Tweaks

Article: Modding an LGA775 Bracket to fit an LGA1155 Socket (CNPS 9700)

For the most part, system building is incredibly straight-forward: Purchase components, just add screwdriver. Some cable management later and you're mostly done. Sometimes, though, things don't work out perfectly - as was the case with our once-famed Zalman CNPS 9700 LGA 775 cooler. It didn't quite fit on the newer LGA 1155 socket (specifically on an ASRock Extreme4 motherboard), and...

Article: An Overclocking Primer: The Basics of Overclocking

System building is an exercise in both education and enthusiasm -- as the core principles of system assembly become second nature, the enthusiast approach to commanding more power from hardware is the next fitting evolution. Overclocking is a part of this process.

Article: Electrostatic Discharge: Understanding and Preventing ESD

Electrostatic Discharge is something that we actively take measures against to ensure no components are inadvertently 'fried' in our build videos; accumulate enough static electricity and discharge it into that shiny, $300 video card, and you've suddenly got a very expensive brick on your desk.

Article: Skyrim Hardcore Survival & Realism Mod Overhaul

There's something to be said about being able to survive the howling winds of Windhelm with nothing but a loin cloth and cold iron sword; Dovahkiin is not only Dragonborn, he is -- for playability purposes, of course -- resistant to all types of weather and hunger. After our previous graphics and content overhaul (which will be updated soon, no doubt), we thought it...

Article: New nVidia Drivers "Boost Skyrim Performance by 20%"

Skyrim hasn't been known to be the most optimized game for PC gamers, but it is quite flexible in its requirements; after installing our graphics mod overhaul, though, even those of us with powerful PCs could use an extra FPS and performance kick.

Article: $2000 Diablo 3 Arch Angel Enthusiast PC Build - May, 2012

Look at them over there -- those treacherous beasts reading the $558 Diablo 3 'evil' build are staring at us. They're plotting. Scheming. They're sizing us up; scoping out our territory. I say let them -- when they see what we have over here, backed by Tyrael the Arch Angel, they'll wish Diablo stayed dead to begin with.

Article: Protect Your Investment: Gaming PC Preventative Maintenance

If I were your financial adviser, I'd tell you that a little bit of planning and maintenance can save you tons of headaches in the future. I'm not your financial adviser. I am a computer engineering instructor, so what I'll tell you is that a little bit of planning and maintenance can save you a ton of headaches in the future.

Article: Intel Visual BIOS Features Explained: Search and Overclocking

Intel's motherboard engineering team wants to change your mind about their boards -- at PAX East this weekend, Senior Product Marketing Engineer Fred Birang told us: "When most people think of Intel, they think of CPUs. We want the gamer mindshare to know that we don't just make a great reference motherboard, we have a board that is as good -- if not better -- than anything out on the market."

Article: Dual-CPU, Dual-PSU Insane System at PAX East 2012 [Photos]

Heart-stopping is the word that comes to mind. We could see the red pulse of this behemoth, dual-Xeon CPU, dual-PSU system clearly from many booths away at PAX East (full coverage here); the Rosewill custom build, as commissioned by BS Mods, was something to kill for. I'll let the photos do the talking:

Article: Bring Skyrim to your Desktop - Custom Skyrim Win7 Theme

Because the cringe-inducing UI isn't bad enough in Skyrim itself, we've elected to bring it to the desktop. Yeah: The Skyrim UI, a smoothly-animated Sovengarde background, and some cool CPU/memory usage meters in the style of health and magicka bars are brought to your Windows 7 desktop with this tweak. Granted, the...

Article: Complete Skyrim Graphics & Content Overhaul

No matter how much hype surrounds a game at initial launch and no matter who the maker is, even great games inevitably become stale and tiresome. Luckily, series that are backed by huge modding communities -- like the Elder Scrolls games or the Baldur's Gate community -- possess the astounding ability to imbue a fading game with invigorating content, potentially...

Article: SSD Dictionary: Understanding SSD Specs - The Basics

Computer hardware has been watered-down into a marketing game of bigger numbers, new, obscure specifications, and unexplained benchmark ratings, generally leaving consumers to fend for themselves. As we did in our GPU Dictionary, we'll break-down the very basics of SSD specs and take a look at how, on the top-level, SSDs work. Understanding how to read SSD specs is...

Article: Mass Effect 3 Fixes: Black Screen, Loading Crashes, Lag, and more

Bioware may be well-known for their controversial storylines and successful RPGs, but that doesn't make them immune to the onslaught of crashes, bugs, video artifacting, freezes on loading, and black screens that Mass Effect 3 would inevitably face. ME3's had a shaky launch for PC gamers -- similar to our "Skyrim Fix Checklist," we'll take a look at Mass Effect 3 alt-tab black screen...

Article: How to: Crush, Kill, Maim, and Destroy Your Files Permanently

Following up close behind our "what happens when you delete a file" and "how to recover deleted files" articles, this guide walks you through the steps to destroy unwanted or security-compromising files as thoroughly as possible; it will completely shred the files and help prevent data harvesting,...

Article: How To: Install Steam Games to Different Hard Drives

Our SSD article kicked off a discussion among a few forum users and commenters, even a couple of staff, all wondering how to better manage limited SSD space when Steam forces its games to be installed on a single location on the hard drive. Due to this Steam restriction, you're basically forced to have all of your games on a single, designated drive, at which point -- if you...

Article: The Basics of Case Fan Noise, Airflow, and Quieter Gaming

With the myriad of fan sizes available today it can be tough to truly understand the difference of larger fans without hands-on experience -- that's what we're here for. Our previous guide explained the basics of fan placement and our recommended number of fans per system, this guide will go into depth on fan sizes, quieter gaming fans, and we'll set the stage for our...

Article: The Basics of Case Fan Placement - How Many Fans and Where?

This low-difficulty guide addresses what I call "fan placement theory," essentially looking at how many fans gaming computers should have, where they should be placed, and what the ratio of intake-to-exhaust case fans should exhibit. Cooling for gaming rigs -- even in the budget build guides we write -- has the power to inhibit gaming (and even damage components) if it is...

Article: SSDs Heavily Impact Seamless Gaming - Do You Need One?

With no end to the spindle drive price hike in sight, hardware analysts have pointed toward growing action potential for solid state drive price reductions. The question, then, is whether or not gaming machines utilize SSDs -- several of our forum users have asked "is an SSD worth it?" or "should I get an SSD?" lately, and having done some minor bottleneck performance...

Article: Re-Spec Your Skyrim Character, Change Race, Appearance

For those of you contemplating your character's existence in Skyrim, this small utility lets you change your race, skills, health, magicka, stamina, gold, appearance, and much more in TES V. This nifty program was added to Skyrim Nexus just recently. Here's the break-down.

Article: Best Skyrim Graphics Mods: Before and After

Update: For a total Skyrim graphics, mechanics, and content overhaul, view our newest guide! After posting our recent article about the best graphics mods out for Skyrim, we had to put together the best possible comparison to truly showcase the wondrous power of the modding community; this...