The real reason: So that the discarded pieces of electronics would camouflage themselves better in nature. The manufacturers were really forward-thinking on this one.
@@SikConVicTioN well aren’t you a ray of sunshine? Electrical Engineer at a satellite development and design sector of a fortune 50 company, but you keep seething at other people’s “success” I guess.
@@Dr.Spatula Ye, often the worst QoL problems are the ones which were so awful that those who came before us had no choice but to optimise away before we came around (:
Senior EE here: Short answer is, the soldermask color is an arbitrary choice for the most part. There's a few common colors that almost all board houses can do- green, red, blue, black, and white. Certain colors like yellow and purple may not be available at all board houses though. The actual FR4 core is usually a pale yellow. Some boards require a particular color for an application, or for industrial design reasons. Eg, a high powered LED board generally wants to be white so it reflects light. On the the other hand, a board with a CCD sensor generally wants to be black (if the PCB is exposed to the optical path) so that reflections off the board into the sensor are minimized. Often though, if there are no industrial design requirements, I will alternate between common colors (green, red, blue, purple, ..) for each revision so I can tell them apart at a glance.
When I worked for General Dynamics back in the 80's, the majority of circuit boards I worked on were a goldish tan, but blue was also common. Green was far more common in the civilian market.
Back in the 80s I was told a story of why mask was green by an industry sales rep for Soldermask. He said the CEO of DuPont had picked green from other equally effective options because it was the color of money. DuPont was one of the first soldermask manufactures and made 100s of millions on it.
will sub to this instead of main channel ,way too gimmicky & linus is some kind of pc narcissist. this guy has the look & vibe that u know he knows his tech stuff!🖥
"And green isn't as fatiguing as yellow or red tend to be." I knew the color was coming but I still couldn't prepare myself for it and visibly recoiled LOL.
Seeing Anthony on more videos is so nice. I find his way of educating me, as a plebe when it comes to dealing with computers, very good and his voice is calming at the same token. Always love watching vids with him!
Now I wanna see LTT do a video on growing a plant in a PC. If it's water cooled, the plant can get water from the reservoir and they would just top off the reservoir every once in a while
@@j.d.8593 I wonder what color are the motherboards in Dell computers. Three years ago, I bought my first Dell computer. It is an all-in-one microcomputer. I am blessed that mine lasted through over three straight years without hardware failure.
I've built boards with red, blue, yellow, black and green soldermask. I think the manufacturers buy green by the barrel and the other colors by the quart. Also, we have used different colors for different stages of development- red for first prototype, blue for second, etc. then green for production. But in 45 years of doing this, green is 99.5% of the boards I've done.
So much easier to QA these when humans can perceive different shades of green more than any other colour. Much easier to pick up delamination and internal FOD.
Even visual inspection is mostly done by machines these days, but using an easily filtered primary colour that is not commonly used for components is still an advantage.
@@Slader77 because supersonic bullets go faster than sound, so they reach the target before the sound does. Subsonic are slower than the speed of sound, therefore sound (bang from the weapon) comes before the bullet.
Military? Nope. You will never see a soldier carrying around a bare circuit board, unless he is a repair technician. Soldiers in the field have their electronics in ruggedized cases, so the board color does not matter.
I heard military circuit boards were coated with an antifungal compound that just happened to be green. In places like the jungles of the South Pacific, uncoated boards did not last.
@@raffriff42 NO.. THAT'S RIDICULOUS Because the military have a thing called MILSPEC (Military Specification) and it refers to HOW THEY PROTECT ELECTRONICS, and it has nothing to do with how they coat a board but instead... - They understand that the comms officer may need to be carrying a keyboard or some nature, maybe a mouse, the main computer in his SCAT PACK and he may need to slowly crawl through a river with all that on MEANING, THE COMPUTER MAY NEED TO BE SUBMERSED FOR A VERY LONG PERIOD OF TIME UNDERWATER - or they may be in a very dry environment, lots of sand, dirt etc, or very hot.. the tropics or very muddy or whatever... you get the idea MILSPEC Deals with how to protect the communication equipment under these conditions They don't give 2 fucks about the coating of the board because in a river that's not gonna mean shit. it's more to do with sealing the electronics while maintaing a reasonable cooling system , usually PASSIVE COOLING because who wants to be fucked worrying about a fan stopping and a CPU over heating while in battle and yes... THE HOUSING OF THESE COMPUTERS IS GENERALLY GREEN OR CAMMO the colour of the board or coating is not relevant
Brown PCBs are actually pretty rare for multi-layer applications, and even then they're still green on one side, not to mention they're easier to damage as they're made out of compressed epoxy-bonded paper (class II) as opposed to the epoxy-bonded fiberglass (class IV) that is commonly used in PC motherboards and graphics cards.
My first job is on a PCB manufacturing company. The boards arrive with the cores intact already and a layer of soft (electroless) copper on both sides. An insulator is placed above the copper, then it goes to a laser drilling CNC equipment to put holes in the insulator. Another layer of soft copper is then plated before it is covered by a dry film resist where the print pattern is then transferred to cover the parts that will be retained. It will then undergo electrolytic (hard) copper plating, etched (to remove unnecesarry copper), before going through the process again (depending on the number of layers). The green coating is what we call LPSR - Liquid Paste Solder Resist - it is there to protect the board as well as establish a layer where the pre-embedded solders - which we call bumps - are to be placed. The LPSR looks (and kinda smells) like paint. It has always been green during my time there (SBGA, FCBGA, etc) and I think the formulation of the solder resist has something to do with it as it arrives already with the green shade.
I still want to see a build where all components are treated to be water-proof, then the entire case is turned into an aquarium and they call it "watercooled". Would be fun, although probably quite hard.
sadly that freedom of chooice has since stopped. I hate black. I rather have the old green than black. - building a system thats not black & red these days is quite difficult. In those olden days MSI, asus, Gigabite, 3D0, they all used the full spectrum of colors for their printing cards.. Today there ofcourse is the occational white motherboard and white gpu.. but obtaining them is near impossible as well galax no longer sells in my country.. and that white asus or acer motherboard is also very limited in availability.. -> but it used to be that even the ramsticks and the soundcards came in the full color spectrum.. -> try today finding a m.2 or a wifi card.. thats not on a black pcb... near impossible.
