Yourself
12-19-2007, 05:00 PM
Okay....I'm taking the plunge.
I ordered the parts for a new system - they should start arriving today or tomorrow.
If anyone is interested, I will detail my build and process along the way (please post if you're interested).
If so, it will include my trials and tribulations.....more specifically, that of my son as I will instruct him but allow him to do the bulk of the work as I've been extremely limited in time lately.
My intent is for this to be a decent higher-end gaming system and also to be used by my son for guitar/music/midi composition/recording/mixing.
I plan on doing a minor overclock - nothing esoteric; I just want to get a decent bang for my buck.
I also plan on piecing the new stuff with parts and equipment I already have on hand - I already have decent monitors, keyboard, mouse, unopened LightScribe capable DVD burner, and unopened Windows XP.
I think I've had to purchase everything else - so far, the total is USD $805.92. That does not include shipping, and there is a $15.00 mail-in-rebate that will be coming. I took advantage of several specials, and I purchased everything from http://www.newegg.com/.
Also, if anyone actually replies, let me know if there's any specific format you want me to report it in, and if you want it day-by-day.
I plan on just detailing day-by-day, and updating this first post to include everything.
I will reserve the second post, as I don't know if there's any limitations to post size.
Look forward to hearing from anyone.
<Post updates to follow>
=============================
Audio intentions (updated 29 Dec 2007)
=============================
My son plans on making it a home recording/mixing studio, and is planning on using an M-Audio Fast Track Pro USB audio/midi interface (http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/FastTrackPro-main.html) to tie his guitars, midi keyboards, and microphones into the system. We already have the Fast Track Pro, however it does not work with any of the computers we have. We initially installed it on a laptop that we had, and it worked well. We then tried to make a music station out of it, and docked the laptop into a docking station. Since that time, it has not worked - it throws a USB BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) everytime it is plugged in. That also happens on the other systems we have in the house. I find by doing some research that it is a probably interrupt sharing issue, so I hope to be able to address the interrupt situation during the build.
He is planning on using ProTools and/or Sonic on the software side....I think he already has Sonic. He also has a modified version of ProTools that came with the Fast Track Pro, but it's not a full version.
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Parts list with some thoughts and justifications/explanations (updated 29 Dec 2007)
================================================== =========
ABIT IP35-E LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail ($89.99) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127031). Fairly inexpensive motherboard that has decent overclocking potential, and supports 1066 and 1333 mhz FSB speeds. It pretty much has everything I need for this build - for the intended purposes, I don't think putting more money into the motherboard will be money well spent.
POWERCOLOR AX3870 Radeon HD 3870 512MB 256-bit GDDR4 PCI Express 2.0 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail ($249.99) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102713). Actually, this links to the Sapphire version, as NewEgg doesn't list the PowerColor that I ordered any more. I decided to go with the 3870 for a few reasons. Number one, it was ACTUALLY IN STOCK; number two, it was at MSRP, not significantly marked up over MSRP as the 8800GT is/was at the time; number three, it is at the top end of the fastest cards available (NOT the fastest); number four, it has a dual-slot cooling solution, so it exhausts air outside of the case, not into the case; number five, the AMD Crossfire dual-card solution scales better than the NVIDIA SLI dual-card solution. (http://en.expreview.com/?p=53&page=4); number 6, I wanted to get at least 512 meg of ram, as higher resolutions and higher AA levels eat up the ram; and number 7, both Intel and AMD chipsets support Crossfire, but only NVIDIA supports SLI - therefore, I potentially have more choices if I choose to go this route. My near-term intended gaming resolution is 1920 x 1200 (a 24" LCD), and long-term resolution will be either 1680 x 1050 (a 22" LCD), 1280 x 1024 (single 19" LCD), or 2560 x 1024 (dual 19" LCD's).
In a real gaming environment, if this card won't run something at a playable rate, no cards currently available will either.
I don't usually overclock a video card, as they generally run hot enough. I did seriously consider the 3850 as that is an excellent card for the price and perfect for 1280 x 1024 resolutions, but I wanted a bit better cooling solution due to my intended processor overclock. Adding a new dual-slot cooler to the 3850 brought it to almost the same price as the 3870, and I wouldn't void any warranties by using the stock 3870.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (Perpendicular Recording) ST3250620AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM ($64.99) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148144). I didn't have any extra SATA hard drives laying around. I wanted a 7200 RPM drive for the raw platter speed, and the 16 meg cache to help sustain I/O. I kept this relatively inexpensive, as the real-world gains of much more expensive drives are not worth the cost in my opinion. I don't plan on implementing RAID in this system, so that wasn't a consideration for the motherboard.
