The Machine (my PC)

[Melkorus]

Last part has arrived today, my case....it's REALLY HEAVY, some 40 lb with power supply only.

It arrived today about 1 hour before I had to take off for work so I didn't have time to put everything together. I assambled power supply, front fan and DVD drive into the case. Mounted CPU and heatsink onto motherboard and put in RAM as well.

When I get home, got to put hard drives in, mount the motherboard into the case, put in video card, and finally connect all cables......which is probably going to take A LONG time.

Basically my own journal ...very excited about putting it all together

[DunWolf]

Grats. Hope installation goes well. You bought some neons and a window...right

[Melkorus]

Originally Posted by DunWolf

Grats. Hope installation goes well. You bought some neons and a window...right

hehe no. Not into that stuff, plus I got to keep it "dark" and silent when I use it at night as my son will be sleeping few yards away from it. This is the case I got btw. Off I go now, workday is over and PC is waiting to be brought to life at home :d

[DunWolf]

I like it. I have the Ultra Black Aluminus. It's amazing how so many cases look so similar. Antec, Ultra, iStarUSA,etc. I really like how the cases change somewhat from one model to the next. The fold out door, sliding mobo tray, quick release HDbays, pretty much all tooless. How did we ever get along before those quality of life items?

[Torr]

I like to mount the motherboard to the case before I put the PS or DVD in, but that's just me. I prefer to get it mounted and inside the case as soon as possible. Have you built many comps? Don't listen to heatsink instructions if they say to put a very thin layer of thermal grease... it's better to make sure the core is covered than to worry about it being thin. Any missing spots for the thermal grease can make your CPU run much hotter.

Anyway, sounds like things are going well for you. Give us another update when you turn it on! Always fun to build a new system... I love that "burning in" smell.

[Melkorus]

All components are in and it fired right up. I'm having trouble with RAID tho, it's a known issue with this mobo. Right now working on costum Win XP to itergrate RAID drivers. If everything goes well, I will be posting from that new PC tonight after work sometimes.

I am also starting to wonder about amount of thermal paste. I went with instuctions on AS website, and I'm not happy with the temps. 40 C both on CPU and Motherboard while in BIOS, that's not good. I have 2 120mm intake fans, one blowing fresh air directly over CPU (side duct) and one in front. 2 more 120mm as outake (rear and PS). Will have to experiment with it once I get into Windows. Perhaps the sensors are not functioning right, because there is absolutely no changes when turn intake fans to max and when I turn them off(they blow A LOT of air). I touched most of the metal components on the mobo and they actually feel a little cold rather than hot.

[Torr]

Yeah I use AS too. Remember a couple of things:

1. Like I said, it's better to cover the core than to apply a perfectly thin layer. Hopefully your problem isn't that. but it's fixable.

2. It takes about 200 hours of use to notice the effects of Arctic Silver, and you have to turn the computer off after use during that time so the compound can cool off than warm up than cool off again, etc.

3. Do you have an adjustable speed fan on your CPU? You can usually tell because they have a little white wire along with the other two. If so, go into your BIOS and look for advanced settings for your fans. For example, my CPU fan was factory set at 10/15. I told the motherboard to send more voltage to make it run faster, setting it at 14/15 (or 14 out of a max of 15).

4. Are you going by the temp probe of the motherboard? They put a probe underneath the CPU, which is somewhat inaccurate. Because it's inaccurate the BIOS will add about 5 degrees to your number as a "conversion factor". Best bet is the get Windows software that gives you more accurate feedback. For example, I'm using an Asus MB, so there's a program that company has called "ASUS probe", that shows me CPU and Motherboard heat, fan speed, as well as the voltages coming off my PS. My CPU runs at 35, up to 45 under a load, my MB never gets above 30, my CPU fan runs at about 5300 RPM (for an Athlon XP processor). I just installed a new CPU fan so I haven't completed the 200 hour process yet, hoping to get it more around 30-40 under a load. I have a front 120mm fan, a side one near my GPU, two rear fans.

Hope one of those things helps... remember that different CPUs run at different temperatures as well.

[Melkorus]

Yeah I'll wait till I get into windows before making any decision to replace heatsink/fan or thermal paste. I didn't really look through BIOS, but I don't think that this stock heatsink fan has variable speed.

Will worry about that once I get into windows. I discovered some bad news before I took off for work. I was messing around some more trying to install windows xp and I tried to "reformat" my RAID set again, it said something like "fromating failed. drive is damaged or defective. check blah blah blah". I already refomated once last night, didn't get that msg. I started reformating last night and I went to bed because it was very late and that was taking a long time, when I woke up in the morning, I continued window setup only to have tons of "Failed to copy <insert filename here>" msges. I went throug 3 different windows CDs (2 xps and 2000), and it always gave me failed to copy. I didn't bother reformating the drives again until later tonight (as I mentioned above) and now it can't reformat. It appears that one or both drives failed when I left them on last night.

Will have to test them seperately and see if, and which, it is bad HDs or something else. If they both appear to work fine as single HDs, I'll just use my old HD to install windows and then copy that entire HD to RAID setup, if RAID is actually recognized by windows.

*headache* *sigh*

[Melkorus]

UPDATE:

Heh, gotta hate computers sometimes. I got home and I tested each HD seperately, they worked just fine. I plug both of them in again to try my luck with RAID setup, and guess what, it works.....for no damn reason they both work this time. Currently installing winxp as I write this.....weird, I'm expecting something to go wrong tho lol, even if it's caused by thunderstorm that is currently in action here hehehe
*fingers crossed*

EDIT (typing as it progresses.....my diary to laugh at at later times ) :
missing streamci.dll .....i ignored it and instalation is continueing
missing "softraid" something...ignored, instalation continued.....
....got error msg about streamci.dll, had to click on it about 20 times before it went away...........
kaboom! I'm in. Windows installation completed!

[Haych]

Originally Posted by Drvanitus

EDIT (typing as it progresses.....my diary to laugh at at later times ) :
missing streamci.dll .....i ignored it and instalation is continueing
missing "softraid" something...ignored, instalation continued.....
....got error msg about streamci.dll, had to click on it about 20 times before it went away...........
kaboom! I'm in. Windows installation completed!

Better than having the blue screen of death pop up I'd say.