse a more open
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internet and use online services as though you are in a different country
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anonymously check out tunnel bear they've got easy to use apps for iOS
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Android PC and Mac they also have a Chrome extension and turning it on is as
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simple as clicking a button boom there
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you go your bear tunnels your internet connection to a new location which means
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two things happen your connection gets encrypted with AES 256-bit encryption
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and your public IP address gets switched so you show up as though you're in a
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different country and it lets you bypass all the annoying bull crap that usually
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comes with using a VPN for personal use no Port configurations DNS or other
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router settings tunnel bear handles all of that stuff in the background they've
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got a toprated privacy policy and the best thing is you can try tunnel bear
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with 500 Megs of free data and no credit card required check it out at the link
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in the video description and if you choose to get a year of unlimited you
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can save 10% by going to Tunnel bear.com
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Linus so thanks for watching guys dislike or like get subscribed and maybe
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leave a comment if you have suggestions for future fastest possible videos just
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like this one