--- r e f l e X i o n ---

[Xion X2]

Check this out, guys.

First, I began removing all the red connectors from the board that could be removed easily.

I began with the floppy connector. What high-end board needs a floppy connector these days, anyway?



Then, the USB connectors. I'll be replacing these with black ones.



These were both easy and just slid right off. Just be careful with the floppy, if you attempt this, because the pins can bend easily. The USB pins were more sturdy.

Here's a shot of the board with the connectors removed.



Looking better, already.

Now for the good part.

I've found an easy, safe solution for clean capacitors. I've found that polishing them with a metal polish and polishing cloth works great for taking off the ugly ink/paint to give you a clean, painted look.

Check out the difference.



And now, with 3 polished.



Slowly but surely, we're getting rid of all the red.

3 caps down.. only 55 to go...

Yes, there are 58 caps on the board. Luckily, the polish makes quick work of them. Takes less than 5 minutes for each one. But if you multiply that by 58, I could be spending almost five hours just polishing caps.

[shazza]

Takes less than 5 minutes for each one. But if you multiply that by 58, I could be spending almost five hours just polishing caps.

Well, I've spent 58 hours studying your work log, so fair is fair Nice job on the board clean-up.

Edit - oops, I meant I've spent 5+ hours

[CptDreadFlint]

Great idea, Xion!
Didn't quite go the radical way of fhantastic's grinding/sanding situation but yours seems to be a safer route.

This certainly beats my nail polish remover (doesn't work) and magic marker (works suprisingly well) method.

So you are using metal polish polish as in the Brasso-type stuff? or like sorta the paint stripping/polish kinda stuff? (and stuff.)

Had to get another "stuff" in there.

[Mabyboi]

Love the motherboard man, makes me think of my bloodrage and how happy i am with it.

I would have never thought about removing the paint on the capacitors, nice touch.... or polishing.. again nice touch.... or removing the red brackets.. i dont need to say it again...

and i agree, who the hell needs a floppy connector on an x58 mobo? (dont mean to offend anyone )

beautiful build man, cant wait to see the end result for this puppy.

[Wezly]

Check this out, guys.

I began with the floppy connector. What high-end board needs a floppy connector these days, anyway?

and i agree, who the hell needs a floppy connector on an x58 mobo? (dont mean to offend anyone )

I run MS-DOS

[aka_GK]

hmm, I didn't even think that they can be removed that easy by just pulling out

enjoyed watching your pics

[Xion X2]

Well, I've spent 58 hours studying your work log, so fair is fair Nice job on the board clean-up.

Edit - oops, I meant I've spent 5+ hours

Good thing. If it'd been 58, I might've started to worry.

Great idea, Xion!
Didn't quite go the radical way of fhantastic's grinding/sanding situation but yours seems to be a safer route.

This certainly beats my nail polish remover (doesn't work) and magic marker (works suprisingly well) method.

So you are using metal polish polish as in the Brasso-type stuff? or like sorta the paint stripping/polish kinda stuff? (and stuff.)

Had to get another "stuff" in there.

Thanks, Flint.

This is the stuff that I'm using. With the help of Lamptron, I've discovered that caps have a very thin aluminum casing. So what better to polish them down than aluminum polish from Mother's:

http://www.amazon.com/Mothers-5100-A.../dp/B00068GEJM

I've taken things a bit further with even better results, so see below.

Love the motherboard man, makes me think of my bloodrage and how happy i am with it.

I would have never thought about removing the paint on the capacitors, nice touch.... or polishing.. again nice touch.... or removing the red brackets.. i dont need to say it again...

and i agree, who the hell needs a floppy connector on an x58 mobo? (dont mean to offend anyone )

beautiful build man, cant wait to see the end result for this puppy.

Thanks, bud!

I run MS-DOS

Join us here in the 21st century, Wezly...

Here it is, guys. Even better than painted caps are mirrored caps:





I've taken things a bit further to get down to the pure aluminum surface under the paint with the same aluminum polish but using my dremel and a soft polishing wheel, instead. You just have to be careful not to apply much pressure and be aware of the other components/circuitries that are in the area.

This looks so much better than that ugly red paint and should go great with my theme.

Now I just have to figure out a way to rid the board of those red connectors. I plan to practice on some junk mobos to see if I can remove them successfully without breaking anything and replace them with new connectors that better mesh with my color scheme, like a black.

[Mabyboi]

whyyyyyy would you ruin the red?! its soooo beautiful! my bloodrage was the center of my build! i bought the motherboard, and then built a red and black theme outwards!! you sir are crazy!

and also the reflective polished caps look amazing!

I run MS-DOS

well sir... im not quite sure what to say... same thing i said to an old customer of mine.. had a ms-dos computer and was buying a vista computer... he was afraid the stuff he had on his old hard drive (in the ms-dos computer) was too much for the new one... figured there wasnt enough space, and that the info on his floppy disks would fill the hard drive... i was slightly stunned... but i didnt critisize!

[Xion X2]

whyyyyyy would you ruin the red?! its soooo beautiful! my bloodrage was the center of my build! i bought the motherboard, and then built a red and black theme outwards!! you sir are crazy!

Bud, red just doesn't fit refleXion, sorry. My color scheme is nickel, black and a small splash of purple.

