Most of us have done modding, right? And your probably all sitting there with some kind of light add on. Be it neon string, bl00 LED but most probably you have a type of cold cathode. The usuall ones you have probably seen are the rather skinny, fragile white ones. But theres the mini ones over at CCM etc.

The skinny ones are very prone to breakage. I myself broke one with my elbow :-p. But how about a good quality cold cathode, that is both strong or at least less prone to damage, also comes with aload of extras you expect to pay for? If so, the Sunbeam cold cathodes are for you :D

Let me get the specs out of the way first:

I worked out that 15000 hours is 625 days. If anyone finds that to be wrong, let me know :)

Below is a picture of the two cold cathodes I have been given, blue and green:

Nice full length 30cm cold cathodes

You can see the cathode is an acrylic protecting tube with cubic ends. This is what gives the cathodes its toughness. When I recieved these, they came via the post. I was a little bit shocked to see this, as cold cathodes sent by post can be a mistake. But when I opened the package up there was no damage at all. This is obviously due to the acrylic protecting tube.

With the cathode, you get a whole kit for setting it up and working:

You get a whole kit to use!! You get velcro pads to help secure your cold cathode. No need to run around trying to find aload of double sided tape! - You also get an inverter with this kit. In fact its a dual inverter, two in one as they say! The dual inverter comes wrapped in a velcro cover. Not also does this keep you from shocking yourself with your inverter, but its also an incredibly eaaasy way to mount your inverter. Just stick the other half of the inverter cover anywhere you want the inverter to be, then walla :D You get plenty of wire to put your cathodes anyway in your case. I also noticed the wire ends where it joins to the molex etc, are coated in a silicon seal, this is great as it stops the wires coming out of the connections. The orginal wires are long enough anyway, but just in case your caught short ;) you get some extension wire with the kit. The kit also includes a small black switch to mount somewhere. The kit includes a small washer as well. This is to help you drill the right sized hole to mount the switch.

Theres what you get =D

mmm

Time to test :D

Before mounting everything etc, I laid the cathodes on the floor to test it all works:

Looks good to meh =D

woah, brightness

Connected while testing

Now, its time to start mounting everything into my case.

As said earlier, you get all the velcro to mount it with. So this was a matter of minutes before everything was in place:

Inverter in

Bl0000, gr33n in

The next task is to mount the switch somewhere. The best place would be in one of my drive bays:

Here will do nicly ;)

The inverter wires will come through here

Drilling the hole was easy. First find the center, or a suitable location for where you want the switch. I started with a small drill bit to drill a pilot hole. Then using a bigger drill bit, bigger still etc:

All done, nice job =D

Front of the switch

Connect the wires:

Switch connected up

Fitted

The small washer came in handy when getting the hole right. For many its reasurrance that the washer is included.

Now everything is where it should be, time to power up scottie ;):

On in the mid

Yeah baby yeah !

A shot through the grill

Everything is in working order. I say it looks good :). Cold cathodes are generally a good easy mod to do.

The good and the bad

The good:

The bad:

Want to comment on this article? Go to our forums