[PrometheusX]

Welcome to the new and improved PC Chat Internet Directory! Every day on the internet there are thousands of people downloading dodgy virus ridden software In the hope that they can speed up, optimise, protect their precious notebook, PC, laptop from the nasty’s. WE NEED YOUR HELP! We need to create a new PC Chat Internet Directory of extra ordinary magnitude! Built by the community for the community, so step up and be a true GTA Forumer and please contribute to our new thread.

	Index
Anti-Virus	Browsers	Benchmarking & Monitoring Utilities
CD Rippers/Burners	Compression	E-Retailers
Firewalls	Freeware O/S	FTP Clients/Servers
Game Applications	General Tech review and news sites	Hard Drive Disks (HDD)
Imaging	Instant Messengers/Chat App/Communication	Memory
Motherboards	Multimedia Stuffs	Operating Systems
Office Software	OverClocking Sites	Overclocking Tools
P2P (for legal purposes)	PC Building Guides	PC Cases
PC Cooling Sites	PC Modifying Sites	PC Manufacturers
Processors & Chipsets	Software Download Sites	Solid State Drive (SSD)
Spring Cleaning Tools	Spyware Removers	Sound Cards
	Video Cards

	General Tech Review and News Sites
AnandTech	ArsTechnica	ExtremeTech
FreshNews	[H]ard|OCP	HARDWAREZONE
LOSTCIRCUITS	Slashdot	TechReport
Tomshardware	TheInquirer	TheRegister
VR-ZONE	Warp2Search	XBitlabs
	TechScrutiny

	Overclocking Sites
BroadbandReports	OverClockers	XtremeSystems
	ExtremeOverclocking

	Software Download Sites
AlternativeTo	Download.com	FileHippo

	Benchmarking & Monitoring Utilities
CPUID CPU info reader	Memtest86 Memory test and burn-in	Prime95 Stress testing
SiSoft Sandra Benchmarking	OpenSourceMark Stress testing	belarc System Management
	BAPCo SysMark Stress testing

	Processors & Chipsets
AMD	Intel	VIA
nVidia		SIS
	News
AMDZone	PCPerspective	nForcersHQ

	Motherboards
	Manufacturers
ASUS	TYAN	GIGABYTE
MSI	EVGA	AOpen
LEADTEK	Intel	DFI
	SUPERMICRO
	Guides & Info
	Motherboards.org

	Hard Drive Disks (HDD)
	Manufacturers
Hitachi	Western Digital	Seagate

	Solid State Drive (SSD)
	Manufacturers
Kingston	Crucial	Intel
Corsair	ADATA	OCZTechnology
Western Digital	Kingston	Samsung
	Samsung

	Memory
Crucial	Corsair	GeIL
Kingston	Transcend	TwinMOS

	Video Cards
	Manufacturers
AMD	nVidia	Matrox
SiS		3DLabs
	News, Fan, Troubleshooting Sites w/ Forums
nvnews nVidia		RAGE3D AMD
	Review & Info Sites
Beyond3D		Guru3D
	Benchmarking & Other Utilities
Fraps Framerate	Futuremark Benchmark	DriverHeaven Driver Cleaner
	Microsoft DirectX Microsoft DirectX

	Sound Cards
	Manufacturers
ASUS	Sound Blaster	Razer

	PC Cases
	Manufacturers
Thermaltake	Lian Li	CoolerMaster
Corsair	RAIDMAX	NZXT
	Antec

	PC Cooling Sites
	Heatsink/Fan Manufacturers
Thermaltake	Thermalright	SwiftTech
Vantec	AavidThermalAlloy	CoolerMaster
	Water Cooling Manufacturers
	AquaStealth
	All-in-One Liquid Cooling Kits
Asetek	Corsair	Thermaltake
NorthQ		Antec
	Guides & Info
WaterCooling101		XSPC

	PC Manufacturers
	Custom Gaming
Alienware	Falcon	Voodoo
VelocityMicro		CyberPowerPC
	General
HP	Dell	Gateway
	Sony

