Computing and technology are plagued by rather curious urban myths and legends whose origins are hard to find. One of the most curious legends concerns a very subtle change in motherboards: the color. More specifically, with the arrival of first black PCBsit was said that these were and are best qualitybut, is it safe?
Surely many have not known the motherboards whose PCB was green or yellow, some were even blue. Currently, nothing surprises us anymore because we have seen all kinds of colors. Although black and white are the usual, we find them in gray, red or a combination of colors.
Are black motherboards better quality?
To do this, you have to go back many years, an era with processors with a maximum of four cores and graphics cards with compact heatsinks. So there wasn’t much fancy in the colors, they did exist three colors for the PCB. They were usually green and yellow, while Gigabyte used blue. Everything changed with ASUS.
You may not know it but Asus was the first manufacturer of motherboards to create a black circuit board. Specifically, this color it was exclusive to the high end the company. Today, it is a color that is easily found in any product line.
Of course, ASUS introduced this color for its high-end motherboards, so it’s associated with premium quality. Due to this specific fact, a black PCB is believed to be of higher quality than any other color.
We are sorry to tell you that this it’s a myth generated from a specific event. Really, the materials and manufacturing process of a motherboard, whatever the color of the PCB, It’s himself. He color it’s just simply aestheticvisual, does not affect the quality of the same.
We need to explain that this layer of the PCB can be any color or combination of colors. There superficial capacity all he does is protect copper tracks that connect the elements. It brings absolutely nothing else to the final product, beyond aesthetics. Therefore, we could have a purple, candy pink, or phosphorescent yellow motherboard.
But color influences one thing
What you probably don’t know is that copper traces are “printed” on a fiberglass PCB. Said base is always green, simply, it is the color that remains when the product is finished.
In fact, the green of the old motherboards (which can still be seen) is that of the fiberglass itself. What has been done is to cover the tracks with a resin which protects the copper tracks. This makes the green color, which is duller in untreated fiberglass, brighter.
Previously, transparent resin was used due to cost. Really, the color is just a shade of the transparent resin, the PCB is still green. This means that the color influences the price of the final product. You have to keep in mind that the pigmentations have different prices and the price of the final product ends up varying.
A black motherboard will always be more expensive than a green one, if they have the same components. The difference can be 1 euro, it’s not very big, but it exists.
