MaximumPC 2004 08

cessor and GeForce 5200 simply don’t have
the legs for a modern flight sim. While your
system is well within the minimum system
requirements for Flight Simulator 2004 , it just
won’t work with all the details turned up.
If you want a system that can run Flight
Sim with the features turned up to a reason-
able clip, we recommend at least a 2.5GHz
processor and a Radeon 9600 XT or GeForce
5700 Ultra.

AND HERE’S A SIMPLE ANSWER
Here’s a simple question: Will the Asus
K8V SE Deluxe motherboard allow you
to boot from a SATA drive?
—RICHARD STAUFFER

The simple answer is yes. The complex
answer depends on what you mean. Can
you boot from a SATA drive connected to the
computer? Yes. Can you boot from the moth-
erboard without using a floppy and hitting F6
to install other drivers in Windows XP? No.
(At least not the last time the Doc tried it on a
board equipped with the same south bridge
as the K8V SE Deluxe.)

RUBBING YOUR CPU THE WRONG WAY
I recently cleaned off my CPU and heatsink
but I mistakenly used rubbing alcohol from the
medicine cabinet rather than pure isopropyl
alcohol. My system is now experiencing
random freezes and pauses. Did I damage my
CPU and heatsink? I read in a recent issue of
Maximum PC that rubbing alcohol has some
oil in it that may cause problems. What kind
of damage could I have done to my CPU?
—GREG G.

While it’s always best to use pure isopropyl alcohol,
the Doctor has never injured or destroyed a CPU by
cleaning it with the cheap stuff. But it’s quite likely
your PC was aversely affected by the recent clean-
ing in another way. Did you wrench on the machine
in the process? Did you remember to use thermal
paste when you reapplied the heatsink? Is the heat-
sink flush with the processor? Did you do anything
else to the machine between cleaning the CPU, or
did you simply remove the heatsink, clean the CPU,
and put the heatsink back on? Any of these ques-
tions could lead to the answer.

STRETCHING YOUR MOTHERBOARD
I have a system with an Epox EP-8K3A+
motherboard and an Athlon XP 2000+
processor. This board has been great for
overclocking and just plain tweaking. I recently
read that the adjustability of the motherboard’s
BIOS makes it capable of running later 333
FSB Athlon chips. Is this true? Will the board
run a Barton CPU with the larger L2 cache? I

was looking to get a 3000+ Barton processor

333FSB and a new videocard and making my

system last for another year or two.

—CLAIR W. SMART

The one caveat with overclocking (even with the

most overclocking-friendly CPUs, motherboards,

and RAM) is that it may not work. Sure, it’s

worked for the 20 guys who’ve posted on 3dover

clockerzhardwarevideocards.com, but is it going

to work for you? If you’re willing to gamble the

$125 price of a new CPU to give it a whirl, there’s

a good chance you’ll succeed. After all, the

board has an established reputation for reaching

333MHz frontside bus speeds. Just remember

there’s always a chance it won’t work. In which

case, you may have to shell out another C-note

for a current-generation VIA or nForce2-based

motherboard to get the best performance from

the CPU.

THIS SPACE IS RESERVED

Every time I defrag my hard drive with

Diskeeper 8.0 , I see green/white areas labeled

Reserved System. What is this space on a hard

drive for? Can it still be used for storage? If

not, is there any way I could reclaim the space

for storage?

—IVAN ROSENBREYER

Reserved System is primarily made up of System

Restore points and/or files located in the Recycle

Bin. By default, Windows allocates a significant

percent of your drive’s capacity to these functions.

If you want to reduce the amount of space used

by System Restore, right-

click My Computer, select

Properties, then click the

System Restore tab. Click

the drive in question and

adjust the slider to reflect

the amount of drive space you want dedicated to

this process. To change the amount of space the

Recycle Bin reserves, right-click the Bin on the

desktop, go to Properties, and adjust the slider to

your liking.

CAPTAIN COMMANDO

OK, I’m a bit of a clumsy case commando

and while fumbling around with my system,

I managed to totally snap off the SATA

connector on my Western Digital WD740GD

10K SATA drive. Because this drive costs much

more than I typically part with for a hard

drive, I would prefer to repair it rather than

replace it, especially since the circuit board

hard wired to the SATA plug can be easily

removed. If I could obtain the part, I could

easily replace that particular portion of the

hard drive but I’m having trouble locating a

replacement part. Also, Western Digital says

the card is firmware specific and therefore a

replacement part wouldn’t work. So what’s

the prognosis, Doc? Is fixing my drive truly

impossible?

—JONATHAN PONDER

Yours is a lesson that should be noted by all. You

must always treat hard drives with the utmost care

and respect! They are very fragile devices, as you

have discovered, and once something goes wrong,

you’re typically up a creek without a paddle.

We contacted Western Digital regarding your

problem, and the first person the Doc talked to

was skeptical that the company would sell indi-

vidual parts to customers who had broken their

drives. As of press time, we had still not received

a definitive answer, but we don’t recommend that

you hold out hope.

Our advice: Say three “Hail Marys,” write “I will

be more careful with my hard drive” on the chalk-

board 100 times, and then go buy a new drive. n

If there’s something strange

under your PC’s hood,

Who ya gonna call?

The Doctor!

E-mail the Doc at [email protected]

WHICH IS THE BETTER RAID CONTROLLER?

Which is better: an onboard RAID controller

or a PCI-based RAID controller card? My

system scored 73MB/s in SiSoft Sandra’s

benchmark with two Western Digital 36GB

10,000rpm Raptors hard drives running off

the onboard motherboard RAID controller.

Will I see a performance gain if I switch to an

add-in RAID controller card?

—DILSHAN

Absolutely not! Your RAID controller can pump

data only as fast as the bus it’s riding, and as a

general rule onboard controllers have faster con-

nections than the PCI bus provides. An onboard

RAID chip runs at whatever speed the south bridge

can communicate with the CPU, which varies

among chipsets but still always exceeds the PCI

bus’ 133MB/s maximum.

This means a PCI add-in card can actually be

slower than an onboard solution if you’re satu-

rating the PCI bus with traffic. Of course, this is

only a concern if the other PCI cards on the bus

are themselves speed demons—such as Gigabit

Ethernet or additional RAID arrays. Otherwise, you

won’t see a significant speed difference between

an onboard RAID controller and a PCI device.

Expect that to change with the upcoming

advent of the PCI Express 1x slot, which will chug

along at a whopping 500MB/s—a welcome devel-

opment, for sure.

The performance

difference between

an onboard RAID con-

troller and a PCI add-in

card such as this Promise

FastTrack unit is negligible,

unless your PCI bus is a limitation.

AUGUST 2004 MAXIMUMPC