@@karelkootjes4019 Yeah. I know what you mean. I really, really dont like white though. Circuit boards are beautiful and after more than 3 decades of looking at them, white just seems unnatural. Well not unnatural cos they aint natural things, but you know what I mean. Its not right. But I dont really care what colour they are. Function is what is important to me. I dont care for coloured parts or RGB or any of that fancy shmancy stuff. Performance, efficiency and longevity are my desires.
@@honestgoat I not care that much for lighting myself too.. But seeing the gold of pcbs on a white background.. is to me estaticly pleasing. I can live with the classic green.. but black.. to me feels "evil" especially with the red it is compared with.. and well I just don't like that dr doom colorsceme;) I tend to balance.. I do not care too much for all this lgb lighting.. I do fancy things like wood and glass.. I would gladly pay 500 euro more for a pc with the same specs if it looks just a bit better. If there are 2 gpu's 1 is 1600 euro and has a white pcb.. the other is 1500 euro.. has 2% better performance but a black pcb.. I likely pick the first one.. too bad the kind of look I aim for is out of fashion.. and while I do have looked into options like true custom made cases of wood.. and custom pcb remades the price of that is to much for me atm and it should not be that expensive just to want more colourchooice to start with. reliability and durability yes as a pc gamer for 3 decades now.. I know to pay extra for better parts.. especially a better motherboard, storage drive and cooling solution... with a much longer lifespan and much decreased failure rate. -> but ecc ram.. meh.. I aint doing THAT kind of speccific things that I will suffer the performance hit and pricehike. But when you had 1500 euro to spend on a pc in the 90s.. you could make it look splendid AND perform well.. today on a budget of 6000.. you already have to suffer putting parts in it you despise the look of because what you want does not excist or cannot realisticly be obtained.
80's the altiar 8080 with the S100 buss their boards were blue.we are talking main frame home computer. It had several boxes a small version of the IBM 360 or 370. Wow we came a long way the way we compute now.
Last ones I remember where the Intel 'reference designs' that they sold along with their chipsets, around the same time nvidia still made motherboard chipsets too..
@@yourmom-qf4oe No.. you just have to open your TV or DVD Player or blu Ray or Alarm clock or Iphone or Android Phone or pull out your cars control board or buy a network card or open a router basically they are everywhere
2:42 "far better to blend into the rest of their equipment and thus their environment than you know some shade of orange..." Autumn/fall: "Am I a joke to you?" Me hunting during autumn/fall: "Sniper go brrrrrrr on green people!"
the substrate, once etched: milky yellow (fr4 with uv block) white (Teflon content - high frequency) tan/brown phenolic paper the requirements of the engineering team determine the finish on top of the etched surface. Solder masking is either a dry film hot roll lamination or a liquid coating. both of these are photo image applications. The volume that green is sold in makes it often the least expensive. Thus is the default for many vendors. Other color options like red black blue purple may carry a subtle premium over green. Check with your vendor to see what they can offer.
I've always viewed green as a "neutral" color and like you said, it's not "offensive" to the eyes and retains that professional look. I think blue would have been just as acceptable, red looks too tacky and too much like a cheap toy.
@@martinkuliza Also the fact that combined with aluminium substrates like are often used in LED lamps, tracing tracks is pretty hard due to not being able to shine light trough the board and the white hiding smaller details behind it.
@@maxpower700 I've seen red video boards as far back as PCI. I seem to recall a TEKRAM or a TSENG red VLB board, but that was two decades ago, I could be mistaken.
I always thought that it’s a normal transformation during production. Back in Highschool a couple of decades ago, the boards we got had a earth/sand-ish brown tone. Then, we would project the circuits on it and the dip the board in a liquid to develop it. That’s the step when the unprojected areas became green while the other parts got a copper like tone. The lacquer we used to insulate the board was a clear one so the color didn’t change. It also helped preventing the board to react further with light.
That might have been how it was done a couple of decades ago, but it isn't how it's done now. A modern PCB manufacturing process (Minus the steps that don't affect the look of the PCB, like drilling and plating and such) goes like this: First, you get your fiberglass and copper. Then, you put photoresist on the board. Then, you project an inverse image of the traces onto the board. This removes the photoresist where you don't want it. Then, you dip the board in etchant. This removes the copper where the photoresist isn't protecting it. Then, you remove the rest of the photoresist and etchant. Then, you apply the green solder mask. At no point does the board look distinctly green until you apply the solder mask. Your substrate might have been dyed green or something.
The server and embedded market is full of green PCBs. No need for fancy flashy colors. Cost, practicality and reliability are the most important factors there (while I don't really think that non-greens are less reliable just because of the color ofc.)
@@fonkbadonk2957 Soldermask is purely cosmetic. Colors are selected by the company who designed the PCB most of the time. That said, some colors are harder to image than others. Soldermask is a photo imagible ink that requires UV light to print an image. Most colors aside from green will not hold features if they are smaller than 4 mils, takes more UV light which causes encroachment issues, your mask opening gets smaller and eventually may be on a component mounting point. Defects related to soldermask are cosmetic in nature, the board still functions as designed but doesn't look good, too thin, mask covers or encroachs onto pads, etc...
@@DBRONCOSfan Yes, most of the time color is purely cosmetic, but in some use cases soldermask color can also have technical reasons. For example LED boards will need white or black soldermask, depending on whether light need to be reflected or absorbt. Also the soldermask finish can be glossy or matt. Green solder mask, on the other hand, would distort the light from the LEDs.
@@j_a_e_r The PCB still functions in terms of electrical signals traveling along the inner layers and outer layers to there respective components, regardless of mask color. The PCB designer would select the mask color and type based on their intended use case. Different types of mask, matte (MP), gloss (BN), semi gloss (HFX), (Taiyo soldermask types) all have different properties that meet different industry standards.
