Acrylic or Metal?

[Daniel0898]

Making a custom GPU back plate, should I use acrylic or metal? What are the benefits of either?

 

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

[W-L]

1 hour ago, Daniel0898 said:

Making a custom GPU back plate, should I use acrylic or metal? What are the benefits of either?

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

Both will work just make sure for the metal to have the proper clearance between the PCB and backplate to ensure nothing shorts out. For acrylic you should still have a small clearance but isn't really as big of a worry like a metal backplate. 

[Daniel0898]

8 hours ago, W-L said:

Both will work just make sure for the metal to have the proper clearance between the PCB and backplate to ensure nothing shorts out. For acrylic you should still have a small clearance but isn't really as big of a worry like a metal backplate. 

what should I use to create a space between the PCB and backplate?

 

[SLAYR]

25 minutes ago, Daniel0898 said:

what should I use to create a space between the PCB and backplate?

 

Nylon spacers if you can find them, but anything non conductive.

[Hackentosher]

You can poke around multirotor stores, nylon spacers are commonly used to mount the flight controller to the conductive carbon fiber frame.  I know eBay also has a good selection. 

[W-L]

2 hours ago, Daniel0898 said:

what should I use to create a space between the PCB and backplate?

As mentioned by others nylon or plastic spacers are good, if you wanted for the metal plate to act as some extra heatsinking for DRAM chips you can add some thermal pads also with the proper spacers. 

[Daniel0898]

8 hours ago, W-L said:

As mentioned by others nylon or plastic spacers are good, if you wanted for the metal plate to act as some extra heatsinking for DRAM chips you can add some thermal pads also with the proper spacers. 

I went with acrylic and found some nylon spacers. How can I make sure the backplate stays on the GPU, should I drill holes in the backplate?

[W-L]

6 minutes ago, Daniel0898 said:

I went with acrylic and found some nylon spacers. How can I make sure the backplate stays on the GPU, should I drill holes in the backplate?

The simplest may be to source some longer screws so you can drill a hole through the backplate and mounting through that into the original mounting points of the heatsink on the GPU.

[Daniel0898]

5 hours ago, W-L said:

The simplest may be to source some longer screws so you can drill a hole through the backplate and mounting through that into the original mounting points of the heatsink on the GPU.

Yeah that's what I figured, thanks for the help! I'll post when it's done

[Daniel0898]

On 7/5/2016 at 7:20 PM, W-L said:

The simplest may be to source some longer screws so you can drill a hole through the backplate and mounting through that into the original mounting points of the heatsink on the GPU.

I've been all over town looking for longer screws identical to the ones on my GPU but I can't find them. Any suggestions??

[W-L]

4 hours ago, Daniel0898 said:

I've been all over town looking for longer screws identical to the ones on my GPU but I can't find them. Any suggestions??

Since those screws are usually quite a small size most hardware stores won't carry them, your best bet would be to look online or dedicated fastener places like Fastental or even Amazon as long as you know the thread of the screw.