I've been wanting to do this mod for some time now! After seeing how much better these cards can look with a reasonable color I really thought it would help tie the rig together. While the card was apart I also changed the VRM pads and thermal paste (mx-4). I got really good thermal pads so my VRM temps have dropped by around 8-10c, the core around 3-5c. Really happy with the performance results as well as the looks, I thought white would look good with the fractal case, plus the 3 colors I was considering were black, red, and white. I found logs for the other 2 so I thought white would be good and I'm glad I did! Here's the process behind my Arctic r9 290
starting with a picture of the card before hand
the cooler/shroud separated
the actual graphics card!
I took the stickers off the fans, since they had yellow accents. Now they're all black
The painted shroud, without the metal accents back on
shroud put back together!
Cooler/shroud all pieced back together
Everything put back together!
Back in the case