[BL] Feronix goes ITX

This RAM looks so good that it's almost a shame to modify it... almost, but not quite!

The clips come off pretty easily. They're on firm enough not to fall off by accident, but if you pull them a little they snap off pretty quickly. Intentional or not - this is some modder friendly stuff.

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My go-to weapon of choice for computer hardware (and mainly this project).

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It's sometimes a bit difficult to work with, giving this 'frost' look the first few layers. Now, I happen to want this for this build, but make sure you give it enough time between layers to set down and become a little more smooth.

First layer:

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Now I'm letting that dry, time to measure the sticker sizes!

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Modifying the stickers in PhotoShop

Document settings:
(Always 300 resolution for printing jobs)

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Product shot with the rest of the dimm removed:

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Used the Magic Wand tool (uncheck 'Contagious', set Tolerance to 50) to select the yellow logo and then ctrl+J to copy it to a new layer. Then give the new layer the desired colour overlay, and also a 1 pixel stroke with 50% opacity.

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Then set the saturation way back on the base layer (or change the hue if you simply want to change the colour, I decided to make the background black & white).

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Pump out the contrast completely to get rid of the grey areas and turn them into either black or white (you can add multiple of these overlays to strengthen the effect). Also adding in some brightness.

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Lastly, I chose to set the exposure back a little. This did mean the white turned ever so slightly grey, but made the honeycomb pattern a lot more distinct.

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PSD Download:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/3kntv56no00zg96/Vengeance+Pro+Sticker.psd


Applying stickers

I printed out the stickers (well, as soon as I finally got that POS printer working :p).

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Figured I'd use the paper cutter, but the blade had gone completely blunt so I had to cut them out by hand. Some lines aren't 100% straight, but you can't tell unless you're very close. I'll still fix this at a later point though, as it annoys me knowing it's not perfect.

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The stock stickers came off surprisingly easily with some peeling. They went off in one go, it's a very satisfying feeling :D
It also needs to be said that these things still look drop-dead gorgeous all stripped down. Perfect for stealth builds.

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Didn't get that reflective look the stock ones have. I did think about printing them on glossy photo paper but 1) We were out of that, 2) This is a lot better with dust :lol:

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I keep taking pictures before I clean things... bad habit.
 
Wow, them rams sticks are totally transformed. Top job :D

Question: did you take a photo of the ram label or is it a google image?
I want to play around with this idea and also the sticker paper is just A4 sticker paper?

sorry for the questions
 
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Looks really nice, Nice work on the mod job

Thanks mate! Quite pleased with how they came out. Gonna have to get glossy photo paper and a proper papercutter to fix the stickers at some point though. Want them to have a bit more contrast and pop more :)

Wow, them rams sticks are totally transformed. Top job :D

Question: did you take a photo of the ram label or is it a google image?
I want to play around with this idea and also the sticker paper is just A4 sticker paper?

sorry for the questions

Thank you!

It was quite a high-res image I found on Google, only had to enlarge it by 2-3mm on both sides and PS does a really good job of filling in the pixels.

There's a PSD download under the last screenshot if you're interested! Yeah it's was a regular A4 sheet, but non-glossy. Be sure to take pics and show it on here ;)



Edit;

Had a play around in PhotoSoup and this happened.... interesting

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Looks amazing man. I wish I have the same skills when dealing with Photoshop.. I can see that you are putting a lot of effort to make sure this build will come out epic! hats off to you Feronix :) Keep us posted.

I will share this log on our FB page once you have finished the build!
 
Looks amazing man. I wish I have the same skills when dealing with Photoshop.. I can see that you are putting a lot of effort to make sure this build will come out epic! hats off to you Feronix :) Keep us posted.

I will share this log on our FB page once you have finished the build!

Thank you mate! And thanks again for the help :)

PhotoShop really isn't /that/ difficult once you get the hang of it, but then I've been doing it since 15. Still not 100% satisfied with the RAM stickers, so I'll redo those with the glossy paper and a papercutter hopefully soon. A lot of stuff still needs to happen tbh, but funds are always an issue so it might take another 2-3 months or so if I'm unlucky :lol:

Wow, that's awesome and would be a huge honour!
 
Great to see all of the progress you're making.

I like how you detailed each step on the Photoshop bit of the RAM mod.

