Personally, I think it can look cool, and I'd say a lot of people agree with this.
However, there are good reasons (including personal preference) for people to want to disable any lights, so manufacturers should ensure that there's a way to disable it, that's persisted across boots.
You can't fucking buy anything anymore that doesn't look like christmas decor.
LEDs and stupid shapes on GPU bodies that don't allow you to plug it in - had to cut rtx 4090 suprim liquid x's funky/idiotic shapes at the lower right corner to plug it in so it doesn't obstruct motherboard's case panel connector.
The absurdity extends to keyboards as well. To get a moderately priced clicky keyboard with the type of switches and layout I was looking for, the damn thing has absurd levels of animated RGB ground effects that make it look like a party bus by default. (Patriot V765 with Kailh Box switches) I regret spending good money on a Mechanical V3 ASDF keyboard because it doesn't work very well, isn't comfortable, the quality is low, and after-sales support was nonexistent. I'm tempted to drag a Northgate keyboard with ALPS switches out of storage and adapt it to USB.
This is why I ended up with a Leopold keyboard. I absolutely did not want any lights on my keyboard (I've had issues in the past with lights turning themselves back on, plus I don't want to pay for features I won't use), and this was the best-quality light-free option I could find, albeit at the cost of customizability.
Thankfully I've been very pleased with it and wouldn't change it if I could.
Not to mention that putting 300+ individual leds in the thing takes a ton of power. I got a corsair keyboard once figuring I could just use it like normal without the LED's.... nope. Have to scrounge up 2 high power USB ports just to plug the thing in because the LED's come on by default? No thank you.
"Dangerous" and "damaging" and "burning" are purposely selecting awfully strong, even disingenuous, words for whatever is going on; the article only gives evidence that the anodizing dye on a heat spreader has lightened/discolored. This is probably a combination of the amount of UV that comes off of modern blue superbright LEDs and a crummy dye that easily fades. If you don't want your anodized aluminum to do this, you paint a clear coat on it.
There doesn't appear to be any evidence for anything outside of cosmetic damage. This is about as overblown as it can get.
You know, I had never considered blue led’s giving off UV light. Tangentially related is that some cheap plasma globes can also throw off significant amounts of UV as well.
Out of curiosity, anyone here have recommendations for a UV specific meter?