	PC Building Guides
	Custom Gaming
BuildeasyPC	MySuperPC	ExtremeTech
	PCSTATS

	PC Modifying Sites
	Xtremods

	Operating Systems
	Windows
Windows		WinSuperSite
	Windows Skins, Themes, Wallpapers...etc
ThemeXP	SHADOWNESS	Deviantart
	Linux
SHADOWLinux.com	LinuxQuestions	LinuxJournal
	Linux Distros
Ubuntu	Redhat	KNOPPIX
Gentoo	Suse	Debian Linux

	E-Retailers
	Price Comparison/Retailer Rating Sites
PriceGrabber	PriceWatch	DealTime
	Main Hardware Retailers
newegg	Tigerdirect	NCIX
Scan	SuperBiiz	eBuyer
	Cooling, Modifying, Cables...etc
SHADOWXoxide	FrozenCPU	CablesToGo
CrazyPC		SVC

Browsers

- ___://Product Name/Link ___://Description ___://Recommended by - Mozilla FireFox A free web browser. Alot faster, stable and less security issues. The better alternative to IE. De_Spank - Advant Browser Try Avant Browser, an upgrade to Internet Explorer. Avant Browser is a fast, stable, user-friendly, versatile multi-window browser. Now, Avant Browser is available in 40 languages. Xcommunicated - Opera Another free alternative to IE. Many people prefer this over IE or Firefox, i prefer Firefox but it's simply your preference. A disadvantage is that the free version is ad-supported. De_Spank - Internet Explorer Not a very popular browser due to the amount of attacks it can get. Some people like it. Butters 2011 - Safari Great browser from Apple, but rarely used by Windows users. Butters 2011 - Maxthon Browser Not a very popular browser either. Not used much. Butters 2011 - DeepnetExplorer Not a very popular browser either. Not used much. Butters 2011 - Google Chrome A new and reliable web browser. One of the best. leik oh em jeez!

Firewalls

- ___://Product Name/Link ___://Description ___://Recommended by - Zone Alarm Zonealarm is very well known free-full feature firewall. What i like about it is the program control, it allows you set which programs have access rights to the Internet. It is very good at blocking unwanted incoming and outing traffic. De_Spank - Comodo Personal Firewall "The experts agree, when it comes to internet safety, Comodo's Firewall software is the choice the pros turn to." Pretty much this. PrometheusX - Agnitum Outpost Firewall Pro[/color] Although it isn't widely known, It's excellent. One of the best. PrometheusX

FTP Clients/Servers

- ___://Product Name/Link ___://Description ___://Recommended by - FlashFXP FTP client Dalpura - SmartFTP FTP client Dalpura - AceFTP FTP client Dalpura - WsFTP FTP client Dalpura - CerberusFTP FTP server Atomic178 - Filezilla FTP FTP server wolf68k

P2P (for legal purposes)

- ___://Product Name/Link ___://Description ___://Recommended by - I2P A good P2P Client, for legal purposes of course. K^2 - Tor Best and Safest P2P Client. K^2 - uTorrent BitTorrent Client - Very Popular. Gareth Croke - PeerBlock BitTorrent peer IP blocker for 'spy' IP's and untrustworthy IP's. Gareth Croke

Spring Cleaning Tools

- ___://Product Name/Link ___://Description ___://Recommended by - Hijack This A very nice prog to clean out your IE. but be warned it's a very easy prog and watch out that you don't delete something you don't want to delete. TwoZero - CCleaner CCleaner is simply the number-one tool for cleaning your PC. PrometheusX - SpywareBlaster Protect against the fastest growing threats on the Internet. MiNdLeSs - Unhide Restores start menu items after it has turned "empty" as well as make all of your files visible again after a infection. *** Unhide will only work if no cleaner program are used. If a cleaner software is used, then shortcuts to the programs are permanently lost and unhide will not be able to recover it. For that user will have to manually add the shortcut links manually to the start menu. Unhide is not a virus removal tool.*** Stinky12