AOI (automatic optical inspection) machines using red and blue light to shine from different angles and show height difference on 2d image, red pcbs was often confusing machines in reading the elevations on board. Also as old machine was based mostly on color identification you would need to recalibrate the machine if you were switching the color of the board. Today with 3D inspection it is not an big deal anymore yet again half the assembly lines in the world did not switch to 3D inspection yet, there for it cheaper both to produce green board and to assembly it later on :)
the brown boards are ultra cheap usually single sided boards made from paper and resin (FR-2/pertinax). Most other boards are yellowish, FR-4 made from glass fiber and resin
I'm kind of curious at what point in production they actually turn it green. I worked at a laminate manufacturer (they create the copper-coated boards, so when we shipped them out they were a yellow/brownish yellow core with copper completely covering one or both sides), so i never saw any green, but i know they would have ended up that way. Is that something that comes before or after the acid bathing to etch the circuits? Maybe LTT/Techquickie should do a video actually showing the full production process from start to finish on making a motherboard, if they could get the access to those manufacturing areas
Digital Equipment Corportation (once second largest computer manufacturer in world) had mixture of Green and tan boards. The tan board tended to be the less complex boards. For instance the Q-Bus extender cards provided a way to join 2 separate Q bus enclosures to create 1 logical Q-Bus so you could plug in many more cards). Those had limited on-board components but had traces because of need to get lines from the bus board to the rubbon cable connector. DEC alo had light green vs traditional darker green boards. BTW, for some reason, this video loops back continuously in case you set some switch and wondered if people would notice.
Truth be told, I kinda miss green-colored motherboards. It's such a traditional PCB color that psychologically makes me comfortable. I grew up with them, so it's like a "comfort blanket" to me. But that's just me. I have no dislike for non-green motherboards. I just miss the green ones.
I always remember that brownish yellow colour on everything in the 1990's, which are my earliest memories of computers. Other electronics I own from even earlier than then aren't green or yellow but plain brown (phenolic). I associate green with generic consumer electronics, but not so much with computers.
The real reason: Green is the natural color, so it was the first color, so it is the cheapest. I don’t agree on the part where you say green leads to fewer manufacturing errors and allows for more densely packed boards. The boards are manufactured and inspected before soldermask is applied, so the color has no effect in that. Also the color has no effect on how dense you can make a board, in fact solder mask color is not even considered when designing a PCB other than when choosing your color of silk screen.
I agree on some. I've never heard of dimensional tolerance changing with color. As for "easier to inspect" I don't think he's referring to PCB fab, but rather post populating and reflowing.
@@iNowHateAtSigns I mean yea green would be easier to inspect by hand because it’s a lighter shade but it’s not really that big of a deal. I don’t think that plays into any part of why pcbs are mostly green
for years many pc builder tech tubers (I remember a guy reviewing a prebuilt pc and scoff at the green pcb of the gpu) have been equaling green pcb = cheapness, finally anthony make a video about green pcb. It's just color. It doesn't reflect if something is cheap.
I used to work at a place that made circuit boards. There reason was because of the solder mask. They would say they would always try to suggest green when selling PCB's to companies because for them it was just one less step of making the boards.
"People showing off their mobos is recent" Me: Since I was a kid a use to take things a apart and never put them back together just to see how they tick 😂
That explains why, in Little Big Planet when i was little, using the logic circuits and squencers, i would prefer some shade of green, over using red, or blue. -it really did make it easier to see, and less eye-straining. i used different colors to glance-differentiate from other projects/pieces i was working on. it's weird, but like...a faded-magenta color was also good for it.
That's the legend I've been told. We forget that SMOBC (solder mask over bare copper) was a major evolutionary step in board construction. I have seen green, blue, red, black, white, and yellow mask on boards.
Green is the most common because it cost less. I have seen Red, Black, Blue circuit boards also but the green mask is most common and because it is the most common it is the least expensive which makes it the default choice unless the company is trying to stand out and willing to pay more to do it.
Prettiest board is a tossup between white and clear/copper. White is so easy to visually inspect for missing components as the pads themselves are whitish in color and most components are black/non-white. Copper/clear soldermask is aesthetically pleasing to if you have wide parallel busses on the board.
I literally searched this exact question on google yesterday lmao. I thought UA-cam recommended this video to me based on my search history... until I saw it was uploaded 2 hours ago.
Interesting! Also fascinating to me that most Americans drop the “L” in the word “solder”. That doesn’t happen pretty much anywhere else in the world. Great channel! Craig - Australia
Been doing this for over 30 years. Green is cheap, everyone uses this color so there isn’t a surcharge or lead time. Some companies I’ve worked for use different colors for prototypes or special board material (I.e. poly) to differentiate.
I feel like He shines way More in videos where he is on his own then in the videos with linus. First video i saw Where hes alone and man, i really enjoy this.
It is just about the solder mask, you named it. There have been all types of colours for PCBs like blue, brown, red, green and black. Even though green might be easier for the eyes i wouldn't consider it the reason for why PCBs are green, differently coloured PCBs have been around for ages now.
I'm old school, I like my PCB's green. I have a deep appreciation for the older PCB's that had hand drawn traces because CAD software wasn't accessible to everyone. Those curved lines look impressive af.
Lies. I'm colorblind and can see they're green. Now if the circuitry was red, THEN it'd be a problem. But you're acting like colorblindness is the inability to see a color (this is incredibly rare) rather than the inability to distinguish between them. Proptanopan here.
Someone told me there's a community of people who use old computer cases as self-contained groweries for tiny cannabis plants, complete with fans and LEDs on timers. Pretty cool.
Same reason why most interstate highways use white on green background signage for directional signs: combination of high contrast and increased viewing distance and reduced eye strain and glare.
The real reason:
So that the discarded pieces of electronics would camouflage themselves better in nature. The manufacturers were really forward-thinking on this one.
sup nordie
Tää
@@particely Hei
@@hdhwkq what?????? omg
@@Mertiq what
Short answer: green is easy for eyes, and provides good contrast for copper wires
thanks, FBI.
