Glowy Geforce 4 Mod: How-to do it

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Sometimes we get the oddest ideas for mods, and while this isn't something we devote too much time too around here, the Glowy GeForce mod turned out kind of cool.

Most importantly it only took a few minutes to whip up.

The basic idea was just to liven up an MSI Ti4200 we had on the review block, and short of back lighting the videocards PCB bright blue, the fan mod seemed a good one to try.

Here's how we went about making the Glowy GeForce 4 attachment.

The first step was to remove the existing shield over the Geforce 4 heatsink and use it as a template for our stock 1/4" thick plexiglass.

With everything traced out we picked up the right sized hole saw to cut out the center and locked it into place on an existing arbour.

This wasn't really necessary in the end because the twist blades we used with our fret saw cut through the material like butter.

In any case it took a few seconds for the hole saw to cut a perfect circle from the plexiglass.

Using a little wooden support, a fret saw and twist blades (they can cut in 360 degrees) it was quick work to remove the pattern from the block of plastic. The edges were in pretty good shape, but a bit of sanding would make them even smoother. For comparisons sake you can see up left how thin the stock plastic shield is.
The tricky part of the operation was drilling out the holes for the bright blue LED. The LED measured 8mm long, and 5mm in diameter which is just slightly larger than the thickness of the material. To stop the drill from sliding out to one side, and the plastic from chipping the pattern was sandwiched between to scrap pieces and a pilot hole drilled in about 5mm. From there, the right sized drill bit was used to cut out a hole just wide enough, and deep enough to hold one LED.
Once the LED was set in place with some krazy glue, and allowed to dry fully we transferred the location of the mounting holes and cut those out of the plastic. Two lead wires were soldered to the LED and run off to a temporary power supply. The blue LED we used requires 4.5v so do not connect it directly to a motherboard fan header (12v) or it will just burn up.