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ - Retail (4 x 1 gig total $93.98) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231098). I just couldn't pass up $40.00 off per 2 gig matched set for decent ram. I bought 4 gig, for a savings of $80.00 (4 gig for almost the price of 2 gig). I decided to go with the 4 gig because I wanted more than 2 gig in the machine. I know that I will only get an effective use of about 3.2 gig or so of ram due to my choice of XP, however the same limitations apply to Vista (NOT Vista 64).
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz LGA 775 Dual-Core Processor Model BX80557E6750 - Retail ($189.99) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115029). I chose to go with Intel because of the overclocking potential. That put my choices at the e4x00 series, the e6x00 series, and the q6x00 series. I didn't think that the intended use of this system would stress a quad core processor (no video processing), and among the dual-cores, the e6750 appeared to have the edge with a 2.66 mhz stock clock speed and a 4 meg cache. I discounted the e2xxx series just due to the cache - while they overclock very well, they are limited in performance because of the limited cache. That brought me into the e4x00 area, and those native clocks were slower and they had less cache for around $40-$50 less. Keep in mind that there are no guarantees to overclocking - so there is a chance I will be stuck at stock clock speeds. Taking that into consideration, I decided on the e6750 at a 2.66 stock clock. It was almost $100 cheaper than the q6600, and there are many documented cases of people getting the e6750 processor to 3.6 ghz on air - in all of my research, I've yet to see someone fail to get it over 2.8-3 ghz on air (but it may take replacing the stock CPU cooler).
APEVIA X-CRUISER-BK Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail ($64.99 + $15.00 MIR) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811144151). I didn't REALLY need a case, however I was concerned that among all of the cases I have sitting around here, none of them would offer good enough case cooling. Plus, my son thought the case was cool, and I agreed.
Rosewill RP550-2 ATX12V v2.01 550W Power Supply - Retail ($51.99) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817182017). Okay...I needed a power supply, and this provides enough power on the 12v rails to run the newer video cards, has enough power connectors to connect the auxiliary power to the new video cards and motherboards, and it has a cool blue LED fan that will match the case. Plus, it's a decent enough name in power supplies.
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Starting the build (updated 2 Jan 2008)
============================
[I was originally planning to document this day by day, however I haven't been able to keep up with it, so I'm just going to document the sequences rather than the days.]
The parts started to arrive, but I didn't get back from work until late.
Received the case, motherboard, processor, power supply, and video card. Shipment was late due to bad weather around Philly, and that postponed the hard drive and memory an additional day.
Shucks....well, we can get started building, checking BIOS, disabling onboard features to attempt the M-Audio installation, etc.
Opened the case....what a sweet case.....and a whole bunch of internal connectors....don't know what they're all for, but a zillion of them.
No documentation with the case - going to have to play the installation by ear.
Okay...after pondering all of the connections for a couple of minutes, we see that most of them are power connectors....many are the case front connectors (hard drive light, power switch, reset switch, front panel USB ports, front panel audio ports), some are fan connectors, and one strange looking wire that ends in a 1/2" flat braid....aha...that's the front panel ambient temperature sensor (or so we guess).
A few bags of screws and miscellaneous equipment is in there...and there's a funny black doohicky on a short cable....a second aha...that's the internal speaker....shouldn't that have been with the motherboard?
Sheesh.......got that all sorted out.
Unpack the power supply.....heavy thing, and exactly matches the case....how nice. A zillion cables and connectors....and a manual. We promptly disregard the manual (we're REAL MEN, of course).
Power supply installs without a hitch...takes about 5-10 minutes....hardest part is keeping the cables out of the way as we slide it into place.
Looking good so far!
We plug in the power supply, but keep the power supply switch in the "off" position - that way, the system is at least grounded so we don't accidentally discharge static electricity.
It didn't start on fire, or make a loud ZAP, so we figure we're doing well.
Unpack the motherboard...... Holy cow…lookit the size of that manual! Care to guess where it goes? Right! On top of the unused power supply manual. We’re men, remember?
Anyway…we look at the motherboard….exactly what I expected.....wait...how come there are 4-pin drive power connectors on the motherboard? We see two of them....never seen that before.
Oh...ok...one of them is for the extra fans, and one of them is additional power for the PCI-e 2.0 connector.
Still looking good.
The motherboard comes with a back panel cover plate.....we take the one out of the case and install the one from the motherboard. A bit hard to position properly, and I cut my finger a bit on a sharp edge. Takes about 4-5 minutes to get it installed and snugged. The original in the case was screwed in, but the new one snaps in - it isn't designed to be folded over and screwed in. It looks like it may fall out.
We mount the motherboard hex anchors (the 1/4" hex extenders that hold the motherboard off the side of the case), and position the motherboard. Takes a bit of wiggling to get the back panel ports to line up with the back panel cover plate, but it didn’t fall off...we have to slightly bend some of the attached spacers to get everything to fit. The motherboard screws in without any trouble at all.
Now, we have a case with a mess of wires....looks like a pot of multi-colored pasta exploded. We have wires coming from the power supply and also from the front of the case. After folding the wires outside of the case (laying them over the sides), we logically group them together.
We then unbox the processor. On top is a thick manual....who needs a manual for a processor? We quickly toss that aside also. I pick up the processor (after making sure I was grounded to the case) and we look at it with anticipation, probably expecting the Holy Grail. It looks like a processor - what a letdown. We pull off the protective covers on the motherboard by lifting the processor lock down plate, and make sure we have the processor oriented correctly - one of the corner nubs are missing (as designed), and we line that up with the proper corner of the socket - it goes in without any trouble, and we lock it down. It looks nice sitting there...all that power just waiting to be utilized. And, the Intel processors no longer have pins…they have little nubs, so NO MORE BENT PINS! YAY!
Shucks...I forgot my heatsink thermal grease....I usually use Artic Silver, and I can't find it. After a few minutes of searching through my stuff, I come back to re-check to see if any came with the processor - I didn't see any initially. I pick up the cooler/fan that came with the processor, and lo and behold...there's thermal tape already applied to the heatsink. All of my other processor purchases were oem purchases, so they didn't come with a heatsink. I usually received a tube of grease with the processor fan purchases, so I wasn't expecting thermal tape already affixed. Good....we can move forward. Probably would have saved a few minutes by reading the manual.
We position the heatsink over the processor, and line up the four mounting feet/pegs. It's a bit tricky pushing each down and turning the peg to lock it into place, but we finally get it - some of them pop back out as we move on to others. We finally get them all locked down, and are satisfied that they are locked and stable. We didn't think so pushing them in, but now that it's in, it does feel secure. We connect the fan connector from the processor heatsink to the CPU fan connector on the motherboard. It takes about 15-20 minutes to get the processor and heatsink in place, excluding the 10-15 minutes of looking for my thermal grease that I couldn't find and didn't need.
Now, our attention turns to that explosion of cables.
We start by connecting the front panel connectors - the connectors are labeled, but not the same as the motherboard. Close enough. We plug in the audio (it only fits one way, as one of the receiving pin holes is blocked off to correlate with the missing mating pin) - no problem. We're on a roll.
We plug in the power switch connector, the hard drive led indicator, the reset switch connector, the system power indicator, and the system speaker. There is a single USB connector from the front panel, so we plug that into one of the 4 internal USB connectors.
Looking good!
We plug in the SATA power cables that came with the motherboard, and start matching up power connectors. We have to decide how to plug in all of the fan connectors and still route the wires out of the way, but get that finished.
It took about 20-30 minutes to connect all the connectors, route the wires, and recheck the connections.
We unbox the DVD writer that I had sitting in a box, and go to install it. It's a pain trying to get the case top drive bay cover plate out, but it finally comes out with a squished finger and a bit of persuasion. The lower ones all have stamped metal blocking them - looks like we'll have to twist them off or cut them off. Not looking forward to that, but we don't need them now. The PATA cable that came with the motherboard plugs in nicely, and reaches comfortably to the DVD writer. Power goes next - no problems. We plug the analog audio cable into the back of the DVD writer, but the other end won't reach to the connector on the far side of the motherboard. Well, we don't really need it, so we remove it.
We unbox the video card, and pause in awe....truly a thing of beauty! We go to plug it into the PCI-e 16X connector, but a problem arises....the back plane card slot connectors are stamped into the case, and they have to be twisted off (they are anchored at both ends). That's a pain - we actually bend the back plane metal a tad as we twist them off to accommodate the dual-slot video card. We'll have to do that for each back panel slot we need. We bend the metal back into position as good as we can, but we won't see it from outside the case. The video card gets plugged in, anchored in the back plane with the screws, and we connect the 6-pin PCI-e power connector from the power supply to the video card.
FINISHED! Altogether, it took about two and a half hours, including the explanations to my son.
We didn't receive the RAM or hard drive...but wait a minute.....one of my two existing Dell machines uses DDR2...and it has 1.5 gig of ram!
