Putting all the Parts together

[Tonar]

Well I got all my low end parts in the mail yesterday and Fireman's stuff will be around soon. so I figured I would get a thread started.

I am going to start with Falconese's sugested first steps as he pointed out in the "contemplating a new PC" thread, number 1- 16

How and where do I burn a memtest disk?

Thanks for starting this up Tonar

~S~ Fireman

[B16Enk]

Good luck Tonar.

Do you want me to remove the 'Deserves a Ban :)' custom tag, or has it grown on you?

[Tonar]

Ha Ha,

[B16Enk]

How and where do I burn a memtest disk?

Download the ISO from here:

http://www.memtest86.com/memtest86-3.5.iso.zip

Burn it using:

http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm

[Fireman]

Here is some beginners advice courtesy of Falconise with regards to building your own rig:

Lots of great info Falconise!!!

It isn't nearly as hard as you would think, there are just a few things to do in the right order and it may go smooth as silk. There are a ton of tutorials on this on the web, as well as a ton of videos on youtube. Be sure to read (and watch) up on this as you are wating for the parts to arrive.

The CPU heatsink come preapplied with paste, it is as simple as plopping in onto the cpu, and pushing four posts down till they click. The only thing to watch out for is that the CPU is properly in the socket, and check that the posts are rotated in the right direction before pushing them in. More info on this below.

Quick and dirty list of steps I do regardless of system. Take your time and enjoy this, it can be quite addictive! I'll repost this in your assembly thread when you start it, and can answer any questions there.

I always pre-assemble the system on a table, actually booting it up and testing the ram with Memtest before going anywhere near the case or installing the OS.

1) Remove and inspect mobo, read through manual and check jumpers. Locate fan headers and all power connections. Taking it out of the box, remove the antistat wrapper, and place the mobo on top of the box with the foam protector underneath.

2) Check all other components for shipping damage.

3) Open and inspect the PSU. Straighten cables out as much as possible, gentally bending out the kinks in them. I sometimes bundle the cables straight out, and hang the unit from a nail in the wall to let the wieght of it straighten the cables for a day.

4) Open the CPU socket on the mobo, remove the plastic protector, and inspect that all the pins are nicely inline and none are bent. A maganfiying glass helps here, everything will be in neat rows if all is well. Replace the protector and close the socket till you have the CPU ready to plop in.

5) Open the CPU box, remove the CPU and place it on a piece of wood or rubber, safely away from being dropped or bumped. Take the CPU fan and throw it in the garbage. LOL, just kidding! Put it away for safe keeping just in case your Freezer dies or goes bad for some reason. When handling the CPU, I often wear latex gloves, the kind with NO powder on them. Keeps finger grease off.

6) Open the CPU socket in the mobo, and place the CPU in it. It will only fit one way, you will notice there is a keyway notch. Be sure not to drop it in, and keep it parallel to the socket when lowering it. There are a couple of gaps to allow your fingers to hold the CPU while doing this. If wearing gloves, you have plenty of time to figure this out. Without gloves, you only want to touch the CPU once! Close the lid, and carefully engage the lock making sure it doesn't spring out on you flipping the CPU out. Clean the top of the CPU with some isopropyl alcohol (99%), and a clean soft rag or some good paper towel.

7) Figure out the orienation of the Freezer, and check that the posts are rotated as far clockwise as they will go -- this is the lock position (turned the other way they will not lock). The fan should point towards the rear of the mobo (towards the I/O connections for mouse/keyboard etc. It should fit without touching anything on the mobo. Carefully hold it above the CPU, and lower it until the 4 posts fall into the holes in the mobo, then let it rest on top of the CPU. Push in the pins till they click, starting at one corner, then diagonal to the next corner, repeat with the other two posts. Plug in the fan cable to the CPU fan header of the mobo, routing it in a way that it will never get caught in the fan blades and is as hidden from view as possible.

