Building Tower For 1st Time, Please Help :)

Tejasmed: Quiet, really quiet? That's in stark contrast to everything else Thermaltake have ever made. Despite their completly false sound labelling, Thermaltake products are usually among the loudest in their market, with the exception of the PSUs.
Abuzar: You think I like the dust? Oh no, I loathe it, but I simply can't be bothered to wipe it down every few hours.
Tejasmed: Haha, I solve all those issues with a 30" PC monitor. Big enough for watching films etc, and more than three times the resolution (and therefore desktop space) of a standard 17/19" monitor. Triple monitor setup? I'll take my single thanks, and still have more pixels!

 

Sam, I was just joking. See the craigslist listing? After seeing a pic of my room I would have to be a hypocrite to make fun of you.

 

Sammorris:
30" ? envy envy.....oh well, I did good this year graduating from 15 inch to two 19 inch flat Samsungs. If my bud that does Warcraft had a 30" he would be in hog's heaven.
As far as the noise. You have probably been doing far more up grades than I have, and would know the difference. The last couple of machines were so loud that I could hear the fans in the next room. The new units are way quieter in comparison. Playing light shows for the rock bands in the late 60's sorta knocked out some of the low frequencies, but I still have better hearing than most at my age.

As far as doing research, I subscribe to PC Mag, and follow the forums. Being an old Ham Operator and tinkerer helps too.
Technology seems to change so fast. It is hard financially to keep up with the Joneses. Just think, in the next couple of years we will be forced to digital TV, USB 2 will jump to USB 3, and a new version of digital .jpg will come out. We may be forced into Vista, but according to Dorvak at PC, Gates is having second thoughts because of all the negative reaction. I hate this war with HD and Blue Ray.

Fed X just arrived with the new board for the Pent 4, so I will dive in and get started. Should be interesting, the first thing I checked was there was a dead cmos battery and after checking the board and the manual, found the "clear" jumper had been left on pin 2 and 3 and needs to go back to normal on pin 1 and 2. Luckily I had read up on some reviews on this old style board and knew what to look for. Brand new out of the box, this would have drove someone else nuts for a while. Let you know later how it works.
Happy New Year and good tinkering....
Tejasmed

 

PC mag is actually useful? Just check toms hardware or anandtech from time to time and you'll keep yourself up to date. Also I like Toms Hardware's Holiday Buyer's Guide 2007 model lol.

 

Well my thread seems to be quite interesting now, lol..


I am still waiting to get money to build my machine.

 

Tejasmed: Hehe, well I have to say 2560x1600 is incredibly useful for RTS, although the demands on the GPU are pretty damn high for some games like Supreme Commander.
As for the noise, it's the same for me. My PCs used to be very noisy. I've progressively been upgrading them to the point where I fell asleep with them on and when I woke up I didn't even notice. It took the flash of the hard disk LED to make me remember! (I sleep about 3m or so from my PC)
USB3? Perhaps, if it could push a higher data rate it would be very useful for external hard drives
New JPEG? What's wrong with the old one?
Vista? Pff, no thanks. I intend to dual-boot with 64-bit Vista, but dear god, I would never use it as a primary OS. Expensive PCs should be fast!
HD vs Bluray is a sticky one, but of course there are less legitimate ways of solving that one! lol

 

Sammorris
I put the new board in the tower and booted it up.
Something really strange happened. Last week when I installed the ASROCK board, I formated and installed a fresh installation of Windows to the boot drive. Then the board died. When I installed the new Chips board,just now, Windows just booted up right from the loaded drive. Everything works fine and even connected to the internet. I did have to install a bunch of drivers again, and put the driver disk for the board in the CD to get the sound, but that is usually strange. Windows normally will not let you change a board out without making you re install and re register. It went right to the Windows up date and found some new stuff and did not flinch. Wonder if it had something to do with the fact that I was using the same Pent 4 chip I used on the other board.
Well, in any case, it saved me a whole lot of time.
Tejasmed

 

That's caused by the chipset change. If the new board uses a completely different chipset to the old one, Windows will usually make a fuss and you may have to reformat. If it's a similar chipset, even if the board manufacturer is different, you can slip the new board in, reinstall drivers and off you go.
As for the board failing, Asrock boards aren't great but they're far better quality than PC Chips, so don't be too surprised if that one goes wrong too.

 

SAMMORRIS
You are right about the Chips board, I read a lot of bad press on them, but after doing all the hunting for a board that still used Pent 4 and had an AGP slot in it, I figured I could get around most of the negative stuff and it would hold up for a couple of years and as I said, use it for work if I can get back into it. Most of the negative stuff was the lack of clear documentation. I had mentioned that knowing to look for a dead battery and watching the jumpers on any new board is just common defensive good sense. But, you either have to learn that the hard way, or get lucky and read the forums and benefit off someone else's grief.
I had been adding several extra pci cards over the past few years that gave me extra firewire and USB2, so the extra slots went to use right away. The Chips board did not have firewire or SATA. That Thermaltake tower gives you lots of room to put panels in the front. I am not that fond of the access ports in the top of the tower. In fact, the only connectors that you can readily use are the USB2 ports as they find pins on the boards with ease. The firewire and sound connections are all going to have to be traced and different connectors put on the leads. Even then, on both units, the Asus and the Chips are nightmares finding the pins.
So, for all those builders of super computers, you get what you pay for. If you want bells and whistles, you have to plan ahead, and save your money and invest in the board and case that will give you all your wishes.

I am not sure if we have exhausted this thread, but I think that there was a lot learned this week.
Anyone else got some new start up questions or problems?

Tejasmed

 

I've not had too much trouble in recent times. If there's one flaw with the P35C-DS3R board I use it's that the positioning of the front panel connectors was a pain, but believe it or not the cruddy Asus board I had before that was brilliant for that. It had a long plug you put all the connectors into in a convenient location (all labelled) and then when done you inserted the whole unit. Made a lot of sense that did!

