Just got word from Adam that he's just finished a new guide that he likes to call, Shinny Boy!

The guide basicly shows you how to replace your side panel of your case, with plexiglass. Also, how to install a fan in the plexiglass. Another thing he shows you how to do, is how to install some "shinny" case handles. Here is a quote from his quide:

"Shinny Boy is a cheap and simple project. It's perfect for people with not much to spend on a mod or a person that is just looking for a simple and clean design to show off with. Cheap is something a lot of people hunt for every day and this is what is wanted. No more then $20 and you've got your first case mod."

Mods For Me is having another little guide online. Check it out for optimal performance of your drives.

Many of you have 40+ speed CD drives or 10+ speed DVD drives and don't even think about tweaking them out because you figure that is fast enough. Well guess what. It COULD be faster. We're going to show you exactly what you have to do. We'll start you out with the basics.

We have taken some nice Alpha aluminium fin designed heatsinks and modded a Radeon 8500 with them. Is it worth to buy and apply them? How much more performance can you get? And how hard is it to mod a graphics card? Well you will find some answers to these questions by checking out the article. Note: The overclocking results of the graphics card are not final yet. I just published the article early for you to see the preliminary results... Read the modding article

Aselabs.com getting on the controversial discussion: You can't just saying CPU x is as good as CPU y because it performs the same in program z. Not trying to bash AMD or Intel, but just relay some thoughts on this whole CPU thing.

Brian@mods4me has told us that they have an article about heatsinks online. Every metal surface on every heatsink that I have ever seen has a lot of little imperfections in them. It simply isn't possible for the manufacturers to produce perfectly flat bottomed heatsinks.

They are good enough for you to use but by doing something called lapping you can usually lower your temps a few degrees. Any real mod freak will want to lap the heatsink on your northbridge as well as the one on your CPU. Today we will be lapping our Northbridge heatsink but you can use the same principles on your CPU and heatsink.

ComputerBase have posted a great article explaining how Nvidia implements it's refresh rate for their drivers and show you how too manually fix your refresh rate for Nvidia Detonators 27.xx to 28.32! Here's a quick translation by babelfish as the site is in german.

After a view of the screenshots the meaning of the individual lines and columns should actually give no more mysteries up. To the better understanding:

The 8. Line of the shown code states that with an adjusted depth of shade by 8 bits (256 colours) in the Resolution at 800x600 the image repetition frequencies 60Hz, 70Hz, 72Hz, 75Hz, 85Hz, 100Hz and 120Hz are supported.

In the 14. Line is e.g. that during a depth of shade by 8 bits and a screen resolution by 1600x1200 however " only " 60Hz, 70Hz, 72Hz, 75Hz, 85Hz and 100Hz are supported. 85Hz or 100Hz will take part in however only those at least monitors in this Resolution!

Ever wondered how you can get the highest front side bus possible? Here's some tips that should prove quite helpful.

"With CPU cooling you really get what you pay for just like with RAM and most other PC parts. There's always a good reason if it's CHEAP!"

Just got word from Matt@OverclockersClub that they have added another Windows XP guide to their site. This time they show you how to change the standard Windows XP boot screen (The one that says Loading Windows!). Here's a quote from their guide: This is a very simple trick to do if you have done the same for the logon screen and the start button. There are 2 ways to do this trick that I know about one is doing it manually and the other is using a program called bootxp. I am going to tell you the manual way to do it, but if you want to know the other way just let me know, so I can do an update to the guide.

VIAArena has collected quite a bit of information regarding the Infinite Loop showstopper issue mostly discovered with Windows XP and Nvidia graphics cards. I might add that this is not the only combination this error appears with but it's the most common one. Now VIAArena has completed their troubleshooting editorial and it is really the most complete I have seen to date. If you still suffer from being stuck you may find help there: VIAArena editorial

Did you ever wonder (at least when running Windows XP) why there is a second startup sound when you boot up and you have an Audigy installed? The reason for it is the Creative splashscreen that runs on startup. (On my PC it does not even get displayed except in safe mode.) If you want to know how to disable it read more...

Just got word from Professor@OverclockersClub.com that he's just posted another how-to guide this time for Disabling Microsoft's System File Checker in WinXP!

Here's a quote from his guide: Why you would want to disable the System File Checker? 1. It takes away from performance. Not much but those that are hardcore go after every performance tweak they can get. 2. To delete and modify any file or folder on your system. System File Checker protects a lot of junk on your hard drive. Like the Tour folder that holds the files from the "Welcome To Windows Tour" that nobody cares about. 3. To free up some extra space. System File Checker itself creates a lot of files which can gobble up hard drive space.

After quite some time Adrian is back with the best BIOS optimization guide I've read so far. The major oberhaul will take place in several steps so check back with his site often. Some new topics include: APIC Function Write Data In to Read Delay Write Recovery Time In-Order Queue Depth AGPCLK/CPUCLK Definitely worth your attention. Hit the guide @ Rojak-Pot.

VR-Zone has posted some benchmarks results of 3DMark2001 SE, Quake3 and SpecViewPerf using the Detonator 27.70 drivers on the GeForce4 MX as well as the GeForce3 Ti200 cards.

AseLabs.com's little large comparison is meant to help some people that just don't know what to get. There are many people tired of reading countless reviews that conflict each other, and make a mess of things when it comes down to buying their new board. All information in this article is their opinion, and may not always be exact. The statements are trends of manufacturers, and may or may not reflect on any individual board they make, as many companies tend to score big once and a while. It is also quite possible while a review makes it look like an amazing board to buy, in the future this will go bad, which is something that they tried to show here.

Just got word from Haddad@3DSpotlight.com that he's updated their OS update pages. Here is what he's saying:

Just a quick note for letting you know that we just uploaded a heavily modified OS Updates page, as usual bringing you up to date the page with all latest patches available for most MS' Operating Systems, we have fixed/optimized links & such, as well as add some to the chipsets section.

Well I felt like playing around with mine tonight. And guess what? I was able to squeeze another 140 3DMarks out of it without overclocking the card or the CPU! If you'd like to know how I achieved that hit read more. 56K warning due to images.

Hi, I saw that solution on fixing the 60Hz problem with DetXP 27.xx and W2K/XP by Jeronimo, and want to point you to another solution I thought of about a week ago (I'm a Moderator at SysOpt.com and even posted it there). Here it goes :

As you probably know, monitor .inf files often host information about possible resolutions/refresh rates the monitor can support. And Windows takes that information directly from there and uses it, both for desktop and for gaming. So I decided to modify the .inf file, and it works much simpler than modding all those values in registry (which can also be quite risky, too).

Refreshrate fix for Nvidia 27.xx drivers.
Inspired by Jake McLain.

For setting the frequency on the new series of Nvidia drivers (which do not support nvreffix), read the following...

Software and Computers have been around for decades, and using illegal software is nothing new. From the time software was stored on tape, then disk and more recently over the Internet, people have always found ways of gaining access to material they weren?t meant to have access to. Then writers and publishers tried to lockout these people with special keys, thus hoping to prevent access to this material. This is where Warez come in to play. In this article I will try to explain about Warez, their uses, why they?re used and much more.

If Internet Explorer (IE) 6 is slowing to a crawl and/or hanging and starts to use 100 percent of CPU time it may well be a corruption of the "Temporary Internet Files folder". In particular, trying to delete Temporary Internet files via Tools, Internet Options or other privacy software seems to trigger this behavior. Also, attempts to view files in the Temporary Internet Files folder may show the folder as already empty when it is not. This behavior occurs because the Temporary Internet files database is corrupt. Read more...