Serial thread lurker comes out of the woodwork to leach your wealth of knowledge! (Please help :) )

Hi guys, been reading these forums for a few weeks now as was on the verge of buying my first lappy, you guys know your stuff, but you there's so much to go through (especially as my request may seem a few months behind schedule) that I'd really appriciate a few quick answers or suggestions to the following.

I've ordered a 9400 from dell (see signature) and aside from a few initial teethings with the items on order it seems to be going smoothly, but we'll see when it arrives....

Ok, I'm clearly going to flash the bios on the card to make it a 7900GSX (GTX bios), Can anyone tell me the best .ISO and driver combo for it?

I know how bad pre-fitted thermal solutions can be, is it worth getting new gap-pads for it? if so which one?

Are there any 3rd party drivers for the chip set that would be worth testing?

I'm wanting to u/g to a faster h/d as i'm not to keen on the 5,400 120gb supplied, size isn't really an issue, so long as over 60gb, i've heard the seagate maximus (is that right?) are top choice for 7,200 2.5 drives.

And finally, I know it's not really important, but I would like to jam in a dual pipe from a GTX or similar, anyone tried this yet? (other than the guy who got a whole GTX off ebay) and where to source from.


I hope i've not imposed to much with my first post, but your ideas will be mucho welcome! also any ideas you think i might want to try will be cool. Looking forward to adding some benchies to the list (as late as they will be )