I've changed the light bar in my SGI Octane case a number of times previously. At first I got it working as its original red with an ATX motherboard that I put inside, then I updated it to shine bright white. This time around I wanted to have it as a blue glow. It was a small job since I had a spare light bar PCB from the previous time already. I'm pretty happy with the outcome.

There are two previous posts that are relevant to this one:

• Reviving the SGI Octane Lightbar for use with an ATX motherboard
• Custom SGI Octane light bar

I won't go into the details of the PCB design in this post since that is already covered in the second post mentioned just above.


So my server has a number of drives inside, this means that the light bar is flicking on a fair amount. I wanted a bit of a change from plain white, but lets see what it was before I changed it...


I've unplugged the light strip and tried out one of the new blue LEDs next.




I had to bend the LEDs as before. It's fiddly work, but it's necessary.


A little bit of solder, and all the components are in place.


Then all is left to do is connect the new board...


...and finally some photos with the case back on and showing different illumination levels.


-i