54
Penryn
Intel’s new 45nm
architecture is here.
We’ll take you on a
guided tour.Introducing
Maximum
PC’s Mod
Shop
!InN?nNM
Ed Word
Please send feedback and
black-eyed peas to will@maxi-
mumpc.com.DECEMBER 2007 MAXIMUMPC
I’
m taking a month off from my usual Vista
grousing to share news about a special
project we’ve been working on— Maximum PC ’s
Mod Shop ( http://www.modshop.net ). Whether you’re a
hardcore modder, a modding wannabe, or just
someone who wants to learn more about the
industrial arts of PC upgrading, The Mod Shop
must become a regular pit stop during your
travels through the Internets.
In simple terms, The Mod Shop gives custom rig
builders and PC upgraders a big, bold, easy-to-use
platform for showing off their projects. In The Mod
Shop’s pantheon of greatness you’ll fi nd amazingly
detailed PC tributes to games, movies, and comic-
book characters. You’ll fi nd paint jobs that belong in
the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You’ll fi nd cooling
schemes that will leave you awestruck and make you
think about science. You can fi nd them all at The Mod
Shop, and you can even vote on your favorite projects
as they battle rig-to-rig for serious cash prizes.
As regular readers know, Maximum PC has
supported the modding community with frequent
feature stories and our monthly Rig of the Month
contest ever since the dawn of the PC modding
scene. The artisans who create these rigs put in an
incredible amount of work, and we love showing off
their ingenuity and craftsmanship. Unfortunately,with just one page for Rig of the Month, we can
never highlight as many machines as we’d like—
thus The Mod Shop.
At The Mod Shop, anyone can post a rig profi le,
which can include pictures, a complete description,
and even a work log to chronicle your step-by-step
building process. As I write this, The Mod Shop is
teeming with the work of expert modders, but it’s also
a place for all PC enthusiasts to post rig profi les—you
don’t have to be an egghead to represent! So please
poke around the site and check out other people’s
rigs (you may even fi nd some editors’ rigs and Dream
Machines in there!).
Besides posting a rig profi le, we encourage you
to actively engage in the site battles, which are the
secret sauce of the site. Each month, we take the
best rigs and pit them against each other in a series
of head-to-head battles to determine the ultimate
winner. The best part? You decide the winner of each
and every battle by voting for your favorite rig. We’ve
got more than $3,000 in cash and prizes to give away
each month, and you decide who reigns supreme.
We’ve spent the last few months building the site;
please check it out and let us know what you think.(^46)
Best of
the Best
We look back at the very
best hardware of 2007.
the Best
We look back at the very
best hardware of 2007.
Features
MAXIMUMPC 12 / 07
22
1 00 Greatest
PC Innovations
Our comprehensive list of the
most important tech of all time!