I can't speak for other modchips, but I have two Executer2 lites, and they have worked great. One has the enable/disable,bios select, & safety switch seperate, so you can stick it right to the outside of your box. Don't be scared of the soldering, I was, and it turned out just fine, twice. Just read everything on this site, and then read it again.
If you go with a solder chip, and you do it yourself, just relax, take your time, and follow the tutorials very carefully. you'll find most of it is common sense. Don't burn the crap out of the circuit board, don't peel up one of the little circuits and so on.
The hardest thing for me was flashing the bios, It was a little confusing at first, but it was actually very easy. Every question you want to ask, has already been asked and answered somewhere in these forums. Look around for the answer. I'm a newb too, but I managed so far.
I'll answer any questions if I can.
While your deciding on chips, go get mirc and read everything there, then get FlashFXP and read that.
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