Painting tricky parts, sleeving/cable management and liquid cooling

[BabieZ]

Painting

 

Forewarning: I'm aware this is quite a large post so I've tried to make the layout as easy to read and concise as possible (it's also my first ever post/thread so go easy on me )

 

Okay so I've been wanting to colour match my PC and accessories now for a while, luckily a few of the items are already colour matched and look amazing but there is quite a few bits that look very out of place. A few things that don't really need it may also get a make over . The overall theme that I'm going for is black with blue accents. I'm planning on using Plasti Dip Blaze Blue as the colour difference between the LED light seems negligible (standard blue is also an option). Standard Black for the bits that require it.

 

Items that are already in line with the theme include;

PSU: Corsair GS600, blue LED.

 

Case: Thermaltake A31, has blue accents and also has a 120mm blue LED exhaust fan.

 

Keyboard: Ducky DK9008 Shine 3 (Cherry Red MX Switches), blue LED.

 

Bits that definitely need work;

Mouse: Zowie FK

Is black and yellow themed which looks extremely ugly in contrast to everything else. This is probably one of the hardest items to paint IMO as both of the bits I'm looking at colour matching is extremely small and detailed. The mouse wheel (I guess I'll have to take the mout and the Zowie logo (although I may just paint the whole surface black). I may also do the bottom depending on how thick Plasti Dip goes on (its feet are fairly thin and I don't want to compromise the integrity of the smooth feeling, but damn its ugly)

 

Motherboard: Asus Z87M-Plus

Is also black and yellow themed (ughh how did I somehow manage pick this colour theme twice....). Wanting to get rid of all the yellow parts so the north/south bridges, SATA slots x6. One of the main problems I see is my wanting to paint the yellow RAM slots (luckily two of the four are already black) as well as the 3 yellow PCI-E slots, I'm not sure if these cant actually be painted but I really, really, really.....want to get rid of the yellow. I'm also considering doing the whole IO shield but I'm still tossing this up.

 

RAM: 16GB G.Skill Trident-X 1600Mhz (8GBx2)

These were originally the reason why I wanted to get painting, the gaudy red mixed with the yellow clashed a lot against the blue. I know the fins should be fairly easy to do. I'm just not sure what I'm going to do about the sticker along the side of the sticks, I may end up just removing it and painting it black (i f its not already underneath) or possibly do both sticks entirely blue.

 

Not so important bits;

GPU: NVIDIA Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 OC Edition 2GB

Fairly happy with how this looks (partly because its upside down orientation means you cant see much of it anyway) but considering taking the metal shroud that encases the 3 fans off and painting blue.

 

Monitor #2: DELL SE197FP

Wanting to get the bezel to be the same matte black finish the the monitor on the right (BenQ XL2411Z) and obviously the stand. I'm not sure if it'll be possible to do the menu, positive/negative and power button but that doesn't bother me so much. The only worry I have is getting around the dell logo (I don't necessarily want to compromise that). I'm not really sure how to tape off something that small for example inside the 'D' and the 'E'.

 

Sleeving/Cable Management

 

My PSU (Corsair GS600) is obviously non-modular so is sleeving still an option? I would want to eventually sleeve all the cables from the PSU blue aswell as the few SATA cables I have (can SATA cables be sleeved?). Opinions on what brand (ease of use/quality) etc would be welcome. Also I had to get a plain white/semi see-through molex adapter because the 8 pin connecter to the GPU couldn't reach as is, so I guess I'll need to get a custom one either blue or black to match the rest (most probably black).

 

My cable management seems fairly tangled and messy, I had to try and get every last little centimeter out of the cables just to get things connected. As you can see with the 8 pin CPU cable, I had to route it under the gap between the motherboard and GPU because I had no chance getting it up and around the back and then the impossible angle to actually get it in the socket). Do I need to get cable extensions or something?

 

Here's a picture of the internal's:

 

Liquid Cooling

 

​I'm hoping to one day very soon, get a Corsair Hydro H105 and replace the two SP120L's for two SP120 Blue LED's to help complete the look as well as adding four AF120 Quiet Edition Blue LED's, replacing the existing case's stock exhast and intake fans and supplementing another intake at the front and another exhaust at the bottom.

 

Corsair Hydro H105:

SP120 Blue LED's:

AF120 Quiet Edition Blue LED's:

 

My one question regarding the H105 is I have no idea on the power draw of the cooler, can my Corsair GS600 take that along with the rest of my system?

 

System Specs:

 

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K @ 3.40Ghz

GPU: NVIDIA Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 OC Edition 2GB

Sound Card: ASUS Xonar Essence STX

RAM: 16GB G.Skill Trident-X 1600Mhz (8GBx2)

Monitors: BenQ XL2411Z & DELL SE197FP

Motherboard: Asus Z87M-Plus

HDD's: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB & 2TB Seagate Barracuda

Keyboard: Ducky DK9008 Shine 3 (Cherry Red MX Switch) Blue LED

Headphones: ATH-AD700X Open Air with ZM-MIC 1

Mouse: Zowie FK

 

And that's about it! Phew that took me an hour or so to write up

Thanks for taking the time to read (if you did, totally waiting for tldr; haha)

Cheers, BabieZ!

