The Bling Bling

[aaro.peramaa]

Preblingification:

Postblingification:

 

Sorry for the poor image quality. (Was shot in low light environment.)

 

Introduction:

Basically the only reason I wanted to do this mod/upgrade was because I wanted to get a new case, for cheap of course, and I had gotten my eyes on the BitFenix Neos. I wanted the windowed version, and I wanted it to be black. Then I figured that since my build didn't have any chosen color theme, I could paint it gold to match the Neos. I think I managed to capture that dolla dolla look pretty well. Currently I do not have the new case, but once I get it ill add some updated pictures.

Also I was really in a need of a hardware upgrade. Since my old HD 7770 had a blue PCB, this mod was a nice kick to finally replace it. I went with a KFA2 GeForce 960 2GB, factory overclocked simply because it was the cheapest 960 available to me. Also the reason I went with 960 instead of R9 380 was that my current PSU (Super Flower Golden Green) is only 400w and I didn't want to replace it.

 

As my CPU cooler I have the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo.

The reason I didn't take it off the mobo is that I kinda have this phobia of thermal paste, and didn't even have supplies to replace the paste.

First step was to sand the top of the cooler to give the paint some kind of surface to stick to. I decided to paint only the topmost layer to reduce cooling performance losses.

Next I had to mask the whole board and rest of the cooler from the paint. I had to get bit creative:

Then I just painted 2 layers of white primer

and 2 more layers of gold: (Taken after first layer)

Now the gold color wasn't exactly what I imagined, this looked bit more like brass, but I liked it, so I went with it. It looks better irl than in pictures.

 

Also the mobo had some ugly blue on the capacitors so I got a golden marker and drew on them

Doesn't look that good from close but still 100x better.

 

 

For the RAM I have 2x4GB G Skill Ripjaws X memory. This time I did paint the whole heat sink, since RAM doesn't run that hot anyways. I didn't want to take off the heat sink because I've seen some horror pictures of memory modules coming off. I decided to just mask the rest out like with the CPU cooler.

 

First I took off the ugly blue stickers on the sides. There was some glue left on the sticks so I stole some nail polish cleaner from my sister and that did the trick really well.

After cleaning the glue off I gave the sticks a slight sanding.

Now the masking was a really tricky to do with this set of sticks. Masking the pins was pretty straightforward but inside of the heat sink was more difficult. I ended up wrapping up a short plastic stick with painters tape and sticking it in there to prevent paint going over the memory modules. The stick was bit too short so I went ahead and added another one you can see sticking out.

Then I was ready to paint it with 2 layers of primer and 2 layers of gold:

 

Then I made sure everything was still working

 

 

Now the power supply was really easy one: I just had to take the stickers off the sides, and they didn't even leave any glue. Masked the back and laid it down on the fan side. Also since its not a modular PSU I had to mask the cables but it was really easy. Gave it a slight sand, and again, 2 layers of primer and 2 layers of gold.

Pictures are bit blurry because it was getting dark and the camera didn't seem to be able to focus. (Weird since it uses laser focus)

 

Also I grabbed a black permanent marker and colored the ugly multicolor wires black.

 

Then I got to the GPU. It arrived at around 12am and I painted it right away. The metallic (originally had imagined it being plastic but was pleasantly surprised) heat sink cover was connected with only 4 tiny screws that came off nicely.

There really wasn't any masking to do except for a little rubber piece at the end (dunno why it was there but left it on). After that gave it the usual 2 layers of primer and 2 layers of gold.

I think it came out to be really good and as my dad said:

 

It looks like it came from the factory like that!

 

 

As I said earlier on, I'll be getting the new case soon and will post pictures later. Also might get some white LEDs.

[DarkBlade2117]

Gold,isn't really my thing, It may be the PSU which is overkill but may some type of LEDs like some white ones or something idk.

[DarkEnergy]

The flip phone camera quality....

It's an interesting idea but not my style; why gold?

[The_Stig]

Official PC of rappers everywhere.

[aaro.peramaa]

The bad cable management, the flip phone camera quality....

It's an interesting idea, why gold?

Yes, the quality is pretty bad, i guess my Canon Powershot doesnt work well in dark areas. In the first picture cables are a total mess I admit but in the second one they are actually pretty tidy (well as good as you are going to get with a bitfenix merc alpha, a really low end case and a nonmodular psu)

And the reason i went with gold was that i wanted to try something new and uncommon that would be different from all the mainstream red blue green builds

[aaro.peramaa]

Dunno if thats any better but now you can see that the cables are (imho) pretty tidy

[ManWithBeard1990]

Definitely an improvement. I'm not really a gold kind of guy but this looks alright.

[FaZe Booce]

I really don't like how the power supply turned out. Too much gold.

Otherwise great idea

[JonU]

Looks ok, but the low quality pictures don't do it any justice. Better lighting would make for a better poll result.