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Hey I'm still new to painting and modeling so I picked up the starter paint set for warhammer 40k that comes w/ 5 space marines. I figure since I've already got the minis I might as well try and build a small force, but I'd prefer chaos space marines to the regular space marines. What would be the easiest/cheapest way to turn these guys that came w/ my paint set into chaos marines? The type of unit doesn't matter to me right now (they came with bolters if that matters), I'd just like to use them as chaos and not have it be obvious that they were meant to be space marines.

Spikes, pointy bits, horns and a dark color scheme. You can carve all of that stuff out of sprue. Green stuffing fleshy bits in the right places might work, to represent demon mutations or Nurgle's blight. (Claw arms are a good, easy start. Extra heads or just plan big lumps work as well.)

Some would say playing Dark Angels would be close enough, but I would not be one of them...

Lots of spiky bits and defaced imperial logos will go a long way, maybe pick up some posessed marines and a regular box could provide enough parts.

Spikes, skulls, etch off any imperial insignia (or deface it), overt battle damage and chaos icons scrawled on the armour. Slight signs of mutation for recently turned.

defacing imperial symbols and painting chaos marks on there armors for newly defected marines

Traditionally chaos marines have horns and longer backpack vents. Backpacks are not hard to mod with pieces of sprue. Then again, you can just paint them black and say they have better backpacks than regular CSM, there's no problem with that.

Preciate the advice. I painted the first batch mostly black and I'll add some goldish colored trim next time I pick up some paints. I did the imperial logos in a bone/dirty brown color and I'll deface them after they dry. I'll either pick up a box of chaos marines and use some spare pieces to chaos up this first batch a lil more or I might try making some spikes and horns from the sprue, but I've never tried carving anthing out of it before.

Thanks again.

Look up 3rd edition's CSM codex Red Corsairs. They have samples of loyalists turned traitor. Boils down to defaced imperial iconography, horns here and there, and painted on chaos symbols on large surfaces.