Νever trust the FBI! :)))
I thought a 4 minute video was already quite short, but you were even more concise.
So that’s what a government agency like you does? Very nice!
Thanks
But I'm here for Anthony 😅
I’m an engineer staring at PCBs all day and never put two and two together with the eye strain thing. Thanks for the knowledge bite!
''huh, I've never noticed that''
PCB manufacturers: ''you're welcome''
You must be the sanitation engineer at a computer company
@@SikConVicTioN well aren’t you a ray of sunshine? Electrical Engineer at a satellite development and design sector of a fortune 50 company, but you keep seething at other people’s “success” I guess.
@@Dr.Spatula Ye, often the worst QoL problems are the ones which were so awful that those who came before us had no choice but to optimise away before we came around (:
@@WhompingWalrus often the worst ones were ones that killed hundreds if not thousands before governing bodies had to be created. Like black lung
Senior EE here: Short answer is, the soldermask color is an arbitrary choice for the most part. There's a few common colors that almost all board houses can do- green, red, blue, black, and white. Certain colors like yellow and purple may not be available at all board houses though. The actual FR4 core is usually a pale yellow.
Some boards require a particular color for an application, or for industrial design reasons. Eg, a high powered LED board generally wants to be white so it reflects light. On the the other hand, a board with a CCD sensor generally wants to be black (if the PCB is exposed to the optical path) so that reflections off the board into the sensor are minimized.
Often though, if there are no industrial design requirements, I will alternate between common colors (green, red, blue, purple, ..) for each revision so I can tell them apart at a glance.
Thanks, very informative
As a fellow Senior Eastern European I thank you for your very informative post,.
nice data about ccd's (cmos)
As a fellow senior East Ender, I too have an abundance of chest hair
TO EVERYONE IN THIS CHAT:
*THE JUDGEMENT OF GOD IS DRAWING NIGH.*
REPENT TODAY AND GIVE YOUR LIFE TO JESUS TO ESCAPE ETERNAL DAMNATION!,
When I worked for General Dynamics back in the 80's, the majority of circuit boards I worked on were a goldish tan, but blue was also common. Green was far more common in the civilian market.
I've seen a lot of that fuggly yellowish-tan in civilian stuff from the late 80s
Ive seen sort of what your talking about in furnaces.
Dude that is a sick job ngl
Yep all our old industrial machines have this disgusting yellow and some are blue
Phenolic PCBs are the cheapest option and are brown because of the material. They get clear or no mask for cost as well.
"Why motherboard's are green"
We can use them as artificial Grass Carpet in 2077
Just when you thought stepping on LEGOs was bad; imagine a bunch if soldered spikes like tiny beds of nails.
@Tom Simons ᨆ how haven't you been banned already for spam?
@@randomplayer6461 it reappears after you report it for spam. Best you can do is completely ignore it, hopefully the trend will eventually die.
@@scottieapplseed stepping on heatsinks are the worst 💀
@@Rainbow__cookie 🙅
Back in the 80s I was told a story of why mask was green by an industry sales rep for Soldermask. He said the CEO of DuPont had picked green from other equally effective options because it was the color of money. DuPont was one of the first soldermask manufactures and made 100s of millions on it.
This is the real answer. It was a very boring reason like this haha!
From brown bakelite to green fiber something. There are still some white circuit boards out there.
I've heard a very similar story about the color of PCB's.
Nice pfp I like it
DuPont is the GOAT - I used to make flex PCBs and dealt with many of their products.
I was literally thinking about this yesterday. Anthony's more powerful than I realized
By far my favorite videos to see are the ones with Anthony hosting.
Anthony knows all and sees all
Anthony's kinda like a god, except real.
Me too lol
Anthony is god Tier, its a well known fact!
Anthony's voice is really relaxing, I could listen to his storytelling all day.
This guy has been the best add to the team in a while. I remember when he started he was so shy . :D
Oh, right! I was going to comment on that. Definitely best host they have in there.
will sub to this instead of main channel ,way too gimmicky & linus is some kind of pc narcissist. this guy has the look & vibe that u know he knows his tech stuff!🖥
@@daniel3231995 Linus is a narcist ?
Have you seen Rilley ???
@@gradientO huh>?
"good luck finding a green motherboard now"
me: looks at my pc
WiFi module.
Dead ram module
Dang, I feel old.
My main rig is a Dell Precision R5500 - also a green board lol
@@davidflorey **angry GN noises from the background**
"And green isn't as fatiguing as yellow or red tend to be." I knew the color was coming but I still couldn't prepare myself for it and visibly recoiled LOL.
Yes, that hurt my eyes.
Ever since Cyberpunk 2077 first got delayed, that shade of yellow gives me PTSD.
I remember the ugly brown boards and have seen some blue bords that look really nice
Do not forget the odd dirty yellow ones, I miss the Red one's a lot as well as the blue ones.
Bords
Yeah I remember those brown boards inside of VCRs and cassette players because you could always see inside the tape deck when it was opened.
I still have somewhere in the shed a yellow/brown mb and a red MSI gpu...
Hercules had blue PCBs as a sort of signature thing.
Seeing Anthony on more videos is so nice. I find his way of educating me, as a plebe when it comes to dealing with computers, very good and his voice is calming at the same token. Always love watching vids with him!
I think classic green circuit boards are very aesthetically pleasing. I hope the prominence of the green never actually goes away.
Me: trying to sleep
Anthony: why are circuit boards green?
Because reasons
I don't need sleep , i need answers
Now I wanna see LTT do a video on growing a plant in a PC. If it's water cooled, the plant can get water from the reservoir and they would just top off the reservoir every once in a while
That would mean humidity. That would mean corrosion. We're also going to have to wonder how you're getting water out of the res and to the plant...
@@DxBlack now convert this humidity back to water and fill up the reservoir again
@@sgt-wd Infinite water!
