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The Official PC building thread!
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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4. October 2006 @ 15:30 |
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Holy crap, that's a jawdropping system you got there! Any particular questions or just a guide on how to do it all?
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aspire180
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4. October 2006 @ 19:10 |
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Ya think?...When I decided to take the plunge and build a PC for the first time, I wanted to do it right and at least have something I can grow into.
I've accomplished a few things today...I installed the PSU into the P180B cage, mounted the CPU onto the motherboard and the motherboard into the case...Mounted the 2 HDs, the optical Drives and sound card...Connected a few of the front panel wiring to the motherboard (USB, Firewire, Audio, Reset, etc.).
What I haven't done yet is connect the power cables from the modular PSU to each item within the PC, mount the Video Card, connect all the fans to PSU and flash BIOs or load OS.
Left the harder stuff for later =)...Been googling guides of the Antec P180 and getting some decent visuals but heading into very unfamiliar territory with the rest.
Suggestions?...Friend who is in CS (Busy at the moment, unfortunately) suggested not connecting HDs, Optical drives etc. and just booting to setup and going through Bios first...I skipped that and just tried to install everything I could.
Made sure I had plenty of cable length to traverse the case as well.
One question I already had was not knowing how to differentiate the 2 HDs from Slave and Master...I didn't see any jumpers/pins to demarcate which is which...The M/B seems to 'suggest' it's numbered as in SATA1, SATA2 guessing that SATA1 indicated Master and so on??
Apart from that, visual guides would be great!...These direction booklets with the PSU, M/B and Case are all conveniently low on the pictures.
Thanks for any help
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Senior Member
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5. October 2006 @ 02:02 |
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No worries about the hard drives, you say they are SATA and they arent bound by the same slave/master laws as the older drives. Simply plug your main drive in SATA 1 and storage drive in SATA 2.
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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5. October 2006 @ 02:43 |
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The harder stuff? You've done all the hard bits already!
For the video card installation, hold the card by the ends as is kinda shown here 
and then simply plug the card in that way round into the top PCI express 16x slot on the board.
The blue one is where you want the video board to go.
Fans aren't all plugged into the PSU:
This one is
But this one isn't. These three-pin connectors go into your motherboard fan header.
Your motherboard will probably only have one or two of those, if you have more than 2 fans with those type of connector (you may have 3 connectors but bear in mind your CPU fan will use one) then you may need to get one of these 
to power all the fans.
If you have legit windows XP, it's easy as pie. Turn the system on, open the cd drive, put the CD in, close it, and away you go, you'll be in the installatin process. XP doesn't need drives pre-formatting or anything like that any more.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 5. October 2006 @ 02:43
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Moderator
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5. October 2006 @ 02:47 |
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nice use of pics there sam, pics can definitely put the point across better than words sometimes..
Main PC ~ Intel C2Q Q6600 (G0 Stepping)/Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3/2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500/Zalman CNPS9700/Antec 900/Corsair HX 620W
Network ~ DD-WRT ~ 2node WDS-WPA2/AES ~ Buffalo WHR-G54S. 3node WPA2/AES ~ WRT54GS v6 (inc. WEP BSSID), WRT54G v2, WRT54G2 v1. *** Forum Rules *** |
AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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5. October 2006 @ 02:54 |
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Yeah, plus he asked for them! :-)
Thanks for the compliment by the way.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 5. October 2006 @ 02:54
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Moderator
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5. October 2006 @ 02:58 |
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no problem, i'm not so bad :P
Main PC ~ Intel C2Q Q6600 (G0 Stepping)/Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3/2GB Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500/Zalman CNPS9700/Antec 900/Corsair HX 620W
Network ~ DD-WRT ~ 2node WDS-WPA2/AES ~ Buffalo WHR-G54S. 3node WPA2/AES ~ WRT54GS v6 (inc. WEP BSSID), WRT54G v2, WRT54G2 v1. *** Forum Rules ***
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crowy
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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5. October 2006 @ 03:55 |
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creaky and sammorris,
That's so sweet LOL!!!!!
If the facts dont fit the theory, change the facts." -- Albert Einstein |
AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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5. October 2006 @ 04:37 |
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?
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ddp
Moderator
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5. October 2006 @ 07:23 |
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i know what crowy is talking about!!
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aspire180
Member
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5. October 2006 @ 07:38 |
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Sam, you ARE the man...Thanks a lot...Gotten many a great help on AfterDawn over the years...Great resource...Community help is where it's at.
I'll give it my 2nd go tonight after work and hoping things will boot up well, fingers crossed.
Just a question about BIOS and OS...Friends were suggesting to boot to BIOS first and flash BIOS with any new updates before going to OS, say with a floppy...Thoughts?
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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5. October 2006 @ 08:46 |
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DDP: Yeah I did too, especially after he PMed about it, but I didn't want to discuss it much. That's behind us now.
Aspire: I'm not sure whether that'll be necessary or not. I know why you've been suggested to do it, some boards don't accept Core 2 Duos straight away they need a BIOS flash first. If they don't you'll soon find out. It may indeed be wise to get a later BIOS revision (not a Beta) on floppy disk using your current machine and flash it before you begin. I don't know whether it's necessary with the P5B or not, but it won't do any harm to try as long as it's not a beta (and in many cases even they're alright, but no guarantees...)
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aspire180
Member
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5. October 2006 @ 08:51 |
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Then I'll go that route then, thanks Sam.
One other thing that came to mind.
