Guide Motherboard Painting

Be brave! Paint you system!

- tf

 

Plah, I really need to start coming back here more often. Thread starter said that there wasn't tutorials about this kind of painting on the net, at least he didn't find. It was a golden year of 2002 when I did this in Metku.

http://www.metku.net/index.html?sect=view&n=1&path=mods/cardpainting/index_eng

Perhaps you should check if there are any other things you may have missed.

 

Hmm, I had seen that before, or maybe after I posted the thread, but for some reason, it didn't register in my head. Sorry about that. I'll fix my first post.

- tf

 

i was wondering since i have a ECS p4vxasd2+, which is an ugly purple color, and doesnt match my radeon 9800 pro or ram. I really dont want to risk painting it, but could i just take a sharpie marker and color the whole thing black by had, or maybe silver?

 

I think that using a Sharpie would be just as risky as painting it, and it might even take longer. Its up to your though, just post some pictures

- tf

 

A sharpie would most likely come off easier and not look as good as a paint job.

 

Plus the fact that sharpies (and all markers that dry quickly) reabsorb (on certain materials) the colored pigment they put out because the carrier chemical picks it back up as you run over it again (you would never be able to do a line for line paintjob with a sharpie).

That's why when you use a marker on a white board and you try to make a solid color, you get those nice white streaks!

[Rant]
I'm really enjoying this thread, but I like a lot less all the cranks that are giving hacker a hard time. I know its your irrevocable right for free speech, but posting just to say you don't like it is ridiculous. You are only racking up posts numbers. It's his motherboard, his warranty, and his money, let him do with it how he pleases. I may not agree that it looks good, but I'm not going around saying "You are going to ruin it!," "Are you Stupid?"

I'm not trying to be bait and start a flame-war here. I'm just tired of seeing people attempt to do a Mod that isn't commonly done, and get ragged on for it. This guy seems like, for the most part, he knows what he is doing.
[/Rant]

I like the white color better than the black color personally. But it would be interesting to see some of that Mirage paint (color shifting paint). What would even be more incredibly cool would be to use that heat sensitive stuff that changes from black to red, or what-not, when heat is applied, then you could show off the hotspots in your case and be all suave!

 

i painted my motherboard with the sharpie, and it works perfectly!. At first i was notice the white streaks, but then realized that the way to stop them would be to apply two coats, the first one drys then i apply touchup where ever needed. Here are some pics.


heres where you can notice the largest difference in color,


here it is almost completely finished just a touch-up here and a touch up there, touch up, touch up, everywhere!


Last but not least here is the motherboard in its fully completed state with all the components attached to it.

I'm happy to say that painting it with a sharpie didnt increase the avg. temperature of the motherboard at all, but unfortuneatly it doesnt look as good as if it were painted properly.

 

Hence: On certain materials. Im surprised that it didnt get reabsorbed on the second coat when you did it on the metal parts, however. Still looks nice for a marker!

Is than an athlon 64?

 

nope its not an althon 64 (I wish). Its a Pentium 4 2.0A ghz. What a piece of crap. Only runs at 400FSB, and is a northwood core.(thats why i have such a large heatsink on it)

EDIT: if you look closely in the 2nd picture, you should notice what kind of case i have

 

But don't you think that the colour painting would be liquid with the high temperature of the motherboard?

 

Black absorbs heat?!?!?!

 

[topic=off]
Lol, Black sure does absorb heat, but it also gives it off quickly as well. Pentium 4 2.0 POS? Wtf? I had a p3 933 with a broken heatsink (basically it was resting on the core, not clamped on) that was underclocked. I upgraded to my current Athlon 64 beast... Aww i love her.... Ill name her Lauren.. err.. Yeah. Anyway, if you dont want that CPU, ill take it! You can go over to frys and get an athlon 2900+ and mobo for 110 .[/topic]

Falcon, it depends on what kind of paint you use. Most paints are only liquid because they are dissolved is something, so otherwise they would be a solid. Hacker also said that where it gets hot the paint just gets burned off.

 

hey tim, since i dont currently have the funds to invest in a new CPU and motherboard (all of its going to make my HTPC), I still need to hang on to the CPU, the only thing I would replace would be the mobo.

 

ok, i have a load of revell paint in small tins that i usually use for airfix and small details on cases, would this be conductive? as i intend to to use the white revell paint to highlight areas on the motherboard so they show up in the uv light

 

the only way to find out is to paint a large blob on something then use a multimeter to see if it conducts.
Multimeters are only £5 for a cheap one, which is very cheap when you consider the price of a new mobo

 

Krylon makes a "Stained Glass" paint, its semi-transparent and bascially colors things... think this would work very well for a mobo becuase then you can still see all the traces and text that was silk screened onto the mobo...

i wont be trying this on my Tyan 2462 tho

check out this link:

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1026118780&postcount=77

 

how does the paint on the heat sinks effect the cooling????

 

it will affect it a but in Temp wise i'm *geussing* about 1-3 degree difference, and if you are painting the mobo then i would asume that it is not your personal gaming rig, and then the temps would not matter that much

 

Black absorbs most wavelengths of LIGHT, and thus heats up. A black motherboard in a hot, dark room will not absorb any more heat than a white mobo in a hot, dark room - until you shine a 100W light buld on it. Hell, even then the temp difference would be small. There are quite a few components that use black PCB (mobos, vid cards, etc).