Blue or UV CCD?

[GenGoku]

Could someone give me a hand.

I'm not sure which to get, a regular UV CCD or blue CCD. I have silver rounded cables (2 IDE, 1 floppy) and planning on setting up a water cooled system with UV reactive dye (blue* or green?). Does anyone know if a blue CCD will light up my hoses the same as a UV CCD and how my silver (not white) rounded cables would look with an UV CCD. My goal is to get a cool "blue" theme, but for reasons below, might get green reactive coloring in my water.

This will all be done in a Lian Li PC65. Also, will 1 be enough or should I order two?

Thanks

*I hear blue isn't that great. The clear/blue dye.

[bigben2k]

The UV will have a much better effect, the blue CCD may not light up the coolant dye at all.

Green is better because it is a color that is more easily seen than blue and so, appears brighter. Amber also falls in the spectrum of light that the human eye can see very well.

The blue CCD, just like any colored light source will emit light over a broad range of frequencies, but mostly blue. It may dip in the UV spectrum, but it'd be too insignificant to mention.

I'll be using blue UV dye myself, because I prefer a subtle effect. Green is too freaky for my taste...

[GenGoku]

so far the only place i can find day-glo dye is from dtekcustoms for a wopping $12.99. anyone know of a cheaper place or is the $12.99 really worth the extra cost. i thought pcmods had it for $8 (it was in my spreadsheet) but can't seem to find it anymore

[Joe]

the guy on this forum under the name Bignuts has played with a few things to make the coolant glow. Hes been playing wiht woolite and stuff like that. I will point him to this thread when I see him in Pro/Chat next. He has had some good results making his own glow mix.

[GenGoku]

cool. thanks a lot joe.

dumb question: woolite wont eat the tubing will it? i'll have waterwetter in it too to avoid the fuzzy stuff from growing.

my goal will to have the tube glow blue like everything else (will buy white rounded cables and that white cable-hiding tube) off a UV CCD.

1 UV CCD will be enough to light all my white stuff up in a Lian Li PC65 right or should i go for two.

[Bignuts]

While it is true that there are things laying around the house that will glow under UV, the best thing I have found is to go to a local autoparts store and ask for some UV coolant leak tester dye.

I got some from a local NAPA (they only had the green stuff there). It came in a little brown bottle, all of one fluid oz.!

Dont let this bring ya down though, nor be put off by the ORANGE color. This stuff is so concentrated that the bottle will do about 20 applications, maybe more! The dark orange tint goes away when you add it to water, anfd it gets WAY green, WAY fast. more than a 6 DROPS will be overdoing it per a whole gallon!

I did get the blue stuff from a online vendor, and it isnt nearly intense as the green stuff, but if you are not looking for intensity its no big deal. If you would like to bolster the strength of the blue stuff you ordered, I have found that adding the green, VERY SLOWLY on the tip of a pin, or small nail, will let you achieve the desired effect. Adding the green will change the tint of the color, but on the sample that I had, the brightness increase was well worth it.

And how much did this bottle of dye cost at NAPA? $4

No Kidding.

This is why I am not gonna bother going into much detail about the common UV glowing stuff around the house, other than to say that you will likely be disappointed in the results.

Most of the "household" glowing UV stuff looks great when in the dry form, (bright blue-white) but is worse than the blue UV dye that is sold at the common watercooling shops when added to water. Some of the things I have tried are fabric "brighteners" like Woolite and RIT (I think that was the name brand). All have ended up in disappointment.

There IS aother thing that seems to work very well, and is available in many colors, UV magic markers. The big down side to these is that they also are hard to clean off stuff if it drops or leaks, but they can give you some decent results.

One of the few other places I have found online for coolant dye is caseetc.com.

I would recommend that if you are looking to do the UV effect, only go with a neon/UV/Cathode that is specifically made to emit true UV, not just a blue one. and hope that you will get some bleedover UV. here is a guy that did it well, with one chamber of his rig with a green cathode, and the other with a UV cathode and green UV marker dye,

Sa1nts rig:

[Bignuts]

The above image was just a little brighter than real life, that green cold cathode really gives off the light.

[GenGoku]

Bignuts, thanks a lot for the post, that'll save me over $9 by just getting it from an auto place.

one thing i'm not too sure what you ment by

If you would like to bolster the strength of the blue stuff you ordered, I have found that adding the green, VERY SLOWLY on the tip of a pin, or small nail, will let you achieve the desired effect. Adding the green will change the tint of the color, but on the sample that I had, the brightness increase was well worth it.

stuff. do you mean blue UV reactant dye? and do you mean to put the tip of a pin in the green dye and mix it with the blue uv dye water setup? how would i do that, just put it in the res? not sure if it'll work fast because my res will be a DD blue res at the highest point in my tower. I guess i'm asking is where/when/how i should mix the green dye with blue in the water. if my res/pump were together, it wouldn't matter since the water is constantly flowing there, but if my res is at the top of the case, the water might not go down to the circulation.

not too sure how it'll look with the UV setup if i have white everything--rounded cables & wire cover--(so it looks blue against the UV) and that green hose. if it doesnt look bad, i'll just do that to make life easier, but wanted an arctic chilled look; green might mess it up? i really dont know anything about colors unless they're all the same

[WireX]

where did you find Sa1nts rig? He has exactly the same case as em (no-name cheapy) and I would liek to see whatelse he has done with it.

