Project Cheapskate Backplate

[Lord Pantaloons]

Some of you may be fimiar with my dual ITX system "Twofold" for those of you who aren't the TLDR version is that it's an ancient Aopen ATX case that I modified to fit two ITX motherboards in. Among the hodgepodge of system components were a pair of PNY GTS 250 1GB XLR8 GPU's one that I bought from @ONOTech here on the forum and another that I bought shortly after from ebay. Currently Twofold is out of action and one of the two GTS 250's is in a PC that I put together for my brother, the other one basically ended up sitting on me desk being unused. Last night (actually very early this morning) I was speaking to a friend on teamspeak and we were speaking about hardware and basically I ended up thinking about how I wanted backplates for the 760's in my main rig and then I thought "how hard could it be to make them?" well after a bit of thinking I decided that the next day I would give it a spin and use my GTS 250 as a test bed for my work.

 

After searching my parts cache for a suitable piece of metal to make the back plate out of and finding nothing I started to think about using other materials, idea's for wood, plastic, and even cardboard back plates came and went and I settled on plastic as it isn't cardboard and I surely had something around the house that I could sacrifice to the project. After searching and searching I found nothing suitable until I hit the kitchen for a drink, while getting a cup I saw one of the many Tupperware containers and that's when it hit me that it would be perfect. I chose the largest one and after measuring to ensure that it was large enough(it was just big enough) I set to work making a template and cutting the lid. After cutting it and then a bit of trimming to shore up the uneven cuts I painted it and used some leftover hardware from building Twofold to attach the back plate to the card. I thought it looked pretty good but I thought it would look even better if I removed the stickers from the metal shroud so I did that as well.



Here's what I did

 

 

What the card looked like before modification

 

Source material

 

Traced template

 

Tool I decided to use to remove the rim of the lid

 

I really love this exacto set, best $20 tool set I've bought

 

Rim removed and template traced onto the lid

 

 

Backplate cut out

 

 

SLI finger cut out

 

Test fit (more trimming required after fit)

 

Paint I decided to use, well I say decided but it was this or either an emerald jewel green or a metallic royal purple so....not really much choice there.

 

Before paint

 

After a few coats

 

A few more coats

 

Finished, I thought it turned out really good.

 

Removed the stickers from the GPU shroud

 

"Glamor" shot <lel

 

The back

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's nearly it, before any of you mention it I know there's a big old belly button in the center of the back plate and I'm going to try to get a sticker made to cover it. Aside from that it's done and I really like how it turned out. It could be a bit better but considering that the whole thing took about 20 minutes to do not counting the paint drying I thought it was good. That's it and thanks for reading.

 

Sincerely,

Lord Pantaloons

[Jack.EXE]

Awesome

 

I should do this for my 7870XT

[TinoXtreme]

Awsome

[darkspeedy26]

woah, im surprised by the improvement. good job

[Shroomster]

Nice!

[Ryan Leech]

That's the sexiest backplate I have ever seen.

[Pugs501]

That's the sexiest backplate I have ever seen.

What the

[TechNut1337]

[Lord Pantaloons]

Wow I really wasn't expecting such a positive reaction, I was really expecting to see quite a few people take the piss out of me for using a tupperware lid to make a back plate. I got my mom to print out some stickers but the size I told her to use was too small so she will reprint them tomorrow in a larger size. I will update the thread if the larger stickers work out.

[jscho]

That fucking SLS mousepad. Goddamnit Pants hahahaha.

But seriously, that backplate looks sweet!

[Lord Pantaloons]

Alright, unfortunately the whole sticker idea fell through. I got ones that were the right size but the still required a bit of trimming and doing that left white edges that were VERY visible when they were stuck to the back plate and I didn't like how it looked. So as it stands now the bellybutton is here to stay until I find another way to cover it, I thought about using one of the EVGA case badges that came with my GPU's but I can't find them. Anyways thanks the positive comments and I hope some of you give this a try too. I would like to see what idea's you all come up with and what interesting materials you might use.

[WoodenMarker]

That turned out better than I expected. Looks great.

[holytoledo]

What's the purpose of a plastic backplate? Arguably the metal ones dissipate heat, but I don't see the purpose to the plastic one. Looks?

 

Good job although I thought the transparent blue was sexy.

[WoodenMarker]

What's the purpose of a plastic backplate? Arguably the metal ones dissipate heat, but I don't see the purpose to the plastic one. Looks?

Good job although I thought the transparent blue was sexy.

Metal ones don't actually help much with dissipating heat. A backplate is more for protection, rigidity, and looks.

[Lord Pantaloons]

That turned out better than I expected. Looks great.

Thanks though go figure I did all that work and now the GPU is dying so....fml

 

What's the purpose of a plastic backplate? Arguably the metal ones dissipate heat, but I don't see the purpose to the plastic one. Looks?

 

Good job although I thought the transparent blue was sexy.

It's for looks, it's floppy and provides no support whatsoever and it obviously can't dissipate any heat in fact it might trap some lol. What Woodenmarker said was spot on though.

[Yuki Sorrelwood]

Hey if your looking to get a sticker to cover it i was looking at moddiy.com and noticed they have a sister site called modsticker.com, you could try THIS STICKER  Which is a metal sticker that says NVIDA with the logo on it for $1.99 USD. Might just cover that ugly spot, and since its a metal badge it will stand out very nicely against the paint job and look more like it was meant to be there.

[Lord Pantaloons]

Hey if your looking to get a sticker to cover it i was looking at moddiy.com and noticed they have a sister site called modsticker.com, you could try THIS STICKER  Which is a metal sticker that says NVIDA with the logo on it for $1.99 USD. Might just cover that ugly spot, and since its a metal badge it will stand out very nicely against the paint job and look more like it was meant to be there.

Looks nice, I'll keep that in mind the next time I do this. The 250 is dying so I'm not going to mess with it anymore.

[TDP_Equinox]

On 10/8/2014 at 9:26 AM, Pugs501 said:

What the

 

Post from 2014
Video from 2016. 
No edit. 
Wat.