I have a couple of older HDs that have around 100GB between the two of them...I was thinking to connect them as 3rd and 4th HDs and dumping what I REALLY want to keep onto the first 2 HDs rather than copying files onto DVD-Rs etc...What is the best way to do this with a Asus P5B (Evidently only 1 IDE slot) and the Antec P180B (Seems to hold only 2 HDs in the middle cage?
I have 2 optical drives connected in tandem to the one IDE slot on the M/B and I have plenty of SATA slots available but these older HDs are not SATA but IDE (One is a WD 75GB 7200 and the other Maxtor 25GB 7200).
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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5. October 2006 @ 08:56 |
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Well this is what I did with my old drives:
Just route two serial ATA slots to the back of the PC and plug those in. Easy to set up, and cost about £35 in total, half what I originally paid for one of my 250GB drives only a year ago.
I don't use two brackets, I swap the cable over, although I do happen to have another port at the front I could use.
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aspire180
Member
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5. October 2006 @ 09:06 |
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Heh heh...Sorry, I have NO idea what you just did there although that first pic with the cable looks like something that came with my Asus M/B...SERIOUS Noob with this so I got lost there with that.
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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5. October 2006 @ 10:02 |
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It's an external hard disk enclosure. You put your internal hard disk in it, and put the box on your desk. It uses its own external power brick, and you plug a serial ata cable from your motherboard to a backplate (which the cable comes with), then another (that comes with the box) to the enclosure itself. Allows you to use the hard disks outside your PC at full speed, not having to use the slow USB2.
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Senior Member
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5. October 2006 @ 10:31 |
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just a thought, is the backing plate for you heat sink on the back of the mobo?
that will be a kick arse rig, you might even give bigdk a run for his money in the bench mark scores if you oc it
with the ide drives it might be easier to get usb enclosers and run them off usb when you want to use them
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 5. October 2006 @ 10:35
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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5. October 2006 @ 11:07 |
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Well yeah but you can get S-ATA enclosures for IDE drives (they're actually cheaper than S-ATA to S-ATA I think!) and USB2 is a lot slower than S-ATA despite what the figures show. A drive should max at about 60MB/s which is what USB2 is supposed to offer. Serial ATA offers the full 60MB/s, most USB2 hard disks don't get much above 20MB/s.
A backing plate is something that goes in an expansion bay at the back of the PC, over one of the PCI slots. (ones that don't have anything on them and are just there to cover the hole are blanking plates). The backplate is actually the metal plate with the set of holes to match up with the integrated ports on the motherboard, USB ports, PS/2/parallel/serial/network/sound ports etc. Cases always come with one, but why i've no idea, motherboards come with one, and that one's usually right. It'd be an impressive coincidence if the backplate with your case matched your motherboard.
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aspire180
Member
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5. October 2006 @ 15:08 |
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Ahhh, lightbulb went on...Thanks Sam, a million...Much clearer to me now.
Yeah, I might be wrong because I have accumulated a pile of peripheral cables etc. but I think the SATA backplate adapter came with my Asus P5B Deluxe box and not the Antec P180B...Not sure.
Either way, I'll be giving it a go soon.
Not to disappoint, not likely to be OCing as I will likely will not be gaming outside of Freecell =)...Mainly want it for multimedia and multitasking purposes...Hoping to have a build that will last 5 years with some upgrade flexibility.
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AfterDawn Addict
4 product reviews
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5. October 2006 @ 15:27 |
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Yes it would have if you have one. Cases don't provide expansion bay stuff, only motherboards. You don't have to overclock mate, I must change my sig as my system is running stock at the moment. A software instability coincidentally appeared when I was OCing which I haven't resolved fully yet. If I OCed and it crashed I wouldn't know whether it was that or the overclock...
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aspire180
Member
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5. October 2006 @ 19:10 |
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Getting ready to power things up as I have finished (???) connecting everything and now just going over the Manuals from Asus (M/B), Antec (P180B), Corsair (PSU) and ATI (VideoCard) before I power up.
As to the suggestion about hooking up the internal IDE HDs (2 of them) externally with a SATA HD Enclosure via a SATA 2-PORT INTERNAL TO EXTERNAL PCI BRACKET, what's the considerations to make (Apart from low cost) for the sort of SATA HD Enclosure?...There are so many out there and want to spend as little as possible obviously...Any particular brands or things I should look out for in choosing one?
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aspire180
Member
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5. October 2006 @ 20:33 |
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So I powered up and got the Asus screen temporarily and then got an error that looked like this.
New CPU Installed.
Please enter Setup to configure your system.
Chassis Intruded!
Fatal Error...System Halted.
What's going on?
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crowy
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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5. October 2006 @ 22:50 |
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aspire180,
Have a look at your manual and see if you can disable the chassis intrusion prevention via jumpers on the mainboard.Try resetting the cmos.
Also try unplugging the seagate drive.
If the facts dont fit the theory, change the facts." -- Albert Einstein
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 5. October 2006 @ 23:14
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aspire180
Member
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5. October 2006 @ 23:16 |
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Looks like I circumvented that problem by clearing the CMOS...Into BIOS.
BTW, when flashing BIOS (Current version is 0302), do I need to go with each update of the BIOS or only with the most current one (0711)?
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crowy
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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5. October 2006 @ 23:18 |
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aspire180,
Usually the most current one is the best option.
If the facts dont fit the theory, change the facts." -- Albert Einstein
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