This comment is going to get (k) likes
@@DxBlack you can coat everything the same way you do for immersion cooling/waterproofing circuits.
"Good luck finding a green motherboard these days"
*Looks at Dell prebuilt* oh no
My dell prebuilt has blue montherboard but isn't very "high quality"
*looks at $2000 Alienware prebuilt online* My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined
Funny enough most Dell prebuilts mb's are blue
@@j.d.8593 yeah mine is
@@j.d.8593 I wonder what color are the motherboards in Dell computers. Three years ago, I bought my first Dell computer. It is an all-in-one microcomputer. I am blessed that mine lasted through over three straight years without hardware failure.
I've built boards with red, blue, yellow, black and green soldermask. I think the manufacturers buy green by the barrel and the other colors by the quart. Also, we have used different colors for different stages of development- red for first prototype, blue for second, etc. then green for production. But in 45 years of doing this, green is 99.5% of the boards I've done.
@1:12 I'm more used to brown colour, since I thinkered with homemade PCBs back when I was young.
So much easier to QA these when humans can perceive different shades of green more than any other colour. Much easier to pick up delamination and internal FOD.
Even visual inspection is mostly done by machines these days, but using an easily filtered primary colour that is not commonly used for components is still an advantage.
@@chrisward000 very true! I also think a lot of manufacturers won't see the point of changing colour based on legacy alone
"good luck finding a green motherboard now"
me: hold my raspberry pie
2:45 Finally someone get this right.
First comes the bullet, then the boom 👏
Good job to whoever did this.
Only for supersonic rounds tho.
@@razaelll yeah that's right 👍🏻
@@razaelll why is that?
@@Slader77 It's literally in the name bro
@@Slader77 because supersonic bullets go faster than sound, so they reach the target before the sound does. Subsonic are slower than the speed of sound, therefore sound (bang from the weapon) comes before the bullet.
dont u just love this guy he is so happy all the time and so insiteful
Never knew I needed a terrarium computer case. Until now.
I miss that super old brown that they used to be lol
Good point. I remember old PCB’s in old radios and TV’s
Looks 💩
then wait until noctua start making motherboards
It screams Retro. I like it too.
Power supply boards are usually beige. I think that's about as close as you'll get these days.
Military? Nope. You will never see a soldier carrying around a bare circuit board, unless he is a repair technician. Soldiers in the field have their electronics in ruggedized cases, so the board color does not matter.
Yeah grunts are not trusted with fragile parts of any kind on any tool they might use.
I heard military circuit boards were coated with an antifungal compound that just happened to be green. In places like the jungles of the South Pacific, uncoated boards did not last.
Also, there are different environments - green camo in a desert stands out, FOR SOME REASON.
@@raffriff42
NO.. THAT'S RIDICULOUS
Because the military have a thing called MILSPEC (Military Specification)
and it refers to HOW THEY PROTECT ELECTRONICS, and it has nothing to do with how they coat a board but instead...
- They understand that the comms officer may need to be carrying a keyboard or some nature, maybe a mouse, the main computer in his SCAT PACK and he may need to slowly crawl through a river with all that on
MEANING, THE COMPUTER MAY NEED TO BE SUBMERSED FOR A VERY LONG PERIOD OF TIME UNDERWATER
- or they may be in a very dry environment, lots of sand, dirt etc, or very hot.. the tropics or very muddy or whatever... you get the idea
MILSPEC Deals with how to protect the communication equipment under these conditions
They don't give 2 fucks about the coating of the board because in a river that's not gonna mean shit.
it's more to do with sealing the electronics while maintaing a reasonable cooling system , usually PASSIVE COOLING because who wants to be fucked worrying about a fan stopping and a CPU over heating while in battle
and yes... THE HOUSING OF THESE COMPUTERS IS GENERALLY GREEN OR CAMMO
the colour of the board or coating is not relevant
@@martinkuliza I was thinking of WWII & Vietnam era stuff. What you say does make sense.
Brown pcbs would be good in a noctua themed PC
Or sewer themed builds
Brown PCBs are actually pretty rare for multi-layer applications, and even then they're still green on one side, not to mention they're easier to damage as they're made out of compressed epoxy-bonded paper (class II) as opposed to the epoxy-bonded fiberglass (class IV) that is commonly used in PC motherboards and graphics cards.
Hey @LinusTech, how about hydrodipping a motherboard? I mean, you've got the tools already after the gfx dip!
This video just serves to cement my theory that Anthony can make literally anything interesting
My first job is on a PCB manufacturing company. The boards arrive with the cores intact already and a layer of soft (electroless) copper on both sides. An insulator is placed above the copper, then it goes to a laser drilling CNC equipment to put holes in the insulator. Another layer of soft copper is then plated before it is covered by a dry film resist where the print pattern is then transferred to cover the parts that will be retained. It will then undergo electrolytic (hard) copper plating, etched (to remove unnecesarry copper), before going through the process again (depending on the number of layers).
The green coating is what we call LPSR - Liquid Paste Solder Resist - it is there to protect the board as well as establish a layer where the pre-embedded solders - which we call bumps - are to be placed. The LPSR looks (and kinda smells) like paint. It has always been green during my time there (SBGA, FCBGA, etc) and I think the formulation of the solder resist has something to do with it as it arrives already with the green shade.
3:15 huh oh... Now you guys HAVE to make an eco friendly pc with NO FANS and only plants lol
Cooling via capillary action through the plant chutes.
I still want to see a build where all components are treated to be water-proof, then the entire case is turned into an aquarium and they call it "watercooled". Would be fun, although probably quite hard.
@@peperoni_pepino "fish" cooled :)
"If you're talking about motherboards, good luck finding a green one anymore."
*supermicro entered the chat*
ASRock has enter the chat
@@tonyman1106 mine is blue :(
*Dell Prebuilt has entered the chat*
@@kyria_kous like what?
Oh if I could only afford a supermicro and its ECC-RAM glory.
I remember plenty of brown boards. I'm old...
Mine still works and great for modern games somehow DDR3 before you ask though not sure how rare brown boards are for that
Me too.
