What's the problem with it?

r.cade wrote:

What's the problem with it?

Off the top of my head

- paint might be conductive
- heat dissipation might be compromised
- replacing capacitors through a paint job is problematic, to say the least
- does not help resale value (understatement)

Normal rattle-can paint shouldn't be conductive, that stuff is expensive!

Heat dissipation? Maybe slightly. The board is already coated with a sealant already though...

Caps? Sure... and this era has a lot of bad ones. Maybe he could find brightly colored ones if it ever dies and make some contrast.

It's "just" an old P4 board that is not yet vintage. It looked to me like more of an art project. I doubt he was worried about resale. 😀

r.cade wrote:

Heat dissipation? Maybe slightly. The board is already coated with a sealant already though...

Heat sinks and VRMs in particular would probably fare better without paint .

r.cade wrote:

Caps? Sure... and this era has a lot of bad ones. Maybe he could find brightly colored ones if it ever dies and make some contrast.

I meant that soldering on a painted board must be somewhat interesting. Hopefully that paint isn't flammable or prone to heat discoloring .

r.cade wrote:

It's "just" an old P4 board that is not yet vintage. It looked to me like more of an art project. I doubt he was worried about resale. 😀

It is his board and it is a P4 board, so he can toss it in a wood chipper when he's done with it, if he wants 😀 . I just can't imagine doing this (I mean painting, not chipping) to anything remotely valuable or rare .

I'm not sure about this job - if any of the components heat up, it might discolor the paint. A long haul test is in order, an update 6 months from now.

darry wrote:

- paint might be conductive - heat dissipation might be compromised - replacing capacitors through a paint job is problematic, t […]
Show full quote

- paint might be conductive
- heat dissipation might be compromised
- replacing capacitors through a paint job is problematic, to say the least
- does not help resale value (understatement)

I don't see how any of these points are valid. Paint, once dried, is not conductive. Heat dissipation won't be affected much by a thin layer of paint. Caps are through-hole components and he did not paint the back of the pcb. And finally, resale value is not an issue given that kind of mainboard. If someone is after such a modded thing, it may even got additional value.

The only reason not to do it is because it looks like shit.

TBH if I was going to do it as an artpiece or some wall decoration, this is not a bad idea 😉

He did a pretty terrible job with masking off stuff. I could see doing something like this to a cheap non-wanted type motherboard for fun. I would have done it quite a bit differently, masking off everything so that just the PCB was painted (and small surface mount stuff). There's also the option of using clear UV reactive paint (clear when not under UV light), but that would be more for a early 2000's LAN Party style PC build. But yea, 99% of the time, this looks like trash. It would be a lot cooler just to have a PCB that is already white. There are quite a few white PCB motherboards, graphics cards, and sound cards already out there. It might take a while to get a full set of components, however it would be much more tasteful.

A few examples..

Just because you can doesn't mean you should...

There is no issue if you cover all the slots and contacts etc. You can do other cool things like trace circuit board traces with UV pens

I don't know about the utility of painting the motherboard itself, but *cases* - I actually prefer modern case colors to the old beige and treated steel in many ways, but the inside of modern cases is often a cavern of impeded visibility.

I have often thought of masking and painting the *interior* of my modern cases white, just so I can see things when I go digging around in there.

I like the factory white hardware for the same reasons, but especially with retro equipment I wouldn't want to cover up markings, traces, components, etc. Even a poor lost unlamented P4.