I've you're out there reading this now, I am already 99% certain you're not the average desk jockey at work who just sits on his computer to type is e-mails and get his 9-5 job done and then doesn't look at a PC till tomorrow. If you are, then stop reading, cuz you won't get much out of this... Or maybe you will, at least if you have a bit of creativity in you and an open mind. For the other 99% of you who ignored that last part, heads up, we're gonna get good, real quick like now.
I know all of you out there who care about your PC's performance are well familiar with the intricacies of tweaking your Windows or Hardware's performance in some fashion or another. Many of you are likely familiar with the uber windows tool "Tweak UI" and all the joy it can bring with its use. Others of you are likely overclockers and hardware fiends and everything. Well, guess what? I don't really care about any of that junk right now. Know why? Cuz I don't need it! I'm not gonna go burn more bandwidth right now talking bout something that I'm sure everyone has seen in some form or another. (Will I burn that bandwidth later? Well, knowing me, likely.) Anyways, back on topic here now... That tweaking isn't why I'm here today. Today I'm talking about tweaking your system so that it looks cooler, and even has the chance of cooling better.
One of the biggest beefs I've always had with PC's was the fact that if you got rid of labels, you really couldn't tell 98% of them apart until a year or two ago. They all were freaking ugly beige boxes that had NOTHING to distinguish them. Plastic bezel, with 1 or 2 CD drives a floppy, and maybe a zip. Was it a home built system? Was it an OEM? HP? Compaq? I don't know. You really couldn't tell anything about them from the front of the box, if it weren't for the little sticker that identified the manufacturer. A lot of the time, this is still the situation, as many companies still use the cheap generic 30$ towers that have no differentiating features anywhere on them. Is this bad for computers? Not directly, as the way a computer looks really doesn't have much to do with the performance of a system. However, if you're a gamer and you got yourself the latest Athlon XP OC'd to XP2300 or whatever, a big ass heat sink, a cooled GF3 TI 500 and all the extras, you can't justify a plain beige box. Its just not right.
I'm sure regular readers of the site will think I'm going to start getting into case modding talks right about now. Well, you're right. I am, but not quite how you're probably expecting me to. I don't expect everyone to be a case modder, as not everyone is capable of doing the work the way I'd consider a true case modder would. So, what I'm going to cover will be a little bit of modding, but not anything hardcore. This is basically going to be for the people out there who want systems that aren't the ugly beige box you see at CompUSA, but don't have the time, money or ability to dedicate their lives to modding.
The beginning:
Starting the project, at the beginning of the week, I'm gonna talk about a few easier things that most people can do for themselves to just get their cases looking a little bit better than the average Joe sitting next to them. I'm gonna cover things you can do that are both external and internal to your system, some requiring parts and notable work, others being a lot quicker and possibly graduating to the ranks of free once in a while. So for now, I'm going to have a partial list of what you can expect from me in the next 3 or 4 weeks or so. (Yeah, its a long time, kinda, but I've got a LOT to get up here for you guys :) )
- FrozenCPU Window kit with dual 92mm fan holes
- Thermal Integration Dr. Thermal heat sink
- Feeling PC Ice Hole lighted fan adapter
- Crystal Orb CPU/GPU/Chipset cooler
- Thermaltake Active memory coolers
- Titan chipset cooler
- So-Trick computers Silver cable review