I remember a lot of brown boards for prototyping but I am not sure how trusty my memory is.
I love that Anthony doesn't have extra crap in the video just to make it longer. It reminds me of LockPickingLawyer videos in a good way.
Very interesting. Thanks for doing in depth research and finding multiple reasons and benefits for green. Also very pleasant use of your voice!
I remember when ECS started making blue and red MB's in the 90's. It was the coolest thing back then.
sadly that freedom of chooice has since stopped.
I hate black.
I rather have the old green than black.
-
building a system thats not black & red these days is quite difficult.
In those olden days MSI, asus, Gigabite, 3D0, they all used the full spectrum of colors for their printing cards..
Today there ofcourse is the occational white motherboard and white gpu.. but obtaining them is near impossible as well galax no longer sells in my country.. and that white asus or acer motherboard is also very limited in availability..
-> but it used to be that even the ramsticks and the soundcards came in the full color spectrum..
-> try today finding a m.2 or a wifi card.. thats not on a black pcb... near impossible.
@@karelkootjes4019 Yeah. I know what you mean. I really, really dont like white though. Circuit boards are beautiful and after more than 3 decades of looking at them, white just seems unnatural. Well not unnatural cos they aint natural things, but you know what I mean. Its not right.
But I dont really care what colour they are. Function is what is important to me. I dont care for coloured parts or RGB or any of that fancy shmancy stuff.
Performance, efficiency and longevity are my desires.
@@honestgoat I not care that much for lighting myself too..
But seeing the gold of pcbs on a white background.. is to me estaticly pleasing.
I can live with the classic green..
but black.. to me feels "evil" especially with the red it is compared with.. and well I just don't like that dr doom colorsceme;)
I tend to balance..
I do not care too much for all this lgb lighting.. I do fancy things like wood and glass.. I would gladly pay 500 euro more for a pc with the same specs if it looks just a bit better.
If there are 2 gpu's 1 is 1600 euro and has a white pcb.. the other is 1500 euro.. has 2% better performance but a black pcb.. I likely pick the first one..
too bad the kind of look I aim for is out of fashion.. and while I do have looked into options like true custom made cases of wood.. and custom pcb remades the price of that is to much for me atm and it should not be that expensive just to want more colourchooice to start with.
reliability and durability yes as a pc gamer for 3 decades now.. I know to pay extra for better parts.. especially a better motherboard, storage drive and cooling solution... with a much longer lifespan and much decreased failure rate.
-> but ecc ram.. meh.. I aint doing THAT kind of speccific things that I will suffer the performance hit and pricehike.
But when you had 1500 euro to spend on a pc in the 90s.. you could make it look splendid AND perform well..
today on a budget of 6000.. you already have to suffer putting parts in it you despise the look of because what you want does not excist or cannot realisticly be obtained.
80's the altiar 8080 with the S100 buss their boards were blue.we are talking main frame home computer. It had several boxes a small version of the IBM 360 or 370. Wow we came a long way the way we compute now.
After white then came a light green.
King Anthony, the only thing still keeping me subbed to LTT these days.
P.S. Please give Anthony a pay raise. ❤️.
if every time Anthony gets a pay raise when someone in comments says so, he would be richer than Elon Musk.
He will only spend it on donuts
"good luck finding a green motherboard nowadays"
challenge accepted
All I have to do is carefully paint it green
Last ones I remember where the Intel 'reference designs' that they sold along with their chipsets, around the same time nvidia still made motherboard chipsets too..
@@yourmom-qf4oe
No.. you just have to open your TV or DVD Player or blu Ray or Alarm clock or Iphone or Android Phone or pull out your cars control board
or buy a network card or open a router
basically they are everywhere
Supermicro. There, hunt is over
2:42 "far better to blend into the rest of their equipment and thus their environment than you know some shade of orange..."
Autumn/fall: "Am I a joke to you?"
Me hunting during autumn/fall: "Sniper go brrrrrrr on green people!"
the substrate, once etched:
milky yellow (fr4 with uv block)
white (Teflon content - high frequency)
tan/brown phenolic paper
the requirements of the engineering team determine the finish on top of the etched surface.
Solder masking is either a dry film hot roll lamination or a liquid coating. both of these are photo image applications.
The volume that green is sold in makes it often the least expensive. Thus is the default for many vendors.
Other color options like red black blue purple may carry a subtle premium over green. Check with your vendor to see what they can offer.
I've always viewed green as a "neutral" color and like you said, it's not "offensive" to the eyes and retains that professional look. I think blue would have been just as acceptable, red looks too tacky and too much like a cheap toy.
and white looks like someone is trying to hard to look like a cool manufacturer
Meh, alot of pcbs where red a copule years ago. Especially addon cards. Gpu, usb, sound etc
@@martinkuliza Also the fact that combined with aluminium substrates like are often used in LED lamps, tracing tracks is pretty hard due to not being able to shine light trough the board and the white hiding smaller details behind it.
@@maxpower700 I've seen red video boards as far back as PCI. I seem to recall a TEKRAM or a TSENG red VLB board, but that was two decades ago, I could be mistaken.
I think of green as a neutral color too, but I'm colorblind. Hey, are you colorblind?
I always thought that it’s a normal transformation during production.
Back in Highschool a couple of decades ago, the boards we got had a earth/sand-ish brown tone. Then, we would project the circuits on it and the dip the board in a liquid to develop it. That’s the step when the unprojected areas became green while the other parts got a copper like tone. The lacquer we used to insulate the board was a clear one so the color didn’t change. It also helped preventing the board to react further with light.
That might have been how it was done a couple of decades ago, but it isn't how it's done now. A modern PCB manufacturing process (Minus the steps that don't affect the look of the PCB, like drilling and plating and such) goes like this: First, you get your fiberglass and copper. Then, you put photoresist on the board. Then, you project an inverse image of the traces onto the board. This removes the photoresist where you don't want it. Then, you dip the board in etchant. This removes the copper where the photoresist isn't protecting it. Then, you remove the rest of the photoresist and etchant. Then, you apply the green solder mask. At no point does the board look distinctly green until you apply the solder mask.
