( 2 reviews )
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( 16 of 18 found this review helpful ) Posted: Nov 20 2004
If you are tired of your boring beige box, then this is the perfect guide to tricking out your PC. Russ Caslis - the guy behind those cool mods you have seen online like the Millennium Falcon and Aircraft Carrier mods (both included in the book, by the way) has written an excellent guide that is broken into 2 main parts. Part I is called Basic Training, and covers all the skills you need to mod your case -cooling systems, cable management, windows, blowholes, soldiering, even working with acrylic, and a brief guide to overclocking. Part II has 9 complete mods with step by step instructions. Looks like there is also a website with the book that has color photos for all the projects and other stuff - www.wiley.com/go/extremetech. This is the most complete book I have seen for learning casemodding skills, and highly recommended for anyone who has seen a cool mod on the web and wondered, "how'd they do that?"
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( 17 of 18 found this review helpful ) Posted: Nov 10 2004
Caslis gives us 9 mods, where he came up with ways to personalise, and I mean, REALLY personalise a PC. He's reaching out to the user who is not satisfied with have a unique background bitmap on the screen, or some strange arrangement of the icons. Rather, you need to be of the hands-on ilk. He also gives you a good overview of the general techniques you need to be facile in. Like drilling holes in the computer casing, without trashing it. Or soldering. Or putting in extra fans for cooling. This latter ability is important if you are into overclocking your machine, with its concomitant extra heat dissipation needs. The cutest mod may be that of turning your PC into a baby UFO. Sorry, it doesn't fly. But it looks really cool.
