A secret that professional hardware engineers won’t tell you, why do circuit boards come in several different colors?

If the PCB design and manufacturing process are exactly the same, color will not have any impact on performance or heat dissipation

However, manufacturers prefer to use black PCBs to manufacture high-end products, resulting in the use of red, blue, green, yellow, and other colors to manufacture low-end products. In summary, the product is endowed with color meanings.

Regarding black PCBs, due to the almost complete coverage of their surface wiring, it poses great difficulties for later maintenance and is not a convenient color for manufacturing and use. Moreover, black PCBs have the highest difficulty in drilling holes, so the yield rate is relatively lower than other color PCBs. Therefore, the price of black PCBs is relatively higher

Because circuit boards need to undergo high-temperature recycling treatment when discarded, and green solder resistant ink does not release toxic gases, recycling is more environmentally friendly. Thanks to the above advantages, the adoption rate of green solder mask ink is the highest and the production process is the most mature. Therefore, using green solder mask ink to produce circuit boards also incurs lower costs

Do PCBs of different colors have differences?

1. Green PCB

Green PCB is the most popular color. Therefore, many people have always mistakenly believed that PCBs are green or most of them are green. Green increases the clarity of PCBs because green PCBs create a sharp contrast with white text, thereby enhancing readability.

In addition, the surface treatment of green PCBs will reflect less light, which helps to reduce glare.

2. White PCB

White PCBs look clean and tidy in various environments, becoming increasingly popular. However, due to the tendency of white PCBs to conceal wiring, white PCBs are still not the preferred choice. But the white PCB looks particularly contrasting in black screen printing.

3. Yellow PCB

Previously, yellow PCBs were commonly used, but now they are not as practical. Yellow PCB can quickly meet different needs such as style, cleanliness, and visibility. The yellow PCB has an obvious drawback: poor contrast with wiring and screen printing.

4. Blue PCB

The blue PCB is considered a thick plate for labels because it provides significant screen printing contrast. This type of PCB color is not as eye-catching as green PCB, black PCB, or white PCB, but blue PCB is the preferred color for PCB because it provides an excellent aesthetic choice. It is better to install a blue PCB on an LCD because it does not produce sharp contrasting edges and bright background colors.

5. Red PCB

Due to some advantages of red PCBs, many PCB manufacturers are enthusiastic about adopting red. The red PCB provides excellent visibility and clearly defines the contrast of traces, planes, and blank areas. The silk screen looks very beautiful against the backdrop of the red PCB.

6. Black PCB

Black PCBs are equally popular as white PCBs. These two PCB colors produce low contrast, making it easy to label important components. However, the main drawback of black and white PCBs is that specific details may be focused and have small shadows. This shadow makes tracking difficult. Therefore, black PCBs should not be used in various high-temperature applications, as black PCBs may cause discoloration in screen printing. Moreover, black PCB boards are a mixture of cobalt and carbon, which may have poor conductivity.