Well back again with more mods on my G73M.

I really liked some of the afterburner LED mods that I've seen, but what I didn't like is the lack of control on them. Plus I really missed the LED's under the Monitor that my old JH had. I killed 2 birds with one stone on this one. I got my power from the Keyboard backlights, so now everything responds to the FN + F3/F4, to brighten or darken the LED's. The LED's are actually a 2nd set of the keyboard backlight that I removed from a damaged JH keyboard.

Here is how I did it:

The first 2 pictures are showing where I tapped the power from the Keyboard backlight ribbon cable. The top trace is the +. The trick on soldering a ribbon cable is to keep the solder joints as low profile as possible.





This picture is the first test if the keyboard backlight could handle 2 sets of backlights. It had no issues to the mod is on.



I actually ending up adding more LED's, by splicing a extra section of LED's from a 3rd set of Keyboard backlights. This requires some very delicate soldering.



So after allot of soldering, some wires and plugs. I ended up with this. You can see the 2 smaller sections have plugs, they are for the exhaust vents. I added the plugs so the install would be easier plus if I need to take the laptop apart again it can come out in parts.



Here is the final LED strips. I attached the rows of LED's to some clear plastic for mounting.



Here is the first test of the new LED parts attached to my keyboard. I used the 3.5V line from a desktop PSU for this test. I did this to make sure there was no shorts before I installed it in to my G73.



This is a picture of how I routed the power from the Keyboard backlight ribbon cable. It will go in though that hold that you can see the power button ribbon cable.



This shot is the first time the new LED's are power by my laptop. As you can see everything is working as it should. Time to install.



Here is the new LED's installed under the LCD. How I missed that glow under the LCD! I really wonder why Asus removed that from the SW.



Here is the Afterburner LED's installed. You can see my plugs and wires.



And here are the money shots after everything is reassembled.




I may revisit this mod later. I'm not totally happy how the lights are like little spot lights. I need to figure out how to defuse the LED beam affect, so it's more of a even glow. For now it's pretty cool.

So anyway, another planned mod checked off my list. Still have a few plans in the works. My SW actually looks more like a JH at this point. See if you can notice all the JH features that I've put on to my SW.

Well let me know what you think or have any questions.