Modding a Windforce GPU to glow green!
Motivation
When I’ve got the GPU my PC was in a different case with blue LEDs. When I switched the case for a new one I was going for a green-black look and the blue LED logo was not very good visible through the tempered glass side panel. The solution was obvious: I had to change the LEDs of my GPU.
Preperation
To change the color of the LED logo you have to get two new side view LEDs and (if you don’t own one already) a soldering iron. I strongly recommend staying away from hot air stations for this task, because the panel on which the LEDs are on is mostly plastic. An SMD soldering iron would be best for this task, however, there are no other components that you could damage. I used a cheap normal one from Amazon that I already had laying around.
Modding
The procedure is pretty straight forward. First, you have to remove the screws that hold the logo in place and disconnect the led cable from the header on the GPU PCB. Depending on the Model of the GPU this task can be accomplished without disassembling the whole card.
Once the panel is lose you can carefully remove it from the shroud. On my GTX 970, the logo has a plastic frame that can be removed with a bit of pressure and heat to soften the adhesive.
Now comes the fun part:
With the soldering iron safely remove the old SMD LEDs and clean up the pads. Once done simply solder in the new LEDs facing each other. The last step is to put everything back together.
The Result
In the end, I’m quite happy with the result. One advantage is that the new LEDs are shining brighter than the original, which makes them more visible through the tempered glass side panel.
