G73SW LED Mod! Afterburner LED's + Under LCD. Controlled by Keyboard Backlight.

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.




cont.....

 

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.




cont.....

 

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.

 

Yeah, they're pretty sweet! Great mod, Muratus!

 

I did the afterburner light mod as well, but did several different colors. In order to not get the light spots like you did, what I did was grind down the plastic and some of the heat sink so that the LEDs would fit and point horizontally and still be hidden. Though I used through hole LEDs when you used SMD ones.

You sound like me, after I finish up all the modding i'm doing I was planning on posting everything like you've been doing.
So far:
*Soldered on extra PCIE slot(put TV tuner in, still need to put an antenna on it)
*Afterburner light mod, 3 colors so far, might add in one more;Planning on revising by hooking up to the light bar so that I can turn them on and off in Windows and have them blink whilst sleeping. I don't necessarily care about their brightness like you do.
*Put in slot loading Blu-Ray drive and modified bezel to accommodate
*Soldered wires on Blu-Ray drive board to top unused "Overdrive" button for eject

Still need to do:
*Solder wires to extra PCIE slot for extra USB
*Hook said USB wires up to wireless 360 controller receiver and mount inside. Also wire sync button and LED from receiver to the the "Splendid" button.
*Add in bluetooth(Probably just going to buy a Wifi+Bluetooth combo card and swap it out, since they're only like $8)(also, inb4 you're not going to get good performance out of a cheap card. My internet is 3mbit, so I get around 350kb max speed, if the card can do that, i'm fine)
*Put colored transparent plastic sheet in keyboard to change color, though i've had a hard time finding said sheets
*Possibly modify casing to fit the DIP switch i've used for the LEDs so the colors can be switched from the outside instead of having to take the bottom door off to switch. I haven't figured out a way to place it without it looking way out of place.
*Possibly upgrade LCD to 1080p. It's not all that worth it to me since I only paid $400 for the laptop and i'd have to throw in around 25% of that to upgrade it
*Possibly upgrade to 6970m if I can find a Clevo one. Only seen one on eBay so far and went for way too much. Also in same position as the LCD.

 

Sweet aaricchavez, they are at the price now that makes modding pretty fun. Not to much risk yet still a very powerful machine. I've been buying, refurbishing or parting out the G73's of all models for the last several month. Mine is pretty much made from many laptops parts and so far the cost is pretty close to zero.

I have a pretty major mod coming that I'll have to make some serious changes to the LCD underlight, so till then I'm not going to mess with it to much. I did like the idea of adding the extra PCIE slot when I had the JH, but the SW doesn't have the empty spot for one. I did change out my DVD for a JH-A2's Blu-Ray player, but have been tempted to ditch it to use the space for something more interesting. I pretty much never use a disk of any type.

A couple minor things that I've done and no one has really noticed is I've exchanged the trim pieces with a JH's. The part right above the keyboard covering the speakers. I never really liked the SW's look. And the black shiny chrome pieces around the exhaust ports, I mean really shiny chrome on a G73? what was Asus thinking.

If your into your laptop allot, might as well by a bluetooth module from another G73 off of eBay, they can be found pretty cheap and it's a pretty easy setup. I never even use bluetooth, but heck why not, I had it and I already had my laptop apart.

Anyway, cool to know there is another like me. Seems most have forgotten about the G73's and/or not interested in modding them.

 

I like how clean it turned out, i did the same thing to my g53 with sickmod led boards but i couldn't find a good way to connect it to the power source for the backlit keyboard. From what i remember poking around with a multimeter it never stopped supplying power. Can you explain which pin on the connector does what and how it works? I ended up wiring mine with a resistor to each led array with a 5 v source from the fan and a switch running to the kensington lock port.

You might get a more uniform lighting effect if you use the sickmod led boards

Here's a picture of the testing.


Final pic


Anyway please let me know about the keyboard backlight connector. I will probably just solder straight to the motherboard and get rid of my switch.

 

I soldered straight to the ribbon cable for the keyboard backlight. If the backlight is connected and your looking down at the ribbon cable. The + is the trace that is closer to the LCD (or top of the keyboard). I pointed the LED Keyboard backlight strip straight down in to the vents. I think it I shine them straight up, it will fix the beam affect.

 

Yeah, besides the price point, one of the reasons I chose this laptop was because of the modding potential.

I've already added everything besides the bluetooth the other day, I feel like it'll be easier just to do the combo card cause I ended up putting the 360 controller receiver where the bluetooth module would go, so i'd have to rearrange a bit.

Bluetooth and optical discs aren't really my things either, I just added them in for the sake of having them.

I look forward to seeing your mod, you write them well and do a good job.