Thank you! :)

Wanted to give others the opportunity to have a go at it themselves. Always handy for colour schemes that aren't red/blue/silver/gold :)

Update

Decided to mod my GPU! Only made the plans on a random boredom streak yesterday, so for me to now announce the card is already up and running I'm very proud. The guys in the Whatsapp group seemed to like the end result. Let me know if you want to see it too ;)

The videocard is an EVGA GTX 760 2GB SC. Great card so far, plays all the games that I want it to and it only cost me €160. Best card I ever bought for that money, although a tiny bit bland looking!

Also, it's not very silent in idle, so I'll probably perform a vbios mod sometime.

I'll start with Disassembling the card.

There she is in the system, not bad looking tbh. But also not great (same goes for the photo quality, sorry about that).

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Having taken her out of the system. The Bitfenix ITX cases are great, but their mounting for the GPU is a bit fiddly. Especially to get it back in...

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After around 2 minutes of pulling I finally got the GPU power cables out. Then I tilted the phone just a bit too much, so enjoy an upside-down PCB photo ;)

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That's going to take a small screwdriver set. Luckily I have one of those!

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The cooler is kept in place by five screws along the edge of the card. Don't forget to remove the fan cable before you pull it off.

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Quite a beefy heatsink for a reference 760. Not bad, EVGA. Because they were originally very short cards, the extended PCB on the right looks a bit bare.

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The shroud and fan come off in one go:

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From the back:
There are an additional 4 screws to remove the fan from the shroud. The two on the far left, and then two along the bottom of the shroud.

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There we go, looking a bit dusty. Good moment for some quick cleaning!

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And the empty shroud from the back:

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And the front:

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The back of the card looks fairly standard. DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI and a full-size Displayport out. Silver bracket though as always, ew ;)

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To remove the bracket you have to unscrew the stand-off like pins on both sides of both DVI ports. Luckily I had this handy tool for motherboard standoffs which worked perfectly.

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The bracket just pretty much falls off after unscrewing it.

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I wanted to make a pun about 'The GTX 760s naked ass', which would probably generate a lot of thread views :lol:

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All taped up nicely! This took me 25 minutes so you guys better appreciate it :p

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Ready for paint

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The bracket too

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Weapon of choice:
Plasti-dip doesn't work here as you'd pull it off with the masking tape. Also, this paint makes for a much more smooth surface. These cans cost €6 each and they've always been brilliant for me.
High-gloss white and matte black, here we go!

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Who wants to see the end result? ;)
 
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The luxury of the WhatsApp group, I know the result already :p
Guys it's awesome!

Why thank you :)

There we go then!

First out of three coats of white of the shroud:

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Bracket only took one coating on either sides, looks awesome in matte-black. Manufacturers should do this is standard imo.

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I couldn't be bothered taking pictures after every layer let us fast-forward to the end-results!

Beautiful matte-black PCI bracket came out nicely! Blowdried it for half an hour to make sure the paint was heat-resistant - which it is.

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Installed back onto the card!

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It makes the card look so much more high-end then it really is :p

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Right then, the white coating on the shroud looks nice, very smooth. Well done, me.

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No residue around the fan cut-out, so I can be sure it won't be touching anything.

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Hmmm, some paint creeped in under the tape because there's a 'ditch' on the middle. I CAN FIX THAT

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But let's remove the rest of the tape first :D

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Used some turpentine to remove the paint that shouldn't have been there in the first place. Man, this stuff is absolutely amazing.

That looks so much better!

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Time to assemble the card back now! Fan screwed back into the shroud, using the same 4 aforementioned screws.

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And now for the moment supreme! Installing the cooler back onto the card. Preeeetty proud of how it worked out! :)
















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And after fitting her back into the system, which was a bitch with the Bitfenix mounting, but hey, at least plugging the power connectors in was a LOT easier than taking them out :D

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Hope you enjoyed that guys, stay tuned for more stuff!
 
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Damn Rick, that GPU look so much better now vs the old look :O

Keep the update coming and you will make a old man happy :D
 
Wow This is amazing :P love the paint job on the GPU

Thank you!

Your first and only post is on my build - I'm honoured :)

Damn Rick, that GPU look so much better now vs the old look :O

Keep the update coming and you will make a old man happy :D

That probably sounded a little creepier than intended :lol:

Thanks though, and definitely still a lot of stuff coming your way!

Lovely work Rick, keep it up, you should def be chuffed with yourself on this one

Thank you mate, I honestly am pretty proud so far! It's not the best rig/mods around here but it's personal and I like it :)

Nice build and awesome paintjob and modding, I'm fond of this rig :)

Thank you very much, I am too!

Looks awesome, the matte black PCI bracket was a nice touch :)

Thanks mate ^_^ I honestly think these things should come stock on any videocard by now!
 
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