-WireX

[iceheart]

I would like to post some images of what happens if you take too much of it as well:

5 drops:


10 drops:

[bigben2k]

Could you comment on that? It's hard to see... it looks like an oily substance started to form.

[Bignuts]

GenGoku:

"do you mean blue UV reactant dye?"

-Yes, I did actually mean the blue UV dye,

It would be better to add any dye to the coolant, before you put it in your system, but you can add it in your res, just be warned that it will take forever to get mixed in. I had some higher concentration UV mix sit in my fill tube for a WEEK and it still didn't get totally mixed in. It really depends on how the coolant flows in your system, my fill tube is located right before the pump intake, and it only seems to get even a hint of mixing when I first start the pump.

I got around this problem by turning the pump on, and then squeezing one of my tubes to shut off the flow. This caused coolant to be forced up the fill tube and mix with the recently added suff. I did have to squeeze multiple tubes in my system, multiple times until I was sure that the whole shebang was the same color (I also had the UV light on to help aid me in this).


"but wanted an arctic chilled look; green might mess it up?"

-Yes, eventually the blue will turn green,

The more green you add to the blue, the more the the blue turns green. But at first, the blue seems to get brighter and loose some of the "blueness" it has( more of a blue-white), then you can start seeing the green tint start to appear, whereas after that, any more green added will just make the mix look more and more like you never had any blue to begin with. The whole process is a little different than say, pissing into a toilet filed with blue bowl cleaner. It just doesn't seem to mix in a linear fashion at first, probably because we are dealing with UV dye.



WireX:

"where did you find Sa1nts rig? ...I would liek to see whatelse he has done with it."

-I met Sa1nt at a MidWestFrag LAN party last year,

I have no way to contact him. He did pop his head up in pro/chat every once in a while, but I have not heard hide nor hair from him in a while, probably months. Maybe someone else knows where he is? I think he was out of the West, or SW of Illinois.


Icehart:

-Thanks for the pics!

bigben2k:

-Ice's pics show what happens when you add too much dye,

The concentrated form of the dye actually looks dark orange, and in this state the concentrate doesnt glow under UV!

In his second pic, Ice has added too much dye, and the mix is getting darker and loosing its ability to glow under UV. The "oily" look you see is the early manifistaion of this, as Ice's pics were taken with a UV light nearby to show the effect (or lack thereof).

Below are some of my experiments in UV stuff,

Clear blue Dye, then clear blue with green:

[Bignuts]

This is actually the clear blue white, above this post is the clear blue white with green added:

[iceheart]

Exactly, the water isn't actually oily, it just looks like that under UV light (that's not even a proper blacklight BTW). Both mixtures look exactly the same without UV lightning.

[Bignuts]

Notice that the mix in the second pic (the clear blue white only) seems to be more transparent than the first one? This is due to the UV dye not giving off too much visible light. The first pic that looks milky is actually just better able to give off light when struck by UV.

My camera is not totally accurate in recording this, as the cap of the milk jug was actually more purple when viewed by the human eye in these conditions, and the clear blue dye sample had a shade less color satruation (blueness), while the blue white with green added was actually a shade or two brighter...

...i.e. the blue white sucks, unless you are looking for a subtle effect, with more "blueness".

[Bignuts]

Is that a light commonly sold to people who grow plants indoors?

They are designed to give off lots of UV in addition to the visible light.

Also note; both of my samples above are clear when veiwed through a clear glass container, they still hae color to them, its just that you can see through them like Kool-Aid...

[iceheart]

Is that a blue or a UV CCD? Because it doesn't look very glowy at all...

[iceheart]

And no it's a UV tanning bed, which gives of lots more visible light and semi-dangerous UVB radiation. I'll try to get some pics of a real UV light...

[Bignuts]

That is standard UV cold cathod fare from case etc, that I used in my pics. My camera just REALLY picks up the light when pointed at this thing.

[GenGoku]

Holy Moley are Case Etc's UV CCD expensive. $11 more than pcmod's and their water dye is $15/ea.

Are Case Etc's that much better than PC Mod's? Anyone know of a cheaper place to pickup blue uv reactive water dye? I'll check out my local automarts.

BTW, will redline waterwetter keep my tubes red which will interfere with the UV reactive dye and stain the water.

[mobuis]

i would get a blue CCD and a UV CCD that way the dye will still light up but the case will still be kinda of blueish thats what im gonna do anyway cuz i just love my blue:-)

[GenGoku]

mobuis,

Awesome, I might copy your idea, are you going to use white rounded cables and white cable-hiding-tubes too? let us know how it works out (pics would be appreciated )

[mobuis]

no i found some glow in the dark rounded cables actually i didn't i saw someone post a link in the forums somewere and went to look at them and they looked pretty cool here is the link
http://store.yahoo.com/thermalmasters/glowindargre.html

[mobuis]

but bignuts talked me into getting green dye beacuse its cheaper and if the lights are blue and the dye is blue they will just blend in and it won't look at bright so i went with green dye and the green dye will also look good with those green glow in the dark cables

[GenGoku]

aww, hehe. green is too spooky-like for me cause i want a blue marathon going in the case. still wondering how it'll look with UV green water dye with UV on white cables and white flexguard (the tube where you can hide cables in).

When people say that the blue/white doesnt give off that much light, do you have to really "look" for the blueness to see that the hose actually has UV reactive dye in it?

Does anyone know the difference between CaseEtc's blue and clear/blue dye? (geez they're expensive!)