Instant Messengers/Chat App/Communication

- ___://Product Name/Link ___://Description ___://Recommended by - Skype A freeware, nice, easy too use program that lets you call every skype user for free over the internet. Just download it, have some headphones and you can talk to your friends, for free! vALKYR™ - AOL Instant Messenger AOL's instant messenger, very popular. De_Spank - Trillian One of my favourite programs. You can use MSN, AIM, ICQ and Yahoo all from one program altogether. De_Spank - Pidgin A really good instant messanger that lets you use aim, yim, msn, irc, and a few others. Stained - Msn Messenger Probaly the best Instant Messenger around. De_Spank - ICQ Instant Messenger ICQ another IM, I don't like it much but you choose. De_Spank - Messenger Plus Messenger Plus adds distinct new features to MSN making the experience more enjoyable? De_Spank - mIRC[/color] Windows IRC Client. Atomic178

Overclocking Tools

- ___://Product Name/Link ___://Description ___://Recommended by - EVGA Precision One of the newest overclocking tools, it's really great. PrometheusX - CPU-Z CPU-Z is a freeware detection program base on the Panopsys hardware detection engine. It allows to get information on your system. amc1 - 3DMark A good free benchmarking tool. It test the capabilities of your processor and graphics card and gives them a combined score and information on your pc. afr0man - nTune nVidia's overclocking tool. leik oh em jeez! - OCCT A good for burn-in/stress testing graphic cards. Wolf68k - ATITool In my opinion the best ATI video card overclocking utility. Fully automatically for the newbies that want to OC. Click go and let it run then your all set. Atomic - Speed Fan Gives a bunch of reading and OC's too I think, fun to play with. Atomic - EVGA OC Scanner Another good for burn-in/stress testing graphic cards. Wolf68k - MSI Afterburner An OCing tool based on RivaTuner. Wolf68k

Multimedia Stuffs

- ___://Product Name/Link ___://Description ___://Recommended by - Winamp WMP sucks. This is quick, simple, looks good and it works goddamn it. De_Spank - Quicktime Basically a program to play .mov files. De_Spank - Crystal Player The best damn video player in the world. It plays everything. Really things on my hdd wich I didn't even know what it was seemed to be movies and played (it where *.m2v files). This player is just awesome it has onscreen menu's is easy to use and is free! although I have the Pro version wich includes many filters for fixing up bad movies. TwoZero - VuPlayer Another very good fee mp3/ogg/wav/wma/whatever player. TwoZero - K-Lite Codecs Pack Free codec pack that contains almost every video and audio codecs used these days. Including Divx, Xvid, AC3, WAF and more. This is really a pack for the normal users. Just a installer and you can play all your movies in your favourite video player. TwoZero - Media Player Classic - Home Cinema Media Player Classic - Home Cinema project is based on the original "Media Player Classic" SourceForge project created by Gabest. PrometheusX - VirtualDub VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP)movies. amc1 - Media Jukebox Media player (what I use), the best IMO. Atomic178 - Real Player Good player, but not the best. PrometheusX - VLC Media Player Nice little video player, supports all the usual formats. Has versions for Linux, Winows, and other operating systems. I use this for playing video because its stable and doesnt have a fugly gui. Atomic

Freeware O/S

- ___://Product Name/Link ___://Description ___://Recommended by - Knoppix Linux For the people who want to try Linux. This is a linux version that can boot from a cd and doesn't require installation. TwoZero - Mandriva Linux One of the most user friendly linux versions. Includes a wide range of extra software and has the best GUI there is for linux installation. TwoZero - Suse Linux Also a user friendly version of Linux. The differnce with Mandrake is that Suse also supports Development enviourments, and is a good disto for developing graphical programs. TwoZero - Redhat Linux IMO the best version of Linux. Simple interface runs on almost every machine. This is the best version for advanced Linux users. 6 Consoles available and many programming tools included. TwoZero - Debian Linux Haven't had much experience with it but it's a very guru-friendly distro. Edwards - Slackware Linux Very UNIXy, also not much experience. Not for beginners. Edwards - Gentoo Linux I run this on all my linux boxen, it's the best out there if you know what you're doing. Every damn thing is configurable - the installer is a standard Bash command line and a very well-written handbook. If you're a beginner, then RUN, RUN AS FAR AWAY AS YOU CAN! Edwards - Ubuntu Linux Most popular one, this one is highly recommended for beginners. Zisis1992

