I’ll admit that RGB lighting has gotten a bit too trendy.  With RAM, watercooling, mice, keyboards and just about every PC part having it, it seems like consumerism more than anything else.  I suspect we’ll look back at “futuristic” PC’s like we look back at our high school photos of us wearing edgy clothes.  However, I do see the appeal in having light inside of a windowed PC build so that the parts can be seen.

I bought the Deepcool RGB 350 (RGB LED magnetized light strips) because it was $15 and had positive reviews.  It makes my build look much better aesthetically, but not overly try-hard either.  If you’re going to spend hundreds of dollars on a PC (and you have a windowed case), you may as well go the extra little mile and make it glow.  

I’m glad I didn’t go for flimsy $5 lights from China on eBay, but I also wouldn’t have spent much more on better ones.  The magnets make installation of the Deepcool 350 simple, and the lights themselves are bright enough to where 2 strips is plenty.  More advanced lighting kits have more color-change settings, smoother fades between colors and even “smart” features which emit a color based on the build’s temperature.  However, for $15, I’m not complaining at all.

The one downside of this product (and others like it) is that the cabling can add a little bit to the bulky mess of cables in the build already.  It does attach to the same molex cable that storage drives are attached on though.  It should be fine for most builds.  However, when I build my next PC in the future, it’ll probably be ultra-compact and I would find a less cabley way of doing it.

I am a bit surprise of how much actual utility some lighting can add to a PC. It allows me to monitor my parts to make sure they work and it allows me to see when things get too dusty.  When adding new parts to my build (or doing slight tweaks/repairs) having lighting inside helps.

These are pictures of my build lit up: