The (new) Official PC building thread!

Pepp77: thanks for the links i will look at them and give it a go.

sammorris: thanks i will give it a try.

 

amen to that, although i myself am impatient i learned the hard way, I spent 800$ bucks on a few new computer parts, and heres were i went wrong ... i left the power connection for the cpu fan unconnected, me being just a dumb sh*t just shut the case, plugged her up and
after 40 minutes of gaming (F.E.A.R) the graphics started to get blocky and the game started to freeze, i then got a blue screen of death and prayed it was the cheap RAM i bought... i opened the case to find a bubble on my AMD (melted), and a nice amount of smoke coming from it, from then on i double check everything!

just another war story
-tripplite

 

whoa thats a really bad mistake!

seriously i need to convince my mom, so she can let me buy computers online, i need a new mobo and psu

 

tripp I think we all have those stories or something similar. It takes a "real" man to admit when he makes a mistake. lol.

I put together a little rig for my kiddies, they haven't used it yet. lol. Gotta buy them a desk first.

Anyway I had all these parts laying around waiting for me to build an AMD single core system. I thru it together and had issues installing windows which was a 'bad' HDD (used) so I got another one and it went just fine. I then started installing monitoring progies and things like that. When I started up the first monitoring progie it indicated I was running about 60C and I figured "hey that's wrong". lol. So I tried another one. It was up to about 75C by then. So I started frantically searching out problems. The frikkin cpu cooler fan wasn't spinning. By the time I turned the puter off it was up to 90C. Oooops... It was a mobo fan plug problem and I fixed it with little effort. lol. Of course I thought the cpu was GONE... I started the puter back up and the fan ran, yeah, BUT to my surprise the computer runs just fine. I ran Orthos for a few minutes and it was fine. NO Oc'in of course. It's an internet beater. lol.

MORAL of the story: LUCK was on my side and we all make mistakes. Hopefully if you make mistakes they're NOT computer threatening. lol.

GOOD LUCK to ALL!!!

...gm

EDIT:
Thought that I would add some pix for you that requested.....

pic 3

pic 4

pic 5

 

Correct me if I'm wrong Gm, but isn't your PSU upside-down? or rather, the right way up at the bottom of the case (and therefore wrong)? Or does the coolermaster case only let you put PSUs the usual way up?

Loving the green S-ATA cables...

 

yeah the psu is right way up!

Wow, green sata cables, and how many drives do you have? and what gpu do you have?

hey there is a spider next to your pc, in the 3rd pic.

@All
Is X38 and good chipset? My friend said it's not that good, X48 is better

 

While you're here Loco, what's the governing rule on lengths of lines for signatures? In my normal size window for afterdawn GTR's sig is 5 lines, it's six if I contract. What screen resolution are those rules set for?

 

Right Im finally ready to start my build

GA-P35C-DS3R
E8200
Corsair XMS2 CAS4 800Mhz Ram (2 x 1 gig)
Arctic Freezer 7 Pro
CM-690 Case
2 x Optiarc 6170AD Opticals
1 x 250 and 1 x 500 SATA internal drives
Sapphire 2600XT 512mb GDDR3


Have spent the best part of the morning and afternoon getting my old PC in a saleable position, cant do it after the build as I only have one PSU

Had a couple of minor blips the first was that I removed one of my drives from the old comp to test an operating system on the other and didnt want to accidentily format the second drive with its 400 gig of backups on lol, then when I turned the PC back on it wouldnt post, it just sat there before even the first beep - this PC usually beeps twice about 10 secs apart if okay. When I looked inside the comp the power cable for the 2nd drive had become dislodged - I thought it strange as i didnt realise this would cause my PC to not post - I thought it would say no Drive or something.