Compression

- ___://Product Name/Link ___://Description ___://Recommended by - Winzip WinZip enables you to quickly and easily compress and decompress files, folders, and entire folder trees to save storage space and dramatically reduce e-mail transmission time, as well as encrypt and decrypt your sensitive documents. De_Spank - UltimateZip Good free tool for all your compressed files including; Zip, Rar, Ace, Gzip and many more. TwoZero - WinRAR Compression thingy. (Better than winzip) Atomic178 - 7Zip 7-Zip is a file archiver with a high compression ratio. PrometheusX

Compression

- ___://Product Name/Link ___://Description ___://Recommended by - CDex The best cd ripper IMO. TwoZero - DVD Shrink DVD Shrink is software to backup DVD discs. You can use this software in conjunction with DVD burning software of your choice, to make a backup copy of any DVD video disc. amc1 - Nero Most popular CD/DVD burning tool. PrometheusX - DVD Decrypter Rips dvds. Atomic - DB Poweramp Decent cd ripping/audio conversion tool. Can tag ripped cds using freedb, and can add some shell extensions. Atomic

Imaging

- ___://Product Name/Link ___://Description ___://Recommended by - GIMP I recommend GIMP 1.2.5, but that's mainly because I'm used to it. The newer version (2.0.1) looks nicer, but it's just not the same. Doody The Clown - Irfanview A fast, small, compact image viewer that supports a large number of image formats and can convert from one format to another (including batch converting). Also supports view of many multimedia viewing. wolf68k - Paint.NET Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. leik oh em jeez! - Photoshop Best one. Highly recommended. PrometheusX - CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X6 A Professional Graphic Design Software. PrometheusX - PaintShop Pro X4 A Photo-Editing Software. PrometheusX - Pixlr I recommend this free Image editing (No download) I prefer it to Photoshop Elements. Check it out. Jack.

Spyware Removers

- ___://Product Name/Link ___://Description ___://Recommended by - Ad-aware I think it's the best spyware remover availible with daily updates. I prefer this over the well known spybot. Nice and simply layout too. De_Spank - Spybot An alternative to Ad-aware. You decide which is better. De_Spank

Office Software

- ___://Product Name/Link ___://Description ___://Recommended by - Microsoft Office No need for explanation. PrometheusX - OpenOffice 1.1 OpenOffice.org 1.1 gives you everything you'd expect in office software. You can create dynamic documents, analyse data, design eye-catching presentations, produce dramatic illustrations, and open up your databases. You can publish your work in Portable Document Format (.pdf), and release your graphics in Flash (.swf) format - without needing any additional software. OpenOffice.org 1.1 is now available for more users than ever, with support for complex text layout (CTL) languages (such as Thai, Hindi, Arabic, and Hebrew) and vertical writing languages too. amc1 - AbiWord A good freeware replacement to Word. Tornado Rex - Adobe Reader The best DF Reader. PrometheusX - Foxit Reader It umm....reads PDFs I guess....better alternative to adobe's acrobat reader I hear. Tornado Rex

Game Applications

- ___://Product Name/Link ___://Description ___://Recommended by - Fraps Monitors FPS in games and also does screenshots and in-game movies. Atomic178 - Steam Steam is the world's largest online gaming platform. PrometheusX - Game Booster Pretty self-explanatory.. PrometheusX - Can you Run it Choose a game and it will tell you whether you can run it or not at high or low settings. vertical limit

Anti-Virus

- ___://Product Name/Link ___://Description ___://Recommended by - AVG Free Edition I don't know where i would be without this program. An insanely good virus scanning program for freeware. Worth paying for the latest AVG's. De_Spank - Trojan Hunter It hunts for Trojan viruses, hence the name. amp! - Bitdefender Antivirus Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2012 provides essential silent security for your Windows-based computer against viruses, spyware and phishing attempts. PrometheusX - Kaspersky Anti-Virus Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2012 delivers real-time protection from the latest malware and viruses. PrometheusX - ESET NOD32 Antivirus Intercept and eliminate viruses, worms, trojans, spyware and other Internet threats with the award-winning heuristic technology of NOD32 Antivirus. PrometheusX - Mcafee Anti-Virus Essential, effective protection against virus threats. PrometheusX - Norton Antivirus Norton Antivirus provides state-of-the-art defense against all types of attacks. PrometheusX - Avira Anti-Virus An entry-level antivirus eliminates many forms of malware, including worms, rootkits and costly dialers. Wolf68k - Avast! Anti-Virus No Description. Wolf68k - Secunia Personal Software Inspector Automatically updates outdated software so you are always up to date. Also tells you how secure your system actually is with a percentage system. Users also have the option for Secunia to notify outdated software and let user manually patch it themselves. Stinky12

This post has been edited by PrometheusX on Monday, Nov 5 2012, 20:03

[.Lycosa]

Free O/S: Plan9, OpenBSD and Maybe Haiku?