Open the RAM, and place it in the yellow slots (nearest to the CPU). They are keyed as well and only fit one way. Don't force them in if they resist, check that you have them orientated correct.

9) Open the vid card and place it in the topmost PCIe slot (blue).

10) Get your PSU, place it above the mobo box, and get the appropriate connectors ready. At this point you will only need the main ATX line, the 8 pin EPS (or 2 x 4pin 12v), the PCIe 6 pin, and one sata power. Connect the man ATX line, the EPS line, and the PCIe 6 pin vid card line, making sure they snap in completely. Hold underneath the mobo when doing this, as the connections can be quite stiff with new components, you do not want the mobo flexing too much when you plug them in.

11) Get the SATA DVD out, place it beside the mobo box and system, and plug in the sata power to it. Open one sata data cable and plug it into the dvd, and the other end into the white or orange sata connection of the mobo (check the manual for what these are for, one of them should be for single drives or opticals, the other may be for an external sata connection which you do not want to use).

12) Plug in a PS2 keyboard, (a USB keyboard can cause problems at this point). Plug in a monitor to the vid card.

13) One more step and you are ready for the first boot. This mobo doesn't have an onboard power button, so you need some way to power it up. You can use an old button from a dead system, plugging it into the Front Panel connectors labled PWR using the little Q-Connector (they give you three of these, use the white one, the largest of the three). Or, if necessary, just put the Q-Connector on the FP headers, and use a flat head screwdriver to jump the two PWR pins together for a second to boot the system up. Note: one of the first changes I make in the BIOS is to allow keyboard startup, so you will not have to do this again, and only have to press the spacebar to boot up from now on.

14) Plug in the power to the PSU, turn on the switch on the back of it, and watch for some lites on the mobo to come alive. If nothing starts smoking, go ahead and hit the PWR button or jump with a screwdriver, keeping one hand on the power button of the PSU to turn it OFF in case of smoke or sparks.

15) It should boot fine, CPU fan spinning up and a single beep from the little speaker. Immediately hit the DEL key on the keyboard, and keep tapping it until you see the BIOS setup screen on the monitor.

16) Once in the BIOS, go to the Power page, and then Sensors. Watch the temperature of the CPU and turn off the power if it goes higher than 50 or 60 degrees -- this will mean the Freezer is not mounted correctly and will need to be addressed ASAP. Temps should be fine it all is well, and you can then snoop around the other sections of the BIOS. Change the keyboard startup setting, and set the system boot order to boot from the DVD. Save and exit. You will get an error that there is no bootable device, go ahead and power the system down by hitting the button in the back of the PSU. Congratulations! You just bench-tested the system!

To continue from here, you will need to burn a Memtest disk. I'll give you a link for that later, and tell you how to use it. Basically, it will verify that your CPU and RAM settings are stable and it will then be OK to try to load the OS on the hard disk. It is only after this, that I even consider moving everything into the case. If anything is wrong, you will just be pulling stuff out again, and it is risky as well as a PITA. While memtest is running, I will gut the case and prep it for assembly. Memtest testing can take a couple days, depending on how much you want to tweak the memory or overclock the CPU.

[Fireman]

Also From Falconise:

Their service departments is visible from the front desk at the location I pickup from. I've always been impressed at the attention they give to builds. Looking at the part boxes stacked up for the builds, these are not cookie cutter systems, but all quality stuff! Cable management is impressive. One of their employees has been doing DIY videos that are now on a youtube page they have. Unlike other outlets, they do care about what they are shipping people, and are quite knowledgable about anything an enthusiast would care about. Considering they offer an overclocking service where you can order your system pre-overclocked and stress tested with a warranty, I feel they are one of the few Canadian outlets that actually know what they are doing.

Here is their Youtube page:

http://www.youtube.com/user/NCIXcom

This Linus Sebastian is a young strapper, but that's what you want in this business!

[Tonar]

Yup I have been referencing that.

I am about to the point of pushing the power switch

[Fireman]

yeah I was surprised at the memtest thing.

