XXXXXXX 2005 XXXXXXXXX 107
MAXIMUM
PC ’
s
DO IT
YOURSELF!
There’s nothing better than quality
time with your loved one. Your PC,
that is. Next month, you’ll bond with
your PC in many delightful and sur-
prising ways with our huge list of
DIY projects!LEGAL MUSIC
DOWNLOADS!
Maximum PC goes undercover and
investigates all of the online music
services. Which are crippled by
DRM? Which have the best rates?
Which one is right for you? Find out
next month!SILENCE YOUR
HARD DRIVES!
Hard-mounted hard drives transmit
loud and annoying vibrations to
your case. We’ll show you how to
silence your drives by suspending
them in elastic webs. It’s so crazy, it
just might work!COMING
NEXT
MONTH
INJUNE 2006 MAXIMUMPC 103
MA
XIM
UM
PC
MA
XIM
UM
PC
MA
XIM
UM
s
NO ARTIFICIAL
FLAVORINGS
LETTERS POLICY: MAXIMUM PC invites your thoughts and comments. Send them to
[email protected]. Please include your full name, town, and telephone number, and limit
your letter to 300 words. Letters may be edited for space and clarity. Due to the vast amount of
e-mail we receive, we cannot personally respond to each letter.ing of a product carries 10 times more weight
than any spec chart. And in a head-to-head
comparison of the Vision: M and the iPod, we
just couldn’t discern much difference between
the two players’ video or audio attributes.
I BEG TO DIS-OGG-REE
The answer you gave for question 23 in your May
2006 Geek Quiz is incorrect. According to the OGG
FAQ at http://www.vorbis.com , OGG is a lossy codec,
albeit a very high-quality one.
—Gregor Diseth
EXECUTIVE EDITOR MICHAEL BROWN RESPONDS:
Actually, we’re both wrong, Gregor. According to
the OGG Vorbis FAQ, OGG is a container format
for audio, video, and metadata. Vorbis is the
codec that’s most commonly contained in OGG
files, but OGGs can also harbor other codecs,
including FLAC. And this means question 23 is
thoroughly ambiguous. Damn, now the College
Board will never hire me to formulate questions
for the SAT!
TUBING TRICK
I read your review of the Swiftech Apex Ultra in
the April 2006 issue, and noted your difficulty in
installing tubing over the barbs on the water pump. I
thought that I might share an old lab trick for install-
ing polyethylene tubing. Immerse about an inch of
the end of the tubing in boiling water for 15 seconds
or so, and then immediately slip it over the barb.
Don’t tighten the retaining clamp until the tubing
cools, however, or the clamp will “bite” into the tub-
ing. I’ve used this trick for years, to attach tubing to
condensers. It makes a very strong, watertight con-
nection. The only hitch is that the connection is so
strong that if you ever need to remove it, you have to
cut the tubing from the barb with a razor blade.
—Russell T. Garland, M.D.
SENIOR EDITOR JOSH NOREM RESPONDS:
Thanks for the tip, Russell. Several readers
wrote to us to about the boiling water trick, and
to be perfectly honest, we were not aware of it
before now. I’m sure other water-cooling aficio-
nados will appreciate it as much as I do.
WESTERN DIGITAL WTF
I’m shopping for a new hard drive, and I noticed
you’ve been recommending the Western Digital
Caviar 400GB SATA drive with 16MB cache. But
while shopping I’ve seen two different models.
You recommend the WD400KD model, but I’ve
also seen the WD400YR model. What’s the differ-
ence? The only difference I’m aware of is that one
of these is intended for RAID arrays, but I’ve never
heard that a special model of drive is required for
RAID, unless there’s something weird about SATA
that needs it. This will be my first SATA drive, and I
have no intentions of using RAID.
Please help me clear up the differences with KD
and YR models. Which is better, or does it matter if
I’m not going to use RAID? Should I get the slightly
cheaper YR model? Also, has WD made a 500GB
model with 16MB cache buffer, with the same or
better performance as the 400GB version?
—Monty A. G.SENIOR EDITOR JOSH NOREM RESPONDS:
Western Digital’s model-name smorgasbord is
a bit confusing, so let us clear it up for you. The
“K” at the end of any WD drive means it’s for
desktop use, as opposed to enterprise usage,
and that it has a 16MB buffer. The “D” means it
uses a SATA 150 interface, whereas “S” means
it uses a SATA 3G interface. So the 4000KD is a
desktop drive with a 16MB buffer that rides the
SATA 150 interface. There’s also a 4000KS drive
which—you guessed it—has a 16MB buffer and
a SATA 3G interface.
“YR” signifies a Raid Edition, or RE, drive.
It’s designed for enterprise applications, and
as such it’s different from the K drives in three
ways. First, it has native command queuing
(NCQ), which lets the drive collect a queue of
data requests and then execute them in the
order the drive deems most efficient (depending
on where its read/write heads are positioned
when the requests are received).
Second, enterprise drives (YR) are tested
more stringently than desktop drives, and are
tested nonstop for a prolonged period, which
WD calls 100-percent duty cycle. These drives
have a higher mean time between failure
(MTBF) than WD’s desktop drives. WD says
the MTBF for RE drives is currently 1.2 mil-
lion hours, but it doesn’t release the MTBF for
desktop drives, so it’s impossible to compare
the two. WD did say the desktop MTBF is lower
though, which is expected.
Third, YR drives have a longer warranty. All
enterprise drives from WD come with a five-year
warranty, while desktop drives have a three-
year warranty.
And finally, regarding your question about
the 500GB version, the answer is yes. We
reviewed the new WD5000KS this month on
page 78. It’s a very fast drive and our new
favorite 7,200rpm desktop model.JULY
ISSUE