I swipe the two 512 meg sticks of DDR2 from the Dell and plug them in - they look out of place (all dusty and grimy).
Okay.....ready to turn it on to check BIOS version - I may have to update it to the latest version. Also, I want to disable the onboard audio so I am prepared to monkey with the M-Audio mixer.
Cross my fingers and power on...the system comes on...fans spin up... blue led's come on illuminating the case. How pretty.....sweet...really cool!
THEN...the whole system shuts down!
What the?
It powers itself back on.............and shuts down again!
It then powers on, and stays on, but nothing happens (no monitor signal, no DVD drive spinup...nothing....it just sits there spinning the fans.
Crud....I unplug it and start checking all of the connections.....everything looks fine.
Plug it in again, and power back on.....same thing!
Not even a system beep!
Great....a defective part in there somewhere.
Okay...tired enough to go to bed....gotta work the next day!
The ram and hard drive come while I'm at work...and I work late again.
I finally get home, grab a bite to eat, and drag my dejected self over to the machine.
My son opens the new ram....geez...it looks SWEET! I pull out the old ram and my son puts in the new ram......it really looks nice in there.
We try to power it up......the fans spin up, the blue leds light everything up...and it shuts down again!
It powers itself back on, and IT POSTS! WE GET A SYSTEM BEEP! No boot drive found! Well...duh...we didn't put one in!
The manual says that the system will automatically reboot after an unsuccessful boot, or an initial boot. I actually found that on the internet, but would’ve learned that if I (we) read the manual.
We're excited.....I check out the BIOS, and everything looks good.......CPU temperature looks good (great…..CPU fan and heatsink have a good connection)......everything checks out......looking good to go!
We install the SATA hard drive, and I put in a Windows BOOT XP. We start going through the installation process - since it's an upgrade version of XP, I dig out my Window ME installation disk and put it in when asked to.
It takes about 15 minutes for the full install, and then we're up and running. We haven't installed any extra motherboard devices, but we go ahead and reboot a few times to make sure everything is working.
Wow.......it boots to a usable XP desktop in just under 8 seconds...from post!
Sheesh...this system has some raw power!
Okay...now to burn a DVD image of the system. I boot off of my Ghost 2003 disk (my old standby just for these situations)...and it won't recognize the DVD-RAM drive....even though it's a PATA connection, it looks like some software is running from the motherboard on boot to emulate a SATA connection for it, and my version of GHOST won't work with a SATA writer.
Darn.
I reboot into Windows and install Partition Magic to make a 150 gig partition in the drive. Then, I installed Ghost, and ran it that way - I selected the options to make an image of the first partition to a file on the second partition, and it asks me to reboot....the system reboots, and GHOST starts the imaging process. Wow...we get over 1.3 gig/minute of throughput, and the backup is done in under 3 minutes.
That's our base installation backup.
We reboot, and install the video card drivers, then all of the remaining motherboard devices - including the audio.
I decide not to mess with overclocking or the M-Audio device until after my son goes back to school - that way, he'll be able to game with the many friends that come over.
But I can't help it.......I have to quickly try overclocking it. I reboot and go into the BIOS, and there are some simple settings there to change. I up it to 2.8 ghz (from the defaul 2.66 ghz) and reboot......it boots right into Windows and runs fine...Windows reports it at 2.8 ghz. Wee!....a bit of an overclock without any pain!
I reboot, make another BIOS change, save it, and reboot.....it reports 3.2 ghz at startup...then just beeps.
It figures......that was just too easy.....and too big of a jump. I power it off, then power it back on. It reset itself to default settings, and booted without a problem at 2.66 ghz.
I install and configure ZoneAlarm (firewall) and Grisoft's AVG (anti virus) and update them both.
My son installs Steam...and everything he runs gets eaten up by the system. Half-Life 2 at 1920 x 1200 with all settings maxed looks absolutely gorgeous!
My son and his friends are into a new MMORPG in beta called SHAIYA (or something like that) - it also looks fantastic at 1920 x 1200.
Got CoD4 and Crysis for Christmas....my son installed them both, and they both look amazing!
He's so infatuated with Crysis that he hasn't played CoD4....and I haven't had the time to try either of them.
The system won't run Crysis at max graphic settings at that resolution, but I never figured it would - I intend to run that system at either dual 1280 x 1024 (19" LCD) monitors, or at 1680 x 1050 (22" LCD) monitor, and that graphics card will be plenty.
Gawd....I'm amazed at how good everything looks on it.
I backup the system again after he has his games installed (about 30 gig on it already), and we sustain a ghost backup transfer speed of over 1.3 gig/minute…wow.
