This month the Doctor tackles...
Home Network Management
Cooked RAM
Home Network Management
Cooked RAM
Home Network Management
Drive Transplants
DOCTOR^
IMPROVING YOUR PC EXPERIENCE ONE STEP AT A TIME20 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC|JAN 2011 |www.maximumpc.com
A RAM fan like this Kingston HyperX RAM cooler can help prevent
heat death.RAM Cooking
Roughly three years ago, I
built myself a gaming rig that
could play all my games. I
then decided to use liquid-
cooling so as to have a better
chance of overclocking. I
had to cool the north bridge
along with the CPU to keep
it stable. I understand this
has to do with the lack of air
movement since the CPU
fan is missing. Over these
last three years, I’ve burned
through four full sets of
memory! It got so bad that
I refused to turn off my rig
for fear of a failure to reboot.
Could it have anything to do
with the missing fan? If so,
how do you fix this?
—Kurt ColbourneFour sets, -urt? ;our machine
is a deathtrap There are a
couple of possibilities here.
If you’re overclocking your
4A/ as well as your pro-
cessor, you might be using
voltages and timings that the
4A/ you’re running can’t
support. /ake sure you buy
4A/ that’s rated for the clock
speeds and timings you’re
overclocking to. 'ven if the
4A/ is pratedq to run at
higher voltages than those
approved by ,'D'%
the con-
sortium that oversees 4A/ ,
there’s no guarantee that it’ll
run at the overclocked speed
for long periods of time.
That’s why buying 4A/ from
a vendor that offers a lifetime
warranty on overclocked
4A/ is a great idea. Despite
this, four sets of 4A/ sounds
pretty excessive.It’s Suite likely that you
have insufficient airflow over
the 4A/.
'ven though you’re
water-cooling your %PU, you
still need sufficient airflow
into
and out of your case to
cool the rest of your compo-
nents. /ake sure you have
at least one front intake fan,
and an exhaust fan or two
at the rear or top of your
case. 4emember, the hot-
test component in a gaming
P% today is the GPU, and its
heat can bake the 4A/. ;ou
might want to consider a side
intake fan blowing directly
onto the north end of your
motherboard. ;ou could
even use a dedicated 4A/
cooler—if you’re rocking
%orsair Dominator 4A/, the
%orsair AirFlow Pro is a good
choice otherwise, there are
some third-party 4A/ cool-
ers out there.Home Network
Management
I find myself with 16 opera-
tional systems in my home.
Each family member has
their own system, and we
have an HTPC, home server,
LAN party game server, and
a few guest computers for
LAN parties. Most users have
a hard enough time ensuring
they keep one PC updated
with fresh AV definitions and
security patches, but multi-
ply that by 16 and it becomes
a very time-consuming task.
I currently use a scratch-
built Windows Home Server.
The system provides daily
backup, file management,media storage (video, pho-
tos, and music), and data
recovery for the networked
computers, which run
operating systems ranging
from 64-bit Win7 to 32-bit
Windows XP Pro.
In the past, I have used
products such as Network
Magic for basic home net-
work management. It did
a satisfactory job of map-
ping my existing network,
and even showed available
Windows updates for each
machine, but was not able
to remotely push these
updates. I now feel that tool
is no longer robust enough
for my needs. I am looking
for a solution that will allow
centralized management of
my home network, including
pushing antivirus definition
and Windows updates to all
my PCs. These tools exist for
business and corporate envi-
ronments, but I can’t justify
the cost to implement them
on my home network.Can you suggest a rea-
sonably priced tool to help
me better manage my home
network, and reduce the
time I spend keeping my
systems up to date?
—David KuhnWow Sixteen systems is a lot
to manage. Unfortunately,
the Doctor and his minions
don’t know of any central-
ized tools for Windows *ome
Server that allow you to
push /icrosoft updates to
attached clients. We have,
however, heard good things
about a free, ad-supported
network-management tool
called Spiceworks
www.
spiceworks.com . Spiceworks
will map your networked
devices, like 0etwork /agic
does, but it can also inven-
tory your eSuipment, track
warranties and service con-
tracts for your gear, and a lot
more. It’s designed for small
to medium-size businesses
and probably has more fea-