Antivirus: Microsoft Security Essentials

Media: Foobar2000, I use it and it's an all around great program with a simple UI that is extensively customizable.

Spyware: Antimalwarebytes maybe? I've ran it a few times and it's picked up stuff other programs left behind.

Game Apps: xfire? you spelt fraps wrong also

Also you could probably throw a link to 4chan /g/ in there somewhere. Aside from the occasional INSTALL GENTOO and other trolling, it's a decent resource.


You've did a f*cking brilliant job on this though, props.

[PrometheusX]

Lycosa, thanks, I'll be adding links after a certain amount of suggestions regularly, other than that I'll be updating to the last post.

Thanks for the contributions!

This post has been edited by PrometheusX on Monday, May 14 2012, 21:34

[Jack.]

I recommend http://pixlr.com/editor/ free Image editing (No download) I prefer it to Photoshop Elements. Check it out.

[AndyGanteks]

Good job man, it's gonna be a very useful topic

[Wolf68k]

RivaTuner is dead. MSI AfterBurner and eVGA Precision are both based on RivaTuner.
MSI Kumbuster (comes with AfterBurner), eVGA OC Scanner and OCCT are all good for burn-in/stress testing graphic cards.
Down side got the eVGA is that you need an account (it's free) to download them but you can get Precision 2.1.2 here not sure of where else to get OC Scanner.

OCZTechnology doesn't to memory any more, only SSDs
Speaking of SSDs maybe add a section for that; include Kingston, Cruical, and Intel

Add memtest86+ http://www.memtest.org/

Spyware Removal:
MalwareBytes http://www.malwarebytes.org/
SpywareBlaster http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html not removal tool but an immunizer to help keep the bad guys out

Antivirus:
Avira Free http://www.avira.com/en/avira-free-antivirus
Avast http://www.avast.com/en-us/index
Microsoft Security Essentials http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows...rity-essentials

Not sure where to put these:
Filehippo http://filehippo.com/ great place to get the latest version as well as older versions of many programs and drivers
Alternative To http://alternativeto.net/ to find alternatives to programs, great for finding a free alternative to commercial software


And check the Index, you have Video spelled wrong; Viideo
Maybe make the Index alphabetical even if the lists aren't. Might make it easier for some to find what they are looking for.

[Gareth Croke]

Excellent job, I approve

...except easy on the colours, could do with a little less.

But some additons

File Under - Benchmarking & Monitoring Utilities:
Belarc Advisor - General tool to examine your computer and give you a comprehensive overview of all software, hardware, O/S Updates and a security report about your computer http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

File Under - P2P (for legal reasons)
uTorrent - BitTorrent Client - Very Popular http://www.utorrent.com/
PeerBlock - BitTorrent peer IP blocker for 'spy' IP's and untrustworthy IP's http://www.peerblock.com/ (it does have legitimate reasons)

File Under - E-Retailers
scan.co.uk - UK Based computer component retailer http://www.scan.co.uk/
eBuyer.com - UK Based computer component retailer http://www.ebuyer.com/

There a few other e-Retailers that are UK based, but the rest are expensive and crap.

[vertical limit]

Can you run it.

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/intro.aspx


Choose a game and it will tell you whether you can run it or not at high or low settings.

[Xcommunicated]

Nice. I intended to update the old one, but just haven't had time, so I'm glad someone finally did it.

I'll leave it unpinned for a few days so more people will notice it floating around in here.

[Girish]

Excellent topic. However, there seems to be something wrong with your table code. It's breaking the page so it would be nice if you could take the time to fix it.

