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ASUS SABERTOOTH Z87 - White w/ Carbon Fiber

Suika

I just recently saw the ASUS SABERTOOTH Z97 Mark S, I wanted it badly because I wanted a black and white build, and it would be perfect. It was perfect, except for the price tag, I couldn't invest that much when I was looking for a $300 at most makeover, and my other plans would have blown that budget. The other day, I found a ASUS Sabertooth Z87 for $150 with a free stick of 8GB DDR3 and $35 rebate. I went ahead and picked it up, and my god was the color scheme ugly, but an overall nice board.

 

Nothing a little plastidip can't fix...

 

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I also found some white carbon fiber vinyl, so I went ahead and stuck that onto a few things instead of painting them.

 

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That's nice and dandy, but let's see it with the Thermal Armor back on.

 

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It looks nice, except where the "SABERTOOTH Z87" and logo is marked into the board. Looks kinda ugly like that. Carbon fiber that bitch!

 

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And if you saw, I ended up putting carbon fiber on the SATA and USB 3.0 ports.

 

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It actually looks pretty nice, I'm going to install it later tonight or Thursday.

 

This is so far my best looking mod, and also my first. I'm impressed with the results and am excited to finish the rest of the build since this alone looks sexy as hell. I also want to see if my i7 can reach 5GHz lol...

if you have to insist you think for yourself, i'm not going to believe you.

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@Suika Those RAM slots look ugly af.

Main Gaming PC (new): HP Omen 30L || i9 10850K || RTX 3070 || 512GB WD Blue NVME || 2TB HDD, 4TB HDD, 8TB HDD ||  750W P2 ||  16GB HyperX Black DDR4

Main Gaming PC (old, still own) : Intel Core i7 7700K @5.0Ghz || GPU: GTX 1080 Seahawk EK X || Motherboard: Maximus VIII Impact || Case: Fractal Design Define Nano S || RAM : 32GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 

Cooling: EK XRES D5 100mm || Alphacool ST30 280mm w/ Vardars || Alphacool ST30 240mm w/ Vardars || Swiftech 3/8 x 1/2'' Lok-Seal Compressions || Swiftech EVGA Hydrocopper Block || Primochill Advanced LRT Orange || Distilled Water

Folding@Home Rig: 2x X5690s @4.6Ghz || GPUs: 2x Radeon HD 7990 || Motherboard: EVGA SR-2 || Case: Corsair 900D || RAM: 48GB Corsair Dominator GT 2000Mhz CL9

Ethereum Mining Rig: Pentium G4400 || Gigabyte Z170X-UD5 TH || 2x GTX 1060s (Samsung & Hynix) 1x GTX 1070 (Micron), 2x RX480s BIOS modded (Samsung), 1x R9 290X 8GB, 1x GTX 1660 Super = ~ 195 Mh/s

Peripherals: 3x U2412M (5760x1200), 1x U3011 (2560x1600) || Logitech G710 (Cherry Blues) || Logitech G600 || Brainwavz HM5 with @Gofspar Mod 

Laptop: Dell XPS 15 || "Infinity Edge" 4K IPS Screen || i7 7700HQ || GTX 1050 || 16GB 2400Mhz RAM 

 

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@Suika Those RAM slots look ugly af.

They are, but there isn't much that I'm willing to do to cover them up. They'll basically be hiding when I get RAM in, though.

if you have to insist you think for yourself, i'm not going to believe you.

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Without the thermal aromor it would be perfect noctua color scheme

Insert   Dank   Signature   Here.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm planning to do pretty much the same thing to an X99 Sabertooth in a couple of months.

Was removing/reattaching the thermal armor as straightforward as I'm hoping?

When you flirt with Death, you run the risk that Death has something more serious in mind.

 

CCIE #4206

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I'm planning to do pretty much the same thing to an X99 Sabertooth in a couple of months.

Was removing/reattaching the thermal armor as straightforward as I'm hoping?

Very straight forward, you don't even have to touch the backplate to remove the front armor fortunately. The only problem I had was I lost a screw, but like every other project, chances are that it was an extra, lol.

if you have to insist you think for yourself, i'm not going to believe you.

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  • 2 months later...

I got the same motherboard and I've seen some other posts where they plasti dip the thermal armor but seem ugly so that discouraged me from doing it.

But let me tell you that your paint job is so much cleaner even though you are using plasti dip and not a vinyl dye.

How did you painted it? thin layers? letting it dry for some time between layers? Please share!

How are the vinyl cuts you placed on the heatsinks? Did you notice any increment on temps?

CPU: Intel i7 4790 Quad-Core (8 threads) 3.6GHz - 4.0GHz (Turbo) | Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth Z87  | RAM: HyperX 16Gb(2x8Gb) 1866MHz | GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 960 4GB Case: NZXT S340 | CPU Cooler: Cryorig H7 | Case Fans:  NZXT FN V2 120mm x2, Rosewill Hyperborea 140mm x2 | PSU: Seasonic S12G 550 | Lighting: Darkside RGB LED Strip SSD: Samsung 850 EVO | Monitor: ASUS PB258Q | OS: Ubuntu 14.04 

 

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I got the same motherboard and I've seen some other posts where they plasti dip the thermal armor but seem ugly so that discouraged me from doing it.

But let me tell you that your paint job is so much cleaner even though you are using plasti dip and not a vinyl dye.

How did you painted it? thin layers? letting it dry for some time between layers? Please share!

How are the vinyl cuts you placed on the heatsinks? Did you notice any increment on temps?

I painted it months ago so I'll struggle to remember.

I always thought this was an average paint job because of how I did it. I didn't necessarily use thin layers and was a bit too generous in an attempt to get the entire board even. There were even a couple spots where you could see paint starting to drip but those faded with extra layers. The only thing that displeases me about the paint job now is just that it's plastic dip. On the top left where that little screw keeps a small chunk of plastic sitting, the screw eventually tore out some of the paint and some black is visible. This isn't due to the paint job but how the plasti dip actually is and that I careless screwed something into it. Keep that in mind in any project where you have to screw something back in. Also time between layers, especially if you let the layer become a bit too much, make sure to follow instructions on the can lol. I gave an average of 30 minutes between layers and 40 minutes for layers I thought I went overboard on.

As far as temperatures I haven't noticed anything note worthy. The vinyl is thin and doesn't actually obstruct any heat spreaders on that one heat sink, it's sitting on a little plastic shield that I could only assume didn't dissipate that much heat from the start.

if you have to insist you think for yourself, i'm not going to believe you.

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