Book Description
Tired of your non-descript, platinum-colored PC case? Want to show your individuality and make your friends green with envy? Interested in wringing out every ounce of performance that your timid PC can produce? If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, then The Maximum PC Guide to Extreme PC Mods is for you! We show you how to reach PC mod nirvana step-by-step, including choosing (or making) the perfect case, cutting custom windows, painting cases, turning everyday, ordinary objects into fully functional PCs, installing neon/cold cathode lighting, liquid cooling and more. Then, we show you how to drain every last drop of performance from your PC - from simple settings within your BIOS and Windows, to more fringe overclocking techniques. If you want to pimp out your rig, then this book is a must-have. No other book combines PC mods and overclocking into one, indispensable book. Best of all, this book was written by the two top voices in PC hardware technology - Maximum PC and Que! First, we show you to cook up your idea, spec it out, gather the tools for the job, prepare your workshop and complete your mod without injuring yourself or setting your workshop ablaze. For beginners, we’ll first show you how to choose the best off-the-shelf enclosures for "simple" modding projects, and later we’ll show you how you can let your imagination run wild, creating kick ass mods from the most unusual objects. Along the way, we show you - with hundreds of full-color photos - how to cut case windows, paint your rig at home, add trick fans, install dazzling interior lights, install custom cables, and how to mod your PC’s front-panel. Once you have all of the hardcore skills down, we dive into three mod projects, which show you, step-by-step, how to build a mod from an everyday, garden-variety PC case, to creating a mod from an object you found around the house or at the hardware store, to building a mod from scratch. Each of these projects is explained in fine detail, with full-color photos that show you exactly how to do it. We then attack more performance-oriented hardware hacking, such as installing exotic cooling, overclocking your CPU frequency, and tweaking your BIOS and video card settings. Throughout the book, we highlight some of the best mods from Maximum PC readers.

About the Author

Paul Capello owns and runs The Best Case Scenario, www.thebestcasescenario.com, a website devoted to extreme PC mods. In August 2003, one of Paul's designs was named Maximum PC's Rig of the Month. Paul has appeared on TechTV's Screensavers and his work has been featured in Wired magazine.

Jon Phillips is Editorial Director at Future Network USA, which publishes a variety of technology magazines, including Maximum PC and MacAddict. He is the former Editor in Chief of Maximum PC and was a regular on the NextStep television show.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Warning: This book is not for the fainthearted. It￯﾿ﾽs about breaking every rule, every warranty, inside and outside your PC. It￯﾿ﾽs about making your box (and the folks at Intel, AMD, et al. who designed it) scream. It￯﾿ﾽs about taking a drill (and everything short of a sledgehammer) to that boring beige box and turning it into an expression of your personality, at its most manic -- squared.

It￯﾿ﾽs Maximum PC Guide to Extreme PC Mods, and, yep, it￯﾿ﾽs extreme. Start with the right case (or, just maybe, build your own. You￯﾿ﾽll learn how to morph a ￯﾿ﾽfound object￯﾿ﾽ into a butt-kickin￯﾿ﾽ case. Hey, if Marcel Duchamp could do it, why not you?)

Onward to case windows (we don￯﾿ﾽt want no stinkin￯﾿ﾽ prefabs). Airbrushing. Interior lighting. Temperature monitors. Front-panel controls. And then...performance.

You￯﾿ﾽll find a full chapter on CPU overclocking, a field that￯﾿ﾽs changed dramatically in recent years; the latest BIOS, memory, and video card tweaks; even a look at Windows settings.

Speaking of overclocking: in the war for speed, heat is your enemy. The Maximum PC guys show how to batter it into submission. This is hard-core refrigeration: external coolers like the Corsair HydroCool 200EX and Koolance Exos, game/case mod rigs with single high-flow pumps and half-inch tubing; and extreme stuff with multiple pumps and radiators, maybe even custom phase change coolers.

The authors wrap up with all the collateral information PC modders need: a chapter on tools, another on web resources, and, yeah, troubleshooting help, too. Bill Camarda, from the February 2005 Read Only

FROM THE PUBLISHER