How I Made My Motherboard Glow in The Dark

Interesing mod for see-through cases – Guy AKA Starfox

NOTE: Painting a motherboard does involve some risk – neither the author nor Overclockers.com will be held responsible if your motherboard is damaged.

Hey gang! After reading numerous discussions on many different boards, I always contemplated as to whether I should do it or not, but I never have had a better time. I decided to take up this crazy feat of UV painting my 8k3a+ motherboard.

I am planning on my clear Lexan cube case, so why not make everything in my case look good as it will all be visible. And why not do it just for the heck of it!

“Are you nutz?!?!?”

No, not really. I believe it is actually quite safe. I took great precautions before doing this.
I found it to be one of the easiest mods I have done.

Supplies:

• 1 Can of blue UV reactive paint, which you can find HERE.
• 1 Multimeter
• Lots of blue masking tape
• Good pair of scissors
• Patience
• And a lot of “Ballz”

Now let the fun begin…

The first thing I did was measure the conductivity of the paint with the multi-meter. I sprayed a good glob of the paint on a post-it-note:

I then used the multi-meter to test the conductivity:

I am not an expert – heck, I have never used a multimeter before, but my Stepfather (an electrician) put it on the correct knob and I guess this is good enough for me.

Now that that is settled, I guess we can say it’s safe to use this paint on the motherboard.

Now it’s time to mask off the motherboard!

This is where the patience, masking tape and scissors come in handy. It was very tedious work.

I made sure to mask off anything that I think would generate heat, so I masked off every black chip I could find. I also masked off anything that looked suspicious – didn’t want to take any chances. And of course, I masked off all of the connectors.

After I was done, the board looked like this:

Now we are ready for the paint!

I took the 8k3a+ into the garage and got ready to paint, using a couple sheets of newspaper and an anti-static bag.

I started painting, giving it a good thick coat. I then waited the 5 minutes it took to dry and went over it another 5 times.

My heart was pounding before I assembled everything and was ready to hit the power button. I thought I had surely killed it in one of my sprees of stupidity – BEEP! – SUCCESS!

That was a relief! The mobo booted and I am now in Windows. “Woohooo!” I thought to myself, “It actually works!”

I have been running the board fine for the last 3 days.

The paint goes on clear, so here are shots with the UV CC’s on and off.

And a last finished pic!

I hope you all enjoyed it, and I await to see more of you mad modders out there try this new mod.

Thanks!

Guy AKA Starfox