I'll save red for later.

[Edward88]

You should use another mother instead :p


Nice work, i love the cosmos s case

[Xion X2]

You should use another mother instead :p


Nice work, i love the cosmos s case

Thanks. Yeah, but I already had this one. It was running in an i7 machine for a few months, already, and I didn't want to spend money on a new one.

Besides.. every motherboard has those stupid colored PCI-e and DIMM slots everywhere that often clash with your color scheme, so I probably would've ended up doing some of this same work, anyway.

[snoro]

too bad the asus sabertooth mobo is for p55 platform, cause this one could have been a bit more easier to blend in with your project.

[Mabyboi]

Bud, red just doesn't fit refleXion, sorry. My color scheme is nickel, black and a small splash of purple.

I'll save red for later.

okay ill let you off the hook this time... just because you have a valid reason

[Wezly]

well sir... im not quite sure what to say... same thing i said to an old customer of mine.. had a ms-dos computer and was buying a vista computer... he was afraid the stuff he had on his old hard drive (in the ms-dos computer) was too much for the new one... figured there wasnt enough space, and that the info on his floppy disks would fill the hard drive... i was slightly stunned... but i didnt critisize!

Don't worry, I have Win7 on my main rigs and I'm trying to get openfiler on my x48-dq6 backup server. I feel sorry for that customer haha. From old, out-dated DOS, to new, out-dated vista....

And Xion, have you considered contacting any motherboard manufacturers for assistance in this matter?

[Red-5]

The rad grills and RAM blocks look great. Excellent additions to your build and think they will fit in well.
I didn't realise the motherboard connectors were as easy to remove as that either. By the way those polished caps look stunning.

[Pado]

If you manage to find a way to replace the ram/pci-e slots, I will love you for life.
I need to replace mine for my black/white build.

[Xion X2]

The rad grills and RAM blocks look great. Excellent additions to your build and think they will fit in well.
I didn't realise the motherboard connectors were as easy to remove as that either. By the way those polished caps look stunning.

Thanks, Red.

Well guys, it looks like the PCI-e slots are irreplaceable.. at least by my little workshop. There are 164 pins underneath that slot.





http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_C...I_Express.html

No thanks. The floppy was only ~20 pins and two of them bent pulling straight up on the connector. I can't even imagine the nightmare of a task like this. It'd be like searching for a needle in a haystack if just one was out of alignment with the rest of them, preventing you from getting the connector on.

I'm going to look into maybe fabricating some kind of covers for them, along with the DIMM slots. Still looking into what appear to be very limited options.

[nlancaster]

Very carefully paint them?

I have the same board and I bought because of the red and black. I can totally understand not wanting to buy new components just for the new case.

[Wezly]

Put a junk card in all the slots that you need to paint, tape everything else off, and spray away?

That way you'd keep paint out of the inside of the slot and everything else, but the outside of the slot would be painted.

Too lazy to make more sense out of that, as I have toasted-pulled-pork-sandwich-itis.

[noeru]

hi Xion X2
Your work is wonderful! Very polite and nice job! Wonderful

[Vinas]

http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_C...I_Express.html

No thanks. The floppy was only ~20 pins and two of them bent pulling straight up on the connector. I can't even imagine the nightmare of a task like this. It'd be like searching for a needle in a haystack if just one was out of alignment with the rest of them, preventing you from getting the connector on.

I'm going to look into maybe fabricating some kind of covers for them, along with the DIMM slots. Still looking into what appear to be very limited options.

If it were easy, everyone would be doing it!

[Xion X2]

Very carefully paint them?

I have the same board and I bought because of the red and black. I can totally understand not wanting to buy new components just for the new case.

Put a junk card in all the slots that you need to paint, tape everything else off, and spray away?

That way you'd keep paint out of the inside of the slot and everything else, but the outside of the slot would be painted.

Too lazy to make more sense out of that, as I have toasted-pulled-pork-sandwich-itis.

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. Yeah, I think I'm going to tape the board tonight/tomorrow and try just painting those slots. I'll lightly sand them first.

There are crevices within the connectors/retention tabs that a cover just wouldn't be able to hide, so this seems to be the most practical solution at the moment. I'll let you know how it goes.

First, though, I plan to finish polishing all the caps (this goes much faster w/ my dremel) and then testing the board to make sure this hasn't damaged it in some way. I'm confident that it hasn't, but I just want to confirm before I go through the trouble of painting it.

hi Xion X2
Your work is wonderful! Very polite and nice job! Wonderful

Thank you, noeru!

If it were easy, everyone would be doing it!

True. But I'm hard-headed and always like to look for solutions to what seem impossible barriers. Sometimes, you get lucky.

[Xion X2]

Finished polishing all of the caps last night. My motherboard looks like it's wearing jewelry now. They sparkle.

I'll upload some photos tonight. It will be painting 101 for the next two nights as I experiment with spraying those red connectors black.

[InCredible]

cant wait to see..might have to do the same to my LE board. would look good since i have a black/silver theme going on.

[Xion X2]

Does anyone have any experience with liquid tape? A guy on another forum is recommending that I use that instead of paint for blackening the PCI-e and DIMM slots.

One disadvantage I can think of is that it would go on thicker than paint and not be able to hit the crevices in the retention tabs.