Hardware General questions about modding your wii.

[FullgoreEXE]

Typical questions, really.

What are the downsides to modding your Wii? What are the risks? Which solderless one is considered best? I got my Wii on the day it came out, if that helps any.

 

[lll]

What are the downsides to modding your Wii? What are the risks?
The downsides? Apart from the very small risk of breaking your Wii drive board with dodgy soldering or blowing a fuse, there's the risk that future games will introduce new anti-chip protection that will prevent new games - even originals - from running. They've already pulled that one out with the Error 001 stuff. Most chips are updateable though, and if the chip isn't then replacing a solderless chip with a different one is extremely easy. A crappy soldering job could also lead to instability. Some chips also have issues with inching/ejecting in certain circumstances, although I don't think that's a problem on older Wiis.

On the other hand, a modchip gives you more flexibility in fixing issues affecting the software (i.e. bricks) by being able to boot special discs (homebrew discs at System Menu 3.2 and under, and autoboot Twilight Princess discs on any version.)

Also, as soon as you open your Wii your warranty is officially out the window - whether that's true in a practical sense is another matter, but since yours is a launch system I assume it's got no warranty left anyway.

The benefits are that you generally have 100% compatibility with backups and are better able to fix software bricks in the unlikely event that they arise. The software solutions are getting pretty good at the moment, although that could very easily change in the future. Chips are far more resilient against attempts to defeat them than backup loader software.

QUOTEWhich solderless one is considered best? I got my Wii on the day it came out, if that helps any.

With a launch Wii, you basically get to pick whatever chip you like, and there is no single "best" chip. For the most part once they're working there's no practical difference between chips, with the exception of small features like Wiikey2's update blocker. Being able to update is important, IMHO, although not everyone agrees. If it were me I'd go for a Free-Clip (they're made by the Wii-Clip people) and program it with YAOSM. If you can't find a Free-Clip locally they're available cheap at DX, although apparently they're really slow to ship them. If you wanted a brand-name, then you could go for any of the big name chips on the market. The older chips are going to be cheaper (and possibly even more stable since they're simpler), but the newer chips are far more likely to have updates available should the need arise.