Your substrate might have been dyed green or something.
"Good luck even finding a green motherboard today" - I just bought one - "Supermicro H11DSI Dual AMD EPYC 7000 EATX Gigabit Server Motherboard"
The server and embedded market is full of green PCBs. No need for fancy flashy colors. Cost, practicality and reliability are the most important factors there (while I don't really think that non-greens are less reliable just because of the color ofc.)
@@fonkbadonk2957 Soldermask is purely cosmetic. Colors are selected by the company who designed the PCB most of the time. That said, some colors are harder to image than others. Soldermask is a photo imagible ink that requires UV light to print an image. Most colors aside from green will not hold features if they are smaller than 4 mils, takes more UV light which causes encroachment issues, your mask opening gets smaller and eventually may be on a component mounting point. Defects related to soldermask are cosmetic in nature, the board still functions as designed but doesn't look good, too thin, mask covers or encroachs onto pads, etc...
@@DBRONCOSfan Yes, most of the time color is purely cosmetic, but in some use cases soldermask color can also have technical reasons. For example LED boards will need white or black soldermask, depending on whether light need to be reflected or absorbt. Also the soldermask finish can be glossy or matt. Green solder mask, on the other hand, would distort the light from the LEDs.
@@j_a_e_r The PCB still functions in terms of electrical signals traveling along the inner layers and outer layers to there respective components, regardless of mask color. The PCB designer would select the mask color and type based on their intended use case. Different types of mask, matte (MP), gloss (BN), semi gloss (HFX), (Taiyo soldermask types) all have different properties that meet different industry standards.
@@DBRONCOSfan Sure, I'm talking more about IMS PCBs where the only function is LED lighting.
AOI (automatic optical inspection) machines using red and blue light to shine from different angles and show height difference on 2d image, red pcbs was often confusing machines in reading the elevations on board.
Also as old machine was based mostly on color identification you would need to recalibrate the machine if you were switching the color of the board.
Today with 3D inspection it is not an big deal anymore yet again half the assembly lines in the world did not switch to 3D inspection yet, there for it cheaper both to produce green board and to assembly it later on :)
I personally like the look of Navy/Blue PCBs as it just feels like a more low-key colour and doesn't scream as much as the Green PCBs.
You're the man Anthony! You should do radio-podcasts on tech-news or tech-stories and such.
Remember when they were yellowish-brown? Those are the real g'old days.
A nice puke color
Peanut butter?
Some still are... Really cheap low end very simple boards still are at times. Lowers manufacturing cost for the rare times they can get away with it.
I'm not sure if you're trying to imply that you viewed that color as gold or not.
the brown boards are ultra cheap usually single sided boards made from paper and resin (FR-2/pertinax). Most other boards are yellowish, FR-4 made from glass fiber and resin
I'm kind of curious at what point in production they actually turn it green. I worked at a laminate manufacturer (they create the copper-coated boards, so when we shipped them out they were a yellow/brownish yellow core with copper completely covering one or both sides), so i never saw any green, but i know they would have ended up that way. Is that something that comes before or after the acid bathing to etch the circuits? Maybe LTT/Techquickie should do a video actually showing the full production process from start to finish on making a motherboard, if they could get the access to those manufacturing areas
I figured as much. I knew green was easier to look at from learning about the many blunders of the Virtual Boy.
Digital Equipment Corportation (once second largest computer manufacturer in world) had mixture of Green and tan boards. The tan board tended to be the less complex boards. For instance the Q-Bus extender cards provided a way to join 2 separate Q bus enclosures to create 1 logical Q-Bus so you could plug in many more cards). Those had limited on-board components but had traces because of need to get lines from the bus board to the rubbon cable connector. DEC alo had light green vs traditional darker green boards.
BTW, for some reason, this video loops back continuously in case you set some switch and wondered if people would notice.
Truth be told, I kinda miss green-colored motherboards. It's such a traditional PCB color that psychologically makes me comfortable. I grew up with them, so it's like a "comfort blanket" to me.
But that's just me. I have no dislike for non-green motherboards. I just miss the green ones.
can always buy yourself a server board, they still green
I always remember that brownish yellow colour on everything in the 1990's, which are my earliest memories of computers. Other electronics I own from even earlier than then aren't green or yellow but plain brown (phenolic). I associate green with generic consumer electronics, but not so much with computers.
The real reason: Green is the natural color, so it was the first color, so it is the cheapest.
I don’t agree on the part where you say green leads to fewer manufacturing errors and allows for more densely packed boards. The boards are manufactured and inspected before soldermask is applied, so the color has no effect in that. Also the color has no effect on how dense you can make a board, in fact solder mask color is not even considered when designing a PCB other than when choosing your color of silk screen.
I agree on some. I've never heard of dimensional tolerance changing with color. As for "easier to inspect" I don't think he's referring to PCB fab, but rather post populating and reflowing.
@@iNowHateAtSigns I mean yea green would be easier to inspect by hand because it’s a lighter shade but it’s not really that big of a deal. I don’t think that plays into any part of why pcbs are mostly green
I miss this man
its her.
its emily young now.
@@adamricecracker7128it's a he. He's a man and will always be no matter how many body parts he cuts / adds on or off of him.
*woman. LOL
for years many pc builder tech tubers (I remember a guy reviewing a prebuilt pc and scoff at the green pcb of the gpu) have been equaling green pcb = cheapness, finally anthony make a video about green pcb. It's just color. It doesn't reflect if something is cheap.
I used to work at a place that made circuit boards. There reason was because of the solder mask. They would say they would always try to suggest green when selling PCB's to companies because for them it was just one less step of making the boards.
I always wondered this but never asked 😜
Same man
Weird but ok
@@vidpetrovic8907 weird
You were the first comment, yet you didn't comment "First", that takes a lot of will power
I never thought about it since I saw a lot of blue and light brown ones too
Why aren’t we talking about red motherboards that HP used in some of their OEM systems?
