Reply 20 of 24, by Malvineous
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- Oldbie
LEDs do wear out over time and not all of them are of equal brightness to begin with (especially older ones) so it is possible that this is the case. But for a low power device like this it is also very easy to supply power the wrong way and have some of it reach the LEDs through an unexpected path, causing them to light more dimly than they should.
You can see this problem with cheap powered USB hubs, which do not block their power from travelling upstream to the host. When you power the USB hub and the computer is switched off, a little of the power travels back up the USB cable and partially turns on the motherboard, causing the power LED to partially to light up. Many people have problems with this in that they cannot switch their computer on when it is in this state, because it already thinks it is powered up due to the power leaking in through the USB ports.