6
Cage the Drive
Installing the hard drive is a straightforward
process. But first getting to the hard drive cage
in the CM Stacker is another matter. To get the
cage out, unlock the quick-release arms on the
left and right sides of the case. Pull the cage
straight out. To get to the screws that you’ll use
to mount the drive, pull the side plates off of
the cage. They’re held there by simple friction
and will come loose with just a slight amount
of pressure (image A). Now, as you have done
for the last 20 years, use four coarse screws
to mount the hard drive in place (image B). Put
both sides of the drive cage back on (along
with the drive rails), and slide the cage back
into the case. Push the bezels in place, lock
the arms in place, and you’re done! With the
hard drive, anyway.You’ll get the most performance out of your PC
by installing RAM in dual-channel mode. The
method for doing this varies among motherboard
brands. On the MSI board, dual-channel mode
requires that you put one stick in an orange slot
and the second stick in a green slot.
Place the board on a flat, stable surface. Put
your antistatic bag beneath the board if you don’t
have a good static-free work area. Next, locate
the notch on the RAM and match it with the notchin the slot (image A). Pop the
arms open for the slot you’ll
be filling, put your fingers
on the ends of the module,
and gently push the RAM in
place until the arms lock into
position (image B). If the RAM
doesn’t go in, double-check
that the notches line up and
try again. When you’re done,
make sure the arms that hold
the RAM in are in their closed
position. If they are extended,
they could impede your GPU
or even damage it.5
raM it hOMe
One of the glaring weak-
nesses with last year’s
$1,500 PC was RAM. With
RAM prices through the
roof at that time, all we
could afford was 1GB of
DDR2/800. Well, what a
difference a year makes.
While 1GB cost $150 last
year, we were able to buy
4GB of Patriot DDR2/
RAM for $120 this go-
round. And that’s without
the rebate, which brought
the price down to $
Why Patriot RAM? At
this price, it’s all about
bang for the buck, and
after surfing the online
stores, we picked the
Patriot modules because
they offer slightly better-
rated latency for about
the same cost as the
competition.
Our RAM configuration
isn’t that simple, though.
Although the board posts
just fine with 4GB, run-
ning a 32-bit Windows
OS doesn’t quite give you
full access to the RAM.
Check Windows XP and
it’ll report only 3.25GB
free. So is the other
.75GB wasted? Not quite.
It’s a complicated issue,
but Microsoft argues that
even if the applications
cannot use all 4GB of
RAM, the OS, and even
the drivers, will, so the
additional headroom
does help.
All we know is that
we’re happy to quadruple
our RAM footprint for less
money than we spent last
year. Now that’s progress.4gB Patriot
DDr2/
raM
WHY WE CHOSE
http://www.maximumpc.com | APR 08 | MAXIMUMPC
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