HogtownHero

To clarify: most components that are going to be gold are heading to be spray-chromed gold by a shop I found in town. Their specific spray-chrome process is NOT the fun chemist-set type (with water and sensitizer baths), THEY will paint a base coat, gold coat, top coat. The Air Cooler itself would suffer severe thermal insulation if it went through that process (I would be at least marginally better off spray painting it gold!) so instead I am considering either Gold Anodizing or Electroplating. So yes Bcat00, we're talking about actually coating it in gold.

I'm putting together my new computer and I'd like to go with a super cheesy black and gold theme. The case frame and a few other bits (video card cover, motherboard shield thingy, etc) are going to hopefully be spray-chromed gold but I'm hesitant to do the same with the air cooler heat sink (an NH-D15S) because this particular spray-chrome process (there are a few) essentially involves some layers of paint. I know most people are going to say that getting the cooler itself gold-electroplated sounds ridiculous and is probably not a GOOD idea; I'm not going to dispute that. I just want to know if anyone thinks it's a horrible idea; are there better, safer alternatives? Gold has pretty decent thermal conduction, but would the electroplating process itself cause any unwanted thermal insulating factors? Additional thoughts?

Does anyone think the Dark 900 would thermally outperform the Evolv if ALL the fan slots were populated?

Actually, if you wack as many RGB fans in the Dark Base as one can, it might look pretty good on the inside.

They Evolv is certainly the sexier of the two, but the dark 900 has more room, more fans, and way more options for liquid cooling later on.

Can't decide between the two for an air cooled rig. The plan is to overclock far down the road, so potential watercooling is a factor as well. Fan and LED controllers are not a factor (will go with software). Price isn't a huge factor either. CPU: 6700k Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S, or maybe cryorig H7 Video Card will be some fancy 1080 Mobo will be some fancy Z170 with ridiculous RGB lighting and aura headers (or something like aura headers) PSU will be some PSU, unless they make fancy, decent quality ridiculous RGB-PSU's as well Ram will be whatever decent cheap RAM goes until/if Crucial ever releases a DDR4 Tactical Tracer Storage: Samsung 950 Pro SSD - 512Gb Some RGB lighting Plus eventually Thermaltake's next gen of RGB Riing Fans with software control

Who cares if they are copies? They're case fans! They're REALLY not going to differ tonnes. That being said, someone had mentioned their confusion about Riing fans going RGB. If you watch a few select computex 2015 videos (which are strangely difficult to find), you will definitely see that Thermaltake had an RGB Riing fan there, with what I can only assume was a prototype fan controller. RGB case fans don't seem to be very common at all, so the bar is set pretty damn low for Thermaltake, and in true capitalist style, it's looking like the features of this fan controller could well be at the toddler level. IE: see http://www.gizmofusion.com/2015/06/new-thermaltake-riing-rgb-high-static-pressure-radiator-fan-with-patented-led-ring-at-computex-2015/ If this article is accurate, we're talking about Riing fans that only change colors with a manual on/off switch (reaching into your case everytime) or a reboot; you can also pause the "multi-color" option to pick a color as the fan slides through an RGB range. This to me, is pretty damn dissapointing as it essentially only allows you to pick colors to match the rest of the stuff in your case for long, discreet periods of time (and in that sense, I might as well just be careful when thinking about internal case colors before I purchase anything). What I really wanted were fans that would change color as the case temperature moved up or down (without an arduino board and a whole mess of wires and specific programing); Frankly, to have RGB fans but not include any softwear or other options for lighting effects is a sorely missed opportunity.