I just watched a RushKit video on the MSI Z97 Gaming 5 motherboard and he said I can take off the motherboard heat sinks (by removing the screws) and painting them any color I want. I was wondering, what type of paint should I use? I was thinking of painting them black. Also, will paintimg the heat sinks affect cooling performance of the components under them?
Thanks!
When you say "motherboard heatsink" do you mean the heat sink for the chip set on the bottom or the heatsink for the the VRM at the top.
If you are talking about the chipset heatsink do what ever you want. I would recommend paint that is oil based or even acrylic based. Latex or any sort of rubber based paint might burn after a while and start to look bad.
If you are talking about the top heatsinks...............different story.
I would just leave it alone. If you have hundreds of dollars to spare and you are ok with risking your motherboard, then I would take off the heatsink, tape it off, and then use high heat black paint. They sell the stuff at home depot and it is meant for barbecues.
Then you are going to have to be very careful about how you put the heatsink back on to make sure it seats properly so that your VRMs do not over heat.
It can be done, but it is a huge pain for some black vrms.
painting heatsinks can be kinda tricky, because you need to know which paint you can use.
Heatsinks are made for dissapating heat, so if you spray paint on it that does not dissapate realy good, then you will have a problem.
As a general rule, you don't want to mess with heatsinks. Their purpose is to wick the heat away from a heatsource and disperse it elsewhere. If you hinder that dispersal process, well, that's bad.
There are companies that have developed a type of ceramic coating for heatsinks, but, to my knowledge, there is nothing like that available on the consumer market. This coating is thin and even, so as to not impede on thermal conductivity, and whatever impedance there is negated by the extra surface area the rough ceramic texture provides.
If you have an aluminum heat sink, you can attempt to anodize it. While you anodize it, you may add a dye color, of your choice. For completely passive heatsinks, some companies use black, or purple, because it radiates the most heat.
If you still want black heatsinks on your mosfets, you may want to consider some aftermarket solutions, voila!: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835708155
I'm using some of these on my GPU mosfets, and even with the stock thermal tape, they work pretty good.
The biggest problem is most people on there first try mosttly always put too much paint on and diminish the pointt of their heat sink... You can get away with a good dusting though...
IF YOU TAKE THE HEATSINKS OFF
Ive actually rigged up a pathetic way to do an electro brush spray.. hook up a 6 volt battery (+) to the metal can and (-) to the heat sink... and you can basically acheive an electro dusting.. very fine coat... but you DEFINITLEY dont want to do that with it hooked to the board.. :D... I did it on an old motherboard... worked aight.. but I like to take the HSinks off none the less... its better that way