[AlbinoTech]

AT-1 Phase 2: Cheap Mod "Spray Painting"

Hey folks, I'm new to the OCN, I'm pretty stoked to be here and share the progress on my budget rig modding/building. Here's a brief story of what got me started; As my parents loved the color white on everything, I naturally got attracted to white colors during my high school days. Our house has literally everything white; white wall, white piano, white table, white couch, literally everything except the wooden floor. I must say though, it was pretty annoying that I could not touch walls as it would get stained instantly, otherwise my parents would neg non-stop.

8 years later, I purchased a white 780T Case and the color preference has hit me once again. As I realized the color of Sabertooth's heatsinks weren't in sync with the case, I decided to research for a whole week if painting on these heatsinks are possible and yes, they are!

However most people recommended those heat-proofing paints that are usually sold in Auto Shops. As I was on a tight budget, I said screw it and bought the normal cans of spray paints from the Home Hardware Store; Rust Oleum: Painter's Touch "Ultra Cover x2" were the available ones at store that specified safe temperature of around 90C after the paints were applied.



I purchased a "Painter's Touch" White Primer and a Beauti-Tone's "Rust Coat" White Semi-Gloss, as well as a bottle of "Easy Off" to strip any existing materials that I don't want under the paints, which i left the heatsinks drowned in easy off, and after while it came off very easily. Once they were all cleaned and dried properly, I made sure to tape the area that I don't want to paint. For example, the bottom where the thermal tapes are attached, unless you are planning to buy one and reattach them. Once that was done, I started painting it inside a ghetto box which took me hours to dry each layers properly and 24 hours to dry everything completely. I did get impatient and went ahead 3 hours earlier and start using AT-1 (name of first AlbinoTech model). This is what it looks like:



Also, the bit of red on the ram sticks aren't melted paints. I did screw up at the bottom of the heatsink while trying to wipe something off, but I honestly don't care as it will be replaced with actual white ram with led on. It's been 3 days, running for 6~10 hours a day and the painted surface seem to be perfectly stable. The North Bridge runs at 33C idle, 40~42 under load, and the South Bridge runs at 29~30C idle, and 33~36 under load. For some reason the idle temps are few degrees lower...wut

[Update] It's been a week and the texture of the paint hasn't changed a bit. Success! Now for the long term..



Now I'm trying to make a decision on painting the interior fully white or not (except for the wires), mostly depending on if I decide to build Motherboard and PSU cover, which will be also white.
Once I make a decision, I will work on it and will keep it posted

Feel free to leave questions or suggestions.

Here's the layout for the future mod before/during summer of 2016:

- Motherboard Socket Painting

- Case Interior Painting

- Building Motherboard/PSU cover, out of Acrylic vs Carbon-fiber, either way painted to white.

- Painting AIO cooler's hose and part of its pump to white (optional)

- Custom Loop (Too high for the budget at the moment)

Future Hardware Upgrade:

- Second GTX 970 (very soon)

- NZXT Kraken G10 White GPU Bracket [x2]

- H55 [x2]

-1TB SSD (waiting on sale)

Thanks for reading, stay tuned!

 

[AlbinoTech]

Just recieved ASUS GTX 970 Strix [x2] !!

I must say, it was a sweet deal as I purchased both for $750 CAD. (where as Newegg.ca sells it for $500+ including tax



They were brand new from a guy who sold me these in his van. Best portable computer shop ever!



It came with very nice box, and another box inside it which contained all those shenanigans other than the card.



The thin box included the usual things: CD, Sticker, Guide, etc. No accessories tho

The card comes in a anti-static bag as usual. The backplate that comes with is very nice and solid! I think I will paint the backplate to white as well.



Comeparing to the MSI one i had, this uses one 8-pin instead of two 6-pin.



It has 2 DVI, 1 HDMI and a Display Port.



There was few terrifying moments where My 2nd PCI-E slot wouldn't allow me to boot with a black screen, which i later figured that the slot is dead. So I decided to switch around and it seems to work on other slots. Next problem was the freezing at the windows 10 logo. However this wasn't issue after a restart. Last of all, I could not put my PCI-E Mini wifi adapter and started panicking. Couple of hours later I realized I can shove it into a normal PCI-E slot. Failzors...



Overall I'm pretty stoked to test out bunch of games at ultra setting, such as Star Citizen, Ark: Survival Evolution, Witcher 3 and etc. Many people are probably wondering why I went for 2 970s instead of GTX 980 ti. First, it's because I'm pretty sure that I won't be able to afford another 980 ti and second, I wanted to try SLI at least once before NVLink becomes common. That way I'll just upgrade everything along with a motherboard that can support NVLink and DDR4 by the time new gen cards get cheaper.

Now all I have left to mod on GPU are painting backplates to white and make a white cover for the SLI bridge.
Once my NZXT Kraken G10 Brackets arrive, I will install them with Corsair H55 and post more updates.

Cheers!

 

[AlbinoTech]

Did a bit of tweak today, to bring my FX8350 to 4.8ghz



Because I realized the additional GPU was bottlenecking while i occationally saw stutter. Now I can play in ultra no problem.
When I boosted Voltage upto 1.5v. temperature became much lower and SLI cards became more equally stabilized in terms of temperature and performance.
This game is called Star Citizen, and if you are into astronomy or a space fanatic, this game looks great check it out.