I just assumed I'd slam the RAM in and when I turned it all on if Windows told me I had 4 gigs then I'd be good to go....lol

[Fireman]

Again from Falconise.

Regarding the memtest:

The more memory you have, the longer it takes. A single full pass of 2GB of fast ram in a fast system may take 30 minutes to an hour. Double that for 4GB of ram.

Running a single full pass is just a starting point. I usually run a few full passes, then 20 passes of test 5. Repeat for every change I make in the BIOS. See how it can start consuming time?

If a DIMM fails......It may not be the dimm, it may just be a setting, or perhaps swapping the sticks in the slots may help. First thing to do is pull the good stick and run just the one that errored. Run a full pass, see what happens. If it still errors, you can then tweak the timings settings to see if you can settle it down... it really depends on what test it errored on. If you settle it down, then add the second stick and see if it is still ok. If we can determine that the stick is bad, you are best to not run it at all, it can hose your operating system.

Memtest may seem quite simple at first glance, but it really is a very powerful tool when used right, and has a lot of options hidden away. For the most part, it is used in a process of elimination to determine problems or perhaps if changes made in the BIOS are stable and improve performance or not.

When overclocking, passing memtest is no garuntee that the system will be stable in the OS. However, if memtest errors you can be damn sure the OS will not load safely.

You can leave overclocking alone, or until you get interested in it. Power savings and sleep functions work best with stock settings anyway. However, stock settings don't necessarily mean AUTO. You can run stock speed with manual settings and get a pretty good boost in performance. Tweaking the memory falls under this.

For example, you purchased DDR2-1066 memory that is rated to run at 1066MHz. However, the mobo when set to auto will most likely run the ram at 800MHz (which is the industry standard speed for DDR2 ram). To get the ram running at 1066MHz you will have to make some changes in the BIOS, and then verify that things are stable with Memtest, and then in the OS by running some stress programs. If the settings are not stable, you can hose your OS install real easy, and at the very least the computer will crash or bluescreen.

[Tonar]

Well I did it.

All put together waiting for power

After pushing the button.. Notice the successful blue boot up screen

[Fireman]

ya know........why do we even bother with a case?

[FoolTrottel]

37C is perfect... I think...

But, what worries me, is your setup-without-casing.

I've done that before, and everytime I tried it, it nearly ended up in disaster... me being uncareful, moving some parts inadvertently... cats running about...

And, technically, are things earthed correctly this way?

Looks good though, job well done!

[Tonar]

I'm using a nice grounding strap as a precaution.

[FoolTrottel]

Ah, I mssed that thing on the strap, and looking closer, I now do see it in the picture!

[Tonar]

I bummed it from work

[Fireman]

cant be sure....

I know when I tried burning as a file/"straight data" so to speak it did not work using nero.

I downloaded a piece of software called CDBurnerXP and burned it as an image and it worked.

I think the drag and drop method just copies the file to the CD but doesnt create an image the cd drive recognizes

[Tonar]

I got it under control... I was just having a hard time using the ISO software Rog sent me.

[Tonar]

Now that I have burned the image to a CD... am I correct in assuming that I just startup the new PC with the CD in the drive and have it search for something bootable.. which will then start this memtest program?

[Fireman]

yep...if your bios is set to boot from cd/dvd drive first it should see the image and start itself up.

I didnt get into all that techno crap Falconise was talking about when I used it last week on my daughters PC, I just let it do its thing and it found an error.

[Tonar]

Currently running on 2 hours for the memtest and it is 50% done.

[Fireman]

Currently running on 2 hours for the memtest and it is 50% done.

[Snacko]

You need to build yourself a custom case for that puppy Tonar.

[Tonar]

Currently running on 2 hours for the memtest and it is 50% done.

[Tonar]

I think it is in a loop and has passed the full set of test 9 times ??

I am going to stoo it and Try the OS

[Tonar]

Complete success !!!!

I have installed Windows XP and she is good to go in the case.