Enthusiast paint PC. News at 11.
Enthusiast paint PC. News at 11.Ever get sick of the boring beige of PCs? This is especially so when you put together a PC from parts, as many a PC enthusiast will do. Few other home devices are such a neutered shade of colour. Most consumer electronics components are actually black. So why not PCs?
So I decided to paint one of mine.
Apologies in advance about all the pictures, how slow they load, yadda yadda. I did what I could to make 'em smaller in size, but I really didn't want to play with thumbnails; that kind of thing tends to annoy me when I know I'll want to look at all the pictures.
Before!
After!
It was a process. Like this story, I realized it would be better if all the bits to be painted were removed from the PC to be painted. This would minimize fiddly masking, and make it easier to be sure all the fiddly corners and crevices were painted. Another site, which I found after I did mine, also recommended removing things (like I did.) I actually did a test disassemble a few weeks beforehand to make sure I could get all the bits off I needed to. And also to make sure I knew how to get all the bits off!
I've been inside this thing many many times since I built it. And I'm so glad I paid extra for a
Macase case. Buying a brand name case instead of a no-name
case means all the metalwork lines up properly, and there are few or no sharp edges to bite knuckles.
This case is a Galaxy KA-K80, if you're interested.
This is a shot of the PC with the easy bits off: the case and the front. Although the case is held on by four screws, the front is held in place by 6 clips in the plastic. You can see one of the mounting points for a clip in the middle of left-hand side. I'll show a closeup of it later.
But although it was easy to pull the front off, it wouldn't work to paint the front while the floppy drive and the DVD-ROM drive were still sticking through in all their beige glory.
This is the floppy disk drive and the DVD-ROM drive dismantled far enough to get the plastic front off them. That means the face plates, the FDD door and the buttons. The spring on the FDD door and the lens of the lights were carefully put aside. Yes, the DVD-ROM drive is upside down.
I'm sure this would have been so much harder if the DVD-ROM weren't a slot-in drive, because then I would have had to remove and paint the tray. Unfortunately, the felt in the slot was attached to the face-plate and not the drive. This required some imaginative masking, as we shall see later.
The front of the PC, fully dismantled, just about ready to be painted.
I wasn't going to paint the power button, or the filter, of course. They were just there to show you I really did pull it all apart!
This is after 1 coat.
It should be mentioned at this point that I had never wielded a spray-paint can before this day. So it took me a little time to get a feel for how it works.
This particular PC case has a large, detachable base rather than dinky little feet. So it had to
get painted, too. The various drive front parts got painted at this point, as well.
Due to the afore-mentioned problem with the felt in the slot of the DVD-ROM drive, some creative masking
was required, as this picture shows.
The PC itself was quietly waiting whilst this was happening.
I couldn't forget the case itself!
I was originally in two minds about how much masking was necessary. Or if any masking was necessary. All things considered, the case had a number of "tongues" for mating with the case when it is put on which probably wouldn't appreciate a coat of paint. So I masked the edges.
Front pieces after a second, later coat.
Umm... it didn't really look that different, but, due to a second coat, this shot was taken rather later in the day so the lighting was different.
There we are... all painted and ready to go back on the PC. Well, after a few hours or so drying, of course.
Putting everything back together was basically a reversal of what it took to pull it all apart.
This is the floppy disk drive and the DVD-ROM drive as before, but the plastics bits are black now.
Getting there, getting there...!
The fiddly stuff is all done! The two drives are back together and in place, and the base has been re-attached. Now where's the front?
Adding the front. It's starting to look really good!
I mentinoed before that one of the many attractions to this case is the fact that the front easily clips on.
All done! And don't it look so classy...
And in a nice burst of irony, I noticed in a recent issue of APC, an ad for a company that sells black powder-coated PC cases!
And finally, you get to see what my little computer nook looks like.
Before!
After!
Magic, huh? Okay, okay, I know: big deal. And yes, that's a Xena calender on my noticeboard (did you even notice?).
Oh yes. If I didn't mention it, I'm sure someone will find a way to ask me...
This is the paint I used. It was not the cheapest in the store, but I felt more confident with this than with ordinary spray paint because it is clearly aimed at the craft-y people and therefore more likely to take to my PC and its plastic. I guessed it was an enamel paint because it didn't need anything fancier than turps to clean up overspray etc.
Yes, I used the whole can. :-)
