 Welcome to part two of how to change the color of your motherboard. It will be the epic conclusion and we don't actually know yet if it's going to be epic win or epic fail, but stay tuned with us as we try and figure out the best technique for removing the paint from the contacts and then test the board to see if it actually works because if it survives this mod, this is the board that's going to be going in my personal system. So I need it to actually be functional in order for me to be comfortable doing that. Wish me luck. Cooler Master's Case Mod World Series is your opportunity to show off your modding skills and win great prizes. Entries close February 7th, 2015. Click now to learn more. So this is the conclusion of our two-parter on motherboard painting and I'd like to both finish up the process, which some of you thought was done but actually had a lot more work left to do, and address some of the criticism in the comments from part one. So let's pick up where we left off just having removed the tape. The quality of the paint job is just not what I was hoping for. From a distance, it looks pretty good, but I was extremely disappointed that I had missed a couple of masking areas, leaving overspray on some motherboard components and even the PCB. Some viewers suggested a liquid masking material that peels off might be a good bet for next time, but given how much flak I'm taking for making this a two-part video because it took me two days, I figure if I spent another day fussing about with learning a new masking technique, y'all would be none too pleased. But I was at least happy to observe that with some rubbing alcohol and cotton buds, I was able to remove overspray from caps and even the PCB very quickly and effectively and... Oh, sometimes too effectively. I actually ended up making a total mess of this PCI Express lot just by rubbing up against it. Some ghetto painting followed that screw up. I didn't have a brush handy and I was trying to finish this in a timely manner, so the bazillion pack of cotton balls that Nick bought actually allowed me to cover the damaged spot. And even though the surface finish kind of sucks in that spot now, it's hard to notice unless you put your face right next to it. One thing that worked better than I expected for touch-ups was spraying a bit of paint onto a little metal poker and dabbing that onto key areas. I was able to fix up a lot of little areas where the masking was too close to a vertical surface to get good coverage, including the PCI Express slots, RAM slots, one of the USB 3 headers, and even the red accent on the VRM heatsink assembly, so basically everything. Now, a lot of folks asked why we used the paint material we did rather than Plasti Dip or at least priming it first. The reason we didn't prime is that I wanted to avoid any more material build-up than necessary on the slot contacts, and the reason for no Plasti Dip is that while it can be removed, which is convenient, when you scratch it, it has a thick, rubbery consistency that could have gummed up the slots and necessitated filling the PCIe, USB 3, SATA, and RAM slots with something to protect them, such as cardboard or dead components. But even I don't have dead DDR4 lying around, and while I do have cardboard, it would have made even paint coverage much more difficult, especially for slots that will be left empty in the finished system. We're not going for a two-tone color scheme here. So the reason we did it the way we did was that we wanted the paint to flake off easily from the contacts. This just makes me feel horrible inside. Okay. So we're gonna go ahead and repeatedly install and uninstall this. Why don't we do three per slot again just to, uh... Oh! It sounds just as bad. This idea clearly seemed idiotic to a lot of you, and honestly, I was on your side hearing the crunch of installing components into each slot for the first time. But I can assure you that some of the other ideas in the video comments, things like desoldering the slots to remove them, painting them, and re-soldering them, are much worse. I'm actually not aware of anyone ever successfully removing and replacing a PCIe slot, let alone a RAM slot on a modern lead-free solder board. And stop! Stop! Do not post the link, because even if someone has done one slot without breaking the board, they didn't do eight on a single board. So let's not treat that like a viable way to do this. I mean, while it's not perfect, our technique is one that has at least been successfully used before. Anyway, with three insertions in each slot behind us, we turned our attention to tearing down a test bench to fire up the board and find out if it works. At this stage, I had literally no idea if the board was going to work, and contrary to what some of you seem to think, that I don't care about the hardware and was just ruining a motherboard for fun, I was really, really worried. I had a dead Rampage 5 Extreme on my hands and genuinely wanted it to work. It's not like ASUS is going to send me a new one because I painted the one they gave me in the first place, but this channel is supposed to be about pushing the boundaries and doing crazy stuff that you wouldn't risk your own hardware to do on your own. So honestly, I think a lot of the crap about how this is an unnecessary project is horseshit. We're not about to stop ghetto modding and experimenting with this stuff because it's unnecessary. We don't consider it a waste of time and money to do something like this. Our monetary investment is like $4 in paint, and the time that we spend doing it is time we would have spent making a video anyway. So yeah, we risk losing the board, but that happens when you're trying new things, which is our job. And anyway, all the hate about how we killed the board should probably have waited until we actually found out whether the board was going to work or not. So we started logically with DimSlotA1, which spat out an error code, but at least managed to display some postcodes on the board. Then we followed up with DimSlotA2, which caused a reboot loop, even worse. And then, success! DimA3 posted, followed by DimA4, which also posted. So I expect retractions in the comments under part one from everyone who guaranteed the board was dead and called us stupid for basically turning it into garbage, which actually, no, I don't expect retractions. This is the internet. So anyway, a few more tense insertions in the first two slots later, and all four slots had successfully posted. Then it was time for the real acid test. Would the motherboard run all four slots in quad channel? And yes. So we took it to the next level and enabled XMP in the BIOS. Our first attempt at 2800 MHz did fail, but our second attempt at 3000 MHz, a higher frequency but more stable RAM divider on our board, succeeded. And we even managed to do some I264 stress testing in the OS to validate that the system was operating correctly. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention we checked in the BIOS to make sure our video card was running at PCIe 16x as well. So the board is fully functional. Take that, haters. Alright. So here we are. To be clear, guys, this project is not something I'd recommend. Like, seriously, we're having a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do moment here. Yes, it worked. The paint we ended up using covered extraordinarily well, given that we didn't use any primer, and the technique we used with some tweaks like better masking and maybe the use of a paintbrush for touch-ups delivered a great 10-foot mod and even a decent 5-foot mod. But there is no guarantee whatsoever that you'd have the same success. And for folks who pay $500 for their ROG motherboards, this is not something I'd be comfortable endorsing. With that said, I'm extremely pleased with the results, and I'm really looking forward to installing this board in my system for my X99 upgrade. I've been having a hard time finding the perfect board, since even the high-end stuff that we get to play with around here at the office either had deal-breaker features for me, like chipset fans, or little things like the wrong color scheme. So this solved my admittedly very first-world problem, and while I'm not sure if I'd do it again, I'm really glad that I did it this time. Speaking of things, you'll be very glad you did, today's episode sponsor is audible.com. And with over 150,000 audiobooks to choose from, including New York Times bestsellers, like All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Dewar, there's always something to listen to on audible. 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