Some 15 years ago, red was MSI's default PCB color. PC-Chips and Biostar also used it for some boards.
Gigabyte and ASRock used Blue, ECS used Purple, and Asus used Yellow.
@Tom Simons ᨆ so sad
Just saw a red motherboard in asus tuf laptop
I assumed red PC boards were products of the red Chinese.
Whit pcb's are pretty good looking. Galax HOF for example
Anthony Young:" Why Are Circuit Boards Green?" 🤔
Alien Old: 😌
The electronics engineer community is developing great sarcasm over time. I'm lovin' it...
-A proud EC engineer
It makes sense that the colours we can stand the longest, are the dominant planet Earth colours
"People showing off their mobos is recent"
Me: Since I was a kid a use to take things a apart and never put them back together just to see how they tick 😂
That explains why, in Little Big Planet when i was little, using the logic circuits and squencers, i would prefer some shade of green, over using red, or blue.
-it really did make it easier to see, and less eye-straining.
i used different colors to glance-differentiate from other projects/pieces i was working on.
it's weird, but like...a faded-magenta color was also good for it.
At 0:25 its so ironic. The sign, her shirt.
I love all the videos that Anthony is included in. He is so knowledgeable and his voice is just great so calming and reassuring. Good work Anthony
Any time I see Anthony on a video, it lifts my spirit. Just such a nice dude.
Lesson 1 : The US Military really loves *Green.*
That's the legend I've been told. We forget that SMOBC (solder mask over bare copper) was a major evolutionary step in board construction.
I have seen green, blue, red, black, white, and yellow mask on boards.
Rip Anthony
Did he really passed away? I've seen no vids with Anthony anymore
@@mrkitty777 He Chris tyson'd himself
Green is the most common because it cost less. I have seen Red, Black, Blue circuit boards also but the green mask is most common and because it is the most common it is the least expensive which makes it the default choice unless the company is trying to stand out and willing to pay more to do it.
Prettiest board is a tossup between white and clear/copper.
White is so easy to visually inspect for missing components as the pads themselves are whitish in color and most components are black/non-white.
Copper/clear soldermask is aesthetically pleasing to if you have wide parallel busses on the board.
Anthony gets so excited when he shares random knowledge like this. It's awesome to see.
I was there when this topic got added to the list of things to do.
I literally searched this exact question on google yesterday lmao. I thought UA-cam recommended this video to me based on my search history... until I saw it was uploaded 2 hours ago.
Interesting! Also fascinating to me that most Americans drop the “L” in the word “solder”. That doesn’t happen pretty much anywhere else in the world. Great channel! Craig - Australia
Yes, but WHY drop the L? For some reason it really irks me.
You can even buy customized versions of pcb, print any color or drawings you want in the pcb
I remember during the 90's when they were all orange/brown. Great times.
Been doing this for over 30 years. Green is cheap, everyone uses this color so there isn’t a surcharge or lead time. Some companies I’ve worked for use different colors for prototypes or special board material (I.e. poly) to differentiate.
0:46 you completely missed the opportunity to plug ShortCircuit in there
Bros Jawline is parabolic 😭
>does he KNOW?
1:53 thank you for the flashbang dang-it!
Thanks, now I know that I really want a white PCB!
I always thought it was to do with the UV etching when you draw out boards as well as the soldermask.
Nope. During etching the pcb is light brown. The layer after that is a green stain so to speak.
Can this dude work out so he doesnt have a heart attack and keep making videos? Cool thanks.
I feel like He shines way More in videos where he is on his own then in the videos with linus.
First video i saw Where hes alone and man, i really enjoy this.
A question I never asked, never needed answered, but am so much happier I know. Thank you for such a well explained video.
It is just about the solder mask, you named it.
There have been all types of colours for PCBs like blue, brown, red, green and black.
Even though green might be easier for the eyes i wouldn't consider it the reason for why PCBs are green, differently coloured PCBs have been around for ages now.
Bro built like Gorlock the Destroyer 💯
I'm old school, I like my PCB's green. I have a deep appreciation for the older PCB's that had hand drawn traces because CAD software wasn't accessible to everyone. Those curved lines look impressive af.
Diabetes final boss 😭🙏
I am currently building a "Mother Wall" and luckily retro MB's have many different colours 😊
Great edting this episode!
When youre colorblind and didnt know it was green and thought it was just really dark colored cuz theyre in a bleak computer
Lies. I'm colorblind and can see they're green. Now if the circuitry was red, THEN it'd be a problem. But you're acting like colorblindness is the inability to see a color (this is incredibly rare) rather than the inability to distinguish between them. Proptanopan here.
@@armyofninjas9055 dude, calm down, there are multiple spectrums of colorblindness.
RIP Anthony. You will be missed.
Cant wait to see what Emily comes up with in the future!
lmao what? she’s not dead
@@_ayohee """"she""""
@@aquaarmour4924 why the quotes?
@@_ayohee Because he's still a man. Why do you hate real women so much?
We love you Emily!
☠️🤖
You shouldn't feed into his delusion that doesn't help anyone
@@georger5558 fr
@what that mean
Well, I got a Linus Pulse-way ad. Nice to see Linus being “professional”.
3:14
Wait a minute.... has nobody made a terrarium inside of a computer? That'd be dope!
Someone told me there's a community of people who use old computer cases as self-contained groweries for tiny cannabis plants, complete with fans and LEDs on timers. Pretty cool.
i liked anthony but he change emily
Why are women not men?
Men and women are pretty much the same.
@@ericcarvalhoferreira512 ?
@@tehjamerz I said what I said.
@@ericcarvalhoferreira512 ?
@@tehjamerz Are you just going to keep replying with "?"?
it's easy to look at and it makes the traces more visible for quality control purposes
Same reason why most interstate highways use white on green background signage for directional signs: combination of high contrast and increased viewing distance and reduced eye strain and glare.
I use to solder circuit boards and I always wondered this!! Thank you for answering