There are several practices that distinguish true power users from common folk. System building is one. Component benchmarking certainly applies. As does religious parts swapping. And then, of course, there’s hardware hacking. Hacking, more than anything else, exemplifies our ongoing quest for more—more performance, more functionality, more power—because we’re wringing this extra goodness from gear we already own, using crafty methods and occasionally pushing the bounds of practicality in the process; sometimes just for the heck (or should we say hack?) of it.
We know that GPUs and CPUs often have features disabled or dialed back in order to fit a price point. We’ll show you some nifty ways to access their hidden capabilities, as well as some fixes for inherent flaws. We also know that our gear can be made to do more than it was intended to with the help of third-party software, as you’ll discover in our webcam and Roku projects. And if you want to make your smartphone smarter, increase your Wi-Fi router’s range, or RAID your SSDs, we’ll turn you on to those tricks, too.
So what are you waiting for? Let’s get hacking!
Read more at:
Maximum PC | The Ultimate Hardware Hackers Guide: 11 Projects For PC Power Users
My Computers
System One System Two
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- Operating System
- Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
- Manufacturer/Model
- Custom
- CPU
- Intel i7-8700K 5 GHz
- Motherboard
- ASUS ROG Maximus XI Formula Z390
- Memory
- 64 GB (4x16GB) G.SKILL TridentZ RGB DDR4 3600 MHz (F4-3600C18D-32GTZR)
- Graphics card(s)
- ASUS ROG-STRIX-GTX1080TI-O11G-GAMING
- Sound Card
- Integrated Digital Audio (S/PDIF)
- Monitor(s) Displays
- 2 x Samsung Odyssey G7 27"
- Screen Resolution
- 2560x1440
- Hard Drives
- 1TB Samsung 990 PRO M.2, 4TB Samsung 990 PRO PRO M.2, 8TB WD MyCloudEX2Ultra NAS
- PSU
- Seasonic Prime Titanium 850W
- Case
- Thermaltake Core P3
- Cooling
- Corsair Hydro H115i
- Mouse
- Logitech MX Master 3
- Keyboard
- Logitech wireless K800
- Internet Speed
- 1 Gb/s Download and 35 Mb/s Upload
- Other Info
- Logitech Z625 speaker system, Logitech BRIO 4K Pro webcam, HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdn, APC SMART-UPS RT 1000 XL - SURT1000XLI, Galaxy S23 Plus phone
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- Operating System
- Windows 10 Pro
- Manufacturer/Model
- HP Envy Y0F94AV
- CPU
- i7-7500U @ 2.70 GHz
- Memory
- 16 GB DDR4-2133
- Sound Card
- Conexant ISST Audio
- Monitor(s) Displays
- 17.3" UHD IPS touch
- Screen Resolution
- 3480 x 2160
- Hard Drives
- 512 GB M.2 SSD