[Enderman]

Nice job

[ImBleu]

Holy Shi-

 

If only all first posts were like this. Welcome to the LTT Forums Enjoy your stay.

 

 

@BabieZ Yes you can still sleeve non-modular power supplies, its just a pain in the arse and I'd recommend getting extensions anyway and yes 600w can power your system and the extra fans / H105. You can use CoolerMaster or Corsair's PSU calculator if you want.

[BabieZ]

Awesome thanks for the feedback and the welcome!

[BabieZ]

Just used the CoolerMaster PSU calculator and it says I should be fine

[BabieZ]

Would anyone be able to give me any info on whether I can paint RAM slots and the heatsinks on north/south bridges?

[W-L]

Would anyone be able to give me any info on whether I can paint RAM slots and the heatsinks on north/south bridges?

 

Yes you can paint heatsinks on your motherboard but I would only use plasti-dip on if they are accent colors you plan to paint and not the whole heatsink since plasti-dip is an insulator, if you plan to paint the entire heatsink spray paint will be a better option to allow for heat dissipation.

 

As for the RAM slots you can paint them using spray paint but you will need to do a fair bit of masking and cleaning of the pins on the inside, which is a bit of a task but can be done, if you plan to use plasti-sip there I don't think it would work so well since it require a thick layer and may cover the pins on the slot where they will be a paint to remove. It's not that it can't be done but it will be a lot of work to get those painted perfectly.

 

 

BTW welcome to the fourm and great post!

[BabieZ]

Yeah I'm planning to paint both heat sinks entirely.

I'm also thinking painting the RAM/PCI/SATA and IO black instead of blue (not plasti dip) because it will probably be easier, faster and look better at the end, the only bits I'll do blue is the heat sinks.

I've been reading up about painting RAM and PCI slots and there's not a whole lot of information/experience out there but the few hits I got were quite helpful

 

Thanks for you're advice and cheers, glad to be here!

[BabieZ]

also what type of spray paint should work best and should I need a base coat for doing blue over yellow?

[W-L]

Yeah I'm planning to paint both heat sinks entirely.

I'm also thinking painting the RAM/PCI/SATA and IO black instead of blue (not plasti dip) because it will probably be easier, faster and look better at the end, the only bits I'll do blue is the heat sinks.

I've been reading up about painting RAM and PCI slots and there's not a whole lot of information/experience out there but the few hits I got were quite helpful

 

Thanks for you're advice and cheers, glad to be here!

 

also what type of spray paint should work best and should I need a base coat for doing blue over yellow?

 

In general for paint PCI-E and RAM slots it's mostly the masking of the motherboard and apply very light thin coats to not add too much thickness and for not too much to get onto the pins, for cleaning most people use an old PCI-E x16 card and remove and install it about a dozen times to wear off any paint that may have gotten onto those pins to get it back to the bare contacts.

 

 

If you are using spray paint and just re-coloring I recommending taking off the heatsink and giving it a good run over with 300-400 grit sand paper or scotch brite to rough up the surface for paint. Clean and mask any areas before painting and for this since it isn't bare metal and has an original finish on it there isn't a need for a primer, you can go directly and use the desired spray paint. As for the kinds of paint the two main go to paints I used, that we have in North America and Canada are Krylon and Rustoleum, but if are in need of a larger color palette or specific shade of blue try looking into artists/graffiti spray paints.

[BabieZ]

Awesome cheers

[BabieZ]

Actually found some hardware that I'm looking at getting instead of painting;

 

Motherboard: MSI Z97 G55 SLI

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=27757 

 

RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws X F3-1600C9D-16GXM 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=19895

 

I was planning on giving my current RAM to my girlfriend at one point anyway so that kind of works out

As for the spare motherboard I'd be gaining, I could give it too my dad for when he upgrades next.

[BabieZ]

Alright figured it all out after a lot of measuring, I can't go for the MSI Z97 G55 SLI because the H105 would hit the fan headers and the VRM heatsink (the 38mm rad would be pushing down on the pins), because of this I was thinking about the ASRock Z97 Pro4 but found it would also have the same issues with the CPU 8-pin.

 

However the ASRock Z97M Pro4 has just enough clearance with the rad fitting snug up against the DIM slots, its also substantially cheaper than the MSI @ $179 and marginally cheaper than the ASRock Z97 Pro4 @$139 with the Z97M being $129.

[W-L]

Alright figured it all out after a lot of measuring, I can't go for the MSI Z97 G55 SLI because the H105 would hit the fan headers and the VRM heatsink (the 38mm rad would be pushing down on the pins), because of this I was thinking about the ASRock Z97 Pro4 but found it would also have the same issues with the CPU 8-pin.

 

However the ASRock Z97M Pro4 has just enough clearance with the rad fitting snug up against the DIM slots, its also substantially cheaper than the MSI @ $179 and marginally cheaper than the ASRock Z97 Pro4 @$139 with the Z97M being $129.

 

Is it not possible to front mount the radiator inside the case, then there would be no worries of clearance.

[BabieZ]

I'm not too sure, it would involve moving my HDD and SSD from the drive bays to somewhere else (not sure where I could do this). I don't think there is mounting brackets (like on the top of the case) for radiators at the front, unless you can just hold it by the fans that will also be there, is that possible/recommended?