After finishing that test I also then removed that drive and replaced it with an 80gig IDE drive (the others are SATA) and replaced both the optical drives with a spare I have. I set the HDD to master and the ODD to Slave on their jumpers. Now the IDE cable I have is too short to connect the blue connector to the motherboard and the grey and black to slave/master, I assumed the cables were basically the same inside as the pinouts all match on each socket, so I connected them in such a way that they would fit. But when I turned it on again I thought it wasnt going to post but then after about 20 seconds the drives get recognised and it posts fine. At first I thought it might have been because it had 3 FAT32 partitions on it, but its still doing it after Ive reformated it to one NTFS partition. If I check in BIOS it shows the HDD as master and the ODD as slave, and the boot sequence is set to CD/DVD then HDD, so I cannot think what is causing the delay apart from the cable being in the wrong order but that doesnt make sense to me.

Now time to go install the CPU and Heatsink on my new build

 

@LOCOENG
changed it...it should read 5lines

 

Well that was easier than I thought - the CPU and heatsink slipped on very easily (thankfully).

 

Does Thermalright Ultra 120 fit on any any mobo?

 

did ya remember to use some artic silver 5 paste on the CPU? nice thin layer...

i'll be gone for a while gotta go to the DR. been up all night sicker than a old dog...

 

The arctic 7 comes with a good thermal paste (from what Ive read) already applied - so it was just a case of plugging it in.

One thing I am trying to work out as neither motherboard nor case say is the coloured or white cable the positive for the front connectors (ie HDD light and power)?


Edit - Mystery solved with the slow posting on the old PC - I replaced the IDE cable an it now boots into windows in about 20 seconds total (clean install).

 

Are you trying to figure which way your front panel wiring goe's the board is marked positive and negitive for the plugs and case wiring should be also..i saw in on cincyrob case when he brought it to work ya'll got the same case different board you got the same board as me..i believe but i stepped up to the ga-ep35c.. rev 2.1 had the p35c..2.0 but the wiring all the same..

 

Yep exactly that - the board is marked as positive and negative but the case cables are not - they are all 2 cables joined at the connector end (so the connector is one 2 plug connector and not two 1 plug connectors) and labelled up as HDD LED, PWR LED etc, but none say which cable is positive and which is negative. I think Ive read somewhere that the writing should always face out - which would make it easy, but I dont know if Im imagining that I read that or not. Also the PWE LED cable is a 2 pin - and the one on the board is a 3 pin, I assume I connect to a positive and a negative pin - not two negative lol, but then theres still the issue of which way round it should go as that header is vertically not horizontally aligned on the board unlike the front header, so theres no way to use the writing facing out rule.

 

GTR: It does, for screen resolutions 1280x1024 and above.
Pepp: As long as it's a decent PSU, then don't worry.
As for the drive, plugging in the power but not the data will never affect a PC, but plugging in the data but no power will often hang the PC before POST as it checks the IDE controllers.
I don't know what would cause the time delay though. Aha, a faulty cable, yeah that makes sense.
The Ultra 120 doesn't come with it pre-applied, but does come with thermal paste. Arctic silver V is much better than what Thermalright provide though.

 

I would have say sense you got the same case as cincyrob.yall two should have the same wiring hook up pattern..I know you got the gigabtye manual turn page 28 front panel header there should circle around the diagram.i know what your talking about the power led
connection mine is in the 3 pin facing vertically with the positive on top..but my case is different than your..i gorget who got a 690 case in here beside cincy..o Greensman do that's right..I'm the Clear case man of them all.i'm heading to work..i'll tell cincyrob to give you a holla on that issue..if no one bets me to it..lol

(Edit: Cincyrob called in sick..I'm left in charge tonite..Get well Cincy..)

@gm..yes he did..lol

 

Thought Id post some pics for all those that like pics:-

Main Pic

Back - managed to route main power cable and can hide 8 pin cable

Front

Inside 1

Inside 2

And some pics of those pesky front panel connections - if anyone can shed any light on if they are right or wrong that would be great:-

HDD and reset

Power LED

Power SW