[Wolf68k]

I see the problem

CODE

[/tableb][/center] {delete this} [th][b][color=black][SIZE=20][font=Verdana]General Tech Review and News Sites[/font][/SIZE][/color][/b] [/th] {delete this} [center][tableb] [tr] [th] [/th] [th][b][color=black][SIZE=20][font=Verdana]General Tech Review and News Sites[/font][/SIZE][/color][/b]

I went a head and fixed it

This post has been edited by Wolf68k on Wednesday, May 16 2012, 16:49

[PrometheusX]

Thanks guys, btw that wasn't the main problem. Everytime I edit the post, the Index [Portal] code breaks, I have no idea why. So I removed the Index, that was some part of it. This was the problem.

[Togrul]

Nice. Very helpful topic. Congartz on medal too

[PrometheusX]

QUOTE (Togrul @ Thursday, May 17 2012, 03:28)

Nice. Very helpful topic. Congartz on medal too

Thanks.

I updated it, but still can't fix the Index problem. Any solutions?

[Wolf68k]

QUOTE (PrometheusX @ Wednesday, May 16 2012, 21:27)

Thanks guys, btw that wasn't the main problem. Everytime I edit the post, the Index [Portal] code breaks, I have no idea why. So I removed the Index, that was some part of it. This was the problem.

That's why when I did the SnP tableb for GTAVC and SA I did it all in Notepad or Wordpad or sometimes used the GTAForums Table Code Generator.
Then when I "edit" the tables I would copy/paste from there
I believe there is an unwritten character limit that a post can have. For the SA SNP I had to split the table in 2.

QUOTE (PrometheusX @ Wednesday, May 16 2012, 22:33)

I updated it, but still can't fix the Index problem. Any solutions?

Send me, in a text file, your code and I'll have a look. Try my previous suggestion first to see if that fixes it

[leik oh em jeez!]

Just figured I'd point out that your link under water cooling manufacturers links to an automotive water/methanol injection kit and an Aquarium Chiller.

So here are some links to manufacturers of all in one liquid cooling kits.
Thermaltake
Corsair
Asetek
Antec
NorthQ


Also, under motherboards, Chaintech doesn't manufacture them and none are listed on the site.
Some more common motherboard manufacturers:
EVGA
Supermicro

Under SSDs:
Corsair

PC Cases:
Corsair
Raidmax
NZXT
Antec

This post has been edited by leik oh em jeez! on Thursday, May 17 2012, 17:44

[PrometheusX]

I fixed the Index for now, I guess the only way is editing from Notepad then copy/paste.

@leik: Just noticed that, I'll fix it and add your links.

[Stinky12]

Some suggestions
Make the text readable so use won't have to squint. Some of the text are similar in color to the background.
Also for software or utilities, label it as freeware or commercial (pay version)

More SSDs
Adata
Western Digital (yes they make SSDs too)
Kingston
Samsung
Plextor

Benchmark/StressTest
OpenSourceMark (Freeware)
A benchmarking/stress tool that mimics how a computer is used in the real world.
A great alternative the expensive commercial based BAPCo Sysmark that cost around $850

Menu restoration (viruses removal additions)
Unhide.exe (freeware)
Restores start menu items after it has turned "empty" as well as make all of your files visible again after a infection.
*** Unhide will only work if no cleaner program are used. If a cleaner software is used, then shortcuts to the programs are
permanently lost and unhide will not be able to recover it. For that user will have to manually add the shortcut links manually to the
start menu. Unhide is not a virus removal tool.***

Security
Secunia (free/commercial)
Automatically updates outdated software so you are always up to date. Also tells you how secure your system actually is with a percentage system. Users also have the option for Secunia to notify outdated software and let user manually patch it themselves.

This post has been edited by Stinky12 on Thursday, May 17 2012, 22:46

[Butters 2011]

Great work there matey, and definitely a topic I'll be using much when I get back on my own PC. Just to echo what others have said though, it's probably a good idea to edit, or remove completely, all the color tags within the tables. It makes the whole thing look tacky...no offence.

[PrometheusX]

@Butters/Stinky/Gareth: Can you specify more what's exactly wrong with the colors? some of them or all of them?

Also Butters if you have any categories that can be added please post them.