De-Solder motherboard LEDs

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asingh

asingh

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Keymaster
Hi...

I want to de-solder the LEDs on my motherboard. There are a bunch of them, which light up like an X-mas tree, quite irritating at night. There is one set which are diagnostic (which I will not remove), rest are quite stupid, telling things like RAM is in Dual Channel, PCI.E slot being used, some current phase stuff, which is quite pointless to me.

Now the question is, once I remove them, theoretically the board should still function...? Since they are not actually 'part' of the continuous circuit, just probably hooked in parallel to some components -- and glow bright blue. Has anyone done this, worst come to worst, if it fails I can solder the LED back. Any suggestions, ideas..? Yes I loose RMA and re-sale value, not too worried about that.
 
not worth the effort or risk involved... cut really small pieces from black electrical insulation tape and generously apply them to the leds ;)

_
 
I tried the tape trick, still it leaks through. Will wait, if anyone can tell, if they tried to de-solder LEDs off.
 
Take a tweezer and permanently crush them. But what if they're don't do what they're actually supposed to do? (Act as an added resistance to a particular circuit or something?)

OR you could get a little amount of children's clay and stick it atop the leds
 
You could desolder them but you need a hot air gun, tweezers, a steady hand and lots of luck to get the temperature right on the first try. The problem is that by the time you heat the second leg, the first one has cooled off. For SMD, I usually crush the components first and then use an iron to clean up the mess, it destroys the component but gives the board a chance. I do a lot of SMD work, and I bought a cheap motherboard (~Rs 10) from a raddiwala for practice. I destroyed that board in my first four runs to find the right temperature settings for different kinds of work. If you do it without practice, you could end up with a board like that.

If you need to retain the LEDs, good luck. They are the size of an ant and if you so much as blow on them lightly they disappear forever under a bed or something.

I would just put a dab of black paint, and repeat with a second dab in 24 hours. This will blacken out most of the light. If you are courageous, you could try removing the pull-down resistor (each LED has one) and that way you get to keep the LED on the board, and SMD resistors are a *lot* easier to find than SMD LEDs.
 
LOL why all the fuss? Just cover them with tape and you're done. God forbid, should something happen while you do all that desoldering, your RMA is screwed.
 
Simplest suggestion. Go buy this thing called Blutack. Its kinda like sticky clay. You ll find it at most stationery shops. Put on LED and enjoy no light.
 
Thanks guys. I had tried the electrical tape trick, was not working. The bright blue still came through. Will try blue-tack else the solder. Heck....! Risk..!

CA50:

Will post the live motherboard image in a few days. Not at my flat for a few days.
 
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