 

Sammorris

Yep, the Asus board had a neat block all marked up, and you just added the plugs and plugged the whole thing in the board.
The Chips board and the old board required a magnifying glass and flashlight. And of course, the manual. I have a small maglight and a magnifying glass on the desk at all times.

I noticed that most boards now do not have dual imputs on them for CD roms for the audio to the board. I always have two CD/DVDs installed. They make a connector that goes from both units into one connector on the board. As far as audio goes, you would only use one drive at a time anyway. I have two drives for faster copy of disks. So, if anyone is interested, two drives can share the same audio input port on the board, you will just have to get the special cable, or make your own.

I already had a pci card in for extra Firewire, and it had a connector to hook to the front panel. It worked right off.

I tried to add one last board into the slots and it locked up Windows and would not let it start.
It is a pci board for extra USB2. There is something in the bios that needs to be set. Will try again and see if the bios cooperates.

Tejasmed

 

They're analog connectors. I've used digital audio playback on all my CD drives for years.

 

You guys actually plug in the CD rom audio? Does it make a difference?

 

Abuzar1
Sammorris:

I suppose that is another thing I learned this week. I guess that the audio was so bad on the last board, that the jumpers were all that were making it work.

I finally got the last pci slot to work last night.
The cheap new board did not have a LAN socket, so I had added a high speed lan card in one of the slots so I could get to the internet.
In the bios there were too many IRQs being used up with all the cards being used. I went into the bios and told it not to allocate an IRQ for a pci slot, since it was using agp. Then told it to disable the parallel port on board, and the modem which it did not have anyway. I had a high speed modem in one of the slots. Well, that freed up the IRQs I needed. Windows went back to working again.
Anyone else would have probably took a hammer to the thing, but I am a sucker for Chinese puzzles.
Problem is, I still have not been able to solve the Rubik's Cube and I even down loaded the solution from the internet.

So, what have we learned this week? Again, you get what you pay for.
If you are cheap, you can kluge together a "Mad Max" monster machine out of spare parts and bailing wire, or you can break the bank and shell out for latest tested and proven gear. Even that might not work if you don't read the manual.

When we were fledgling "Hams" we usually found an "Elmer". An Elmer was always the guy that knew just a bit more than you, and was always there to help. I guess today, we have the forums as Elmers, and we have have guys like you two as computer Elmers. I just have a problem with some of the smart alecs on some of the forums. They think they know everything. In real life, those are the ones I would never trust to go on patol with, or go hunting with.

I guess I will have to shut down over the weekend, the dreaded "help the wife take down the decoratons time" is at hand.

Regards, guys,

Tejasmed

 

Haha nice

 

As far as I know, only the Windows 98 CD player has used that cable. No matter how bad the board seemed, if you use XP or 2000 it shouldn't be necessary.

 

tesjasmed, you go hunting? I used to go hunt deer back home. When I came here I even bought a Ruger Mini-30 as I wasn't allowed to carry firearms over. I don't know how it works here though.

 

The comment about hunting is a bit out of context with the thread, but I will answer it. I used to like to go camping on the weekend. Some of the guys liked to hunt, I would go to just be cook and bottle washer. Later, I became a Ham, they would go on field trips. I still wound up being a cook and bottle washer. But, I learned electronics, and we had some real gyro gearloose characters along with the super geeks, and the real techs. You learned something from all of them. But, some were just not enjoyable enough to sanction the cost of time to get the education. Over the years, I had to learn the hard way, if you spend all your time around people that are pulling you down, or put you in danger, you are just being stupid. Hence the comment about hunting and having a trusted partner on patrol.
With the forums, especially this last week or so, I have learned to correct at least 12 mis conceptions I had, and several hours of labor and frustration avoided. I prefer being in the company of people actually contributing and solving problems and situations.

I decided killing was not my bag, so hunting was out. Instead, I decided to be a Texas Chili Cook. That allowed me to camp, cook, and communicate with all my friends on internet. Time spent building and learning about computers was put to use being one of the first to form a website for Chili Cooks. The practical knowledge of computer use made me more valuable in my normal day job. When digital photography finally came along, I blended it in with the computer knowledge. Photography was something I always loved, but could not afford. Now, I have two great machines whirring next to me thanks to a lot of help from the forum.
Tejasmed

 

Sammorris:
Back to serious stuff.
Probably need to start a new thread. Let me know if I should.
You mentioned something about Putty, a program.

In keeping with the theme of the thread, about building a new computer, Say, you have the old computer, and now the new computer.
Windows XP has some sort of built in program that will transfer files from the old to new.
That is one way.

We learned that if the chipset is about the same, you can swap over the drives.
Mostly, that won't work, and you have to re-install everything.

Most people will buy a new hard drive, use it to install Windows, and use the old drive as a slave on the new machine and move some files over.

With Maxtor units, you can use Max Blast 5 and it will clone your old drive, as long as you use a new Maxtor for the new drive.

I have a Maxtor USB/Firewire 300 ext drive that I use to swap stuff back and forth with.

I finally got the USB cable link to work between the two computers. It is slow, but the files can be swapped as needed. (I may have built a Power Point presentation on the big computer with all the art work, and it is a simple thing to move it over to the other machine. The files are usually too big to send across the internet.)

There is a way to make both machines be a network with cat 5/6
Which I never could get to work.

Granted, you don't normally have your machines talk to each other, but it would be interesting to hear opinions and hear from others on this.

When Josh finally gets the new rig built, he is going to have to face transfering over some old files.

Tejasmed

 

I couldn't put the hard drives i already have into my new machine once i get all the parts?? Thats what i was planing to do...