Mashed Articles

Here’s a run through of all the software you’ll need to get the most out of issue 314′s Make It section.

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Overclock your Graphics Card & RAM

There’s more power inside your PC than your probably realise, and your CPU isn’t the only place you should look: boost your GPU or your RAM and you could see some quite significant speed increases. These packages cover everything you should need to get the job done.

CPU-Z
Keep tabs on your CPU and, more importantly, your clock speeds with this app.
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

HWMonitor
If something’s running hot, you’ll want to know about it. HWMonitor can watch your temperatures and fan speeds to keep them in check.
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

MSI Afterburner
MSI’s tool is a great example of how to do overclocking right – if it works with your hardware, you can just drag sliders to try different settings.
http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm

Heaven Benchmark
See the benefits – and possibly the errors – of your tweaks by running a decent benchmark. Heaven is as good as any.
http://unigine.com/products/heaven/

Memset
Do the important work; fiddle with your RAM settings with this app. You use it at your own risk, of course.
http://www.tweakers.fr/memset.html

CPU-Tweaker
Make sure your CPU is expecting what your RAM is giving it – again, at your own risk.
http://www.tweakers.fr/cputweaker.html

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Make Black & White photographs

We’ll recommend this application until the end of time: the GNU Image Manipulation Program, or GIMP, is a great Photoshop-esque tool, and it’s completely free.
http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

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Linux Media Box

Using entirely free tools, you can completely revolutionise your network and make your media your own.

Linux Mint
Our favourite Linux flavour at the moment, Mint comes complete with the codecs you’ll need to play back all sorts of videos.
http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

Media Tomb
The actual media server end of your Linux configuration.
http://mediatomb.cc/pages/download

Handbrake
By far the best media conversion software that you don’t have to pay for. You won’t find it in a Linux package manager, so you’ll have to download it here.
http://handbrake.fr/downloads.php

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Security

This issue we look at the tools you’ll need to recover from a malicious hack attack – getting your PC back online and working properly.

Ubuntu Linux
You can use an Ubuntu live CD to extract the files from a compromised drive without risk of cross infection.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download

Process Explorer
Think something untoward is running in the background of your machine? There’s one good way to find out. Process Explorer lets you see what’s there when it shouldn’t be.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free
It’s always good to get a second opinion – if you think there’s a bad process somewhere on your system, give MalwareBytes’ tool a go. It’ll sniff out anything dodgy.
http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free