Guide Motherboard Painting

the reason i did that is because everyone knows i have tons of pc parts and they share there old pc's with me and i just keep getting free crap all the time i just happen to use an old emachine beeings it is the biggest piece of crap out there. and its my grandmas old pc. thats why i painted it all. just to see if it did work. i try to find out for myself instead of taking other peoples words for it....

 

i have to admit it kinda looks good

 

Yeh Looks Nice , I Would Try Just Spraying light UV paint on the board , from a distance , not to cover the whole board , but to give it tht highlighted affect , add sum Uv Cathodes , and see the final results .

 

lol.. grandpas old pc makes it sound prehistoric or something

 

Expert Witness: This is not a flame, it is a friendly informant from someone who works in computers and hardware on a daily basis for a living. I am not dissing your work here, that guy could have gone about saying what he did a different way, but he is correct.

Defendent:

Expert Witness: I am definatly going to do this, and I think you did a great service creating this thread. But, you as well need to do some more research before you go yelling back at those who don't know much either. Now I am off to make a bright pink mobo for my girlfriends puter, and a bright ass green one for myself. Again, great job though, and happy modding.

 

I wish I had the balls to try that, or I wasn't so cheap that I don't wanna buy spray paint. I've got some crappy Win 3.1 computers laying around that I think have fried BIOS, so I just might give black a try. Crappy boards too, so no need for much taping.

 

All that may be true, termitesgraffix, but there is more to this than you might think.

Concerning heat: I noted that the only parts on the board that were notably hotter after spraying were the Toroidal coils, since they caused the paint to melt. Yes, the components on modern motherboards do produce more heat than their ancestors, but in general, the MOSFETs, CPU, northbridge, and southbridge put off the most heat. Putting heatsinks on these would help heat dissipation, but it is up to you (heatsinks should already be on the CPU and northbridge). To be fair, I did not give either of these machines a thorough burn-in before or after the painting, and I recorded no temperatures along the way.

Concerning heatsinks: When you spray a heatsink, paint covers the wide side of two fins and the edges of all the others. Some may seep into the inside, but a very small percentage of the heatsink is actually covered with paint. I don't think that it is enough to cause a change in its efficiency, but as previously noted, I have not tested.

Concerning hard drives: This comment went over my head because my hard drive did not have those air holes (or they were covered by something that I didn't remove), and I have not scanned the surface of a hard drive for holes before. This is a valid concern, and if you plan to paint a drive that has those holes open, cover them!

I might make a new version of this guide (motherboard painting v2.0!) with temperature testing and a newer motherboard, maybe even overclocked. At this point, I don't have enough extra hardware to paint. If you want to see a newer version of this guide, send comments or suggestions to me: tfausak@thursday.com

 

if you really want to actually make that multicoloured rig worthy of showing people, bondo up that emachines e on the side, thatd help the look A TON. i have one of those cases at home too.

 

Ah, good, in the picture it appeared that you covered the entirety of the heatsink. My bad man.
As for the drives, I am pretty sure there are a few brands/models, that don't use the vent hole.
Nice to see you had the balls. Actually I was sitting at work the day I found your tutorial, wondering to myself, "I wonder what would happen if I painted my mobo." I then went on to search for maybe a special type of latex or sylicone paint. Found your post here, and well... I am gonna try it. When I have some downtime.

 

I'm glad that I could be a resource for you. If you have any questions about the process, please email me or send me a private message. If you do decide to paint your board, know that it will be unavailable for several days afterward.

Welcome to the boards

 

Great guide, very interesting idea, not sure if I would do it my self, but I still like it.

 

sorta off topic, but i want to know. what size are those fans on your zalman vid card heatsink? i want to know so i can do the same thing.

 

aren't those 60 mm? A Friend of mine has that cooler

 

ok thanks, ive got 2 60's lying around that ill slap on my ZM80D.

 

en...nice ...but

i don't think the thermal conduction of paint is good

 

To the garage!

*search for the spray cans*

*damn empty*

*drive like bat out of hell to store*

*damn! Closed!*

I'll do it tomorrow

Nice, going to try this, what goes well with black tho? White or Alu?

Regards
GiGo

 

Hey the pics on pg 4 dont work for me... id never do this i just wanna see.

 

Oh yeah, I lost those images in an unfortunate website crash.

I plan on eventually remaking this guide (version 2!), but I need to find some old hardware to do this on again.

 

i tried this on an old Sct A mobo, it failed to post, and i only painted the PCB. (not the chips)

 

What did you paint it with? How long did you wait for the paint to dry before you tried to POST?

I'd like to know more about what happened to your computer so we can figure out what how to avoid it in the future.