I’ll post back once I get a chance to play with it in some detail.
Overall, it would have taken us about 4-5 hours from scratch to a working system (including the knowledge I was imparting to my son).
A pretty easy build - the hardest part was figuring out all of the case cables, and I (we) should have waited until we had all the part for the system.
Yourself (Dave)
I ordered the parts for a new system - they should start arriving today or tomorrow.
If anyone is interested, I will detail my build and process along the way (please post if you're interested).
If so, it will include my trials and tribulations.....more specifically, that of my son as I will instruct him but allow him to do the bulk of the work as I've been extremely limited in time lately.
My intent is for this to be a decent higher-end gaming system and also to be used by my son for guitar/music/midi composition/recording/mixing.
I plan on doing a minor overclock - nothing esoteric; I just want to get a decent bang for my buck.
I also plan on piecing the new stuff with parts and equipment I already have on hand - I already have decent monitors, keyboard, mouse, unopened LightScribe capable DVD burner, and unopened Windows XP.
I think I've had to purchase everything else - so far, the total is USD $805.92. That does not include shipping, and there is a $15.00 mail-in-rebate that will be coming. I took advantage of several specials, and I purchased everything from http://www.newegg.com/.
Also, if anyone actually replies, let me know if there's any specific format you want me to report it in, and if you want it day-by-day.
I plan on just detailing day-by-day, and updating this first post to include everything.
I will reserve the second post, as I don't know if there's any limitations to post size.
Look forward to hearing from anyone.
<Post updates to follow>
=============================
Audio intentions (updated 29 Dec 2007)
=============================
My son plans on making it a home recording/mixing studio, and is planning on using an M-Audio Fast Track Pro USB audio/midi interface (http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/FastTrackPro-main.html) to tie his guitars, midi keyboards, and microphones into the system. We already have the Fast Track Pro, however it does not work with any of the computers we have. We initially installed it on a laptop that we had, and it worked well. We then tried to make a music station out of it, and docked the laptop into a docking station. Since that time, it has not worked - it throws a USB BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) everytime it is plugged in. That also happens on the other systems we have in the house. I find by doing some research that it is a probably interrupt sharing issue, so I hope to be able to address the interrupt situation during the build.
He is planning on using ProTools and/or Sonic on the software side....I think he already has Sonic. He also has a modified version of ProTools that came with the Fast Track Pro, but it's not a full version.
================================================== =========
Parts list with some thoughts and justifications/explanations (updated 29 Dec 2007)
================================================== =========
ABIT IP35-E LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail ($89.99) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813127031). Fairly inexpensive motherboard that has decent overclocking potential, and supports 1066 and 1333 mhz FSB speeds. It pretty much has everything I need for this build - for the intended purposes, I don't think putting more money into the motherboard will be money well spent.
POWERCOLOR AX3870 Radeon HD 3870 512MB 256-bit GDDR4 PCI Express 2.0 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail ($249.99) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102713). Actually, this links to the Sapphire version, as NewEgg doesn't list the PowerColor that I ordered any more. I decided to go with the 3870 for a few reasons. Number one, it was ACTUALLY IN STOCK; number two, it was at MSRP, not significantly marked up over MSRP as the 8800GT is/was at the time; number three, it is at the top end of the fastest cards available (NOT the fastest); number four, it has a dual-slot cooling solution, so it exhausts air outside of the case, not into the case; number five, the AMD Crossfire dual-card solution scales better than the NVIDIA SLI dual-card solution. (http://en.expreview.com/?p=53&page=4); number 6, I wanted to get at least 512 meg of ram, as higher resolutions and higher AA levels eat up the ram; and number 7, both Intel and AMD chipsets support Crossfire, but only NVIDIA supports SLI - therefore, I potentially have more choices if I choose to go this route. My near-term intended gaming resolution is 1920 x 1200 (a 24" LCD), and long-term resolution will be either 1680 x 1050 (a 22" LCD), 1280 x 1024 (single 19" LCD), or 2560 x 1024 (dual 19" LCD's).
In a real gaming environment, if this card won't run something at a playable rate, no cards currently available will either.
I don't usually overclock a video card, as they generally run hot enough. I did seriously consider the 3850 as that is an excellent card for the price and perfect for 1280 x 1024 resolutions, but I wanted a bit better cooling solution due to my intended processor overclock. Adding a new dual-slot cooler to the 3850 brought it to almost the same price as the 3870, and I wouldn't void any warranties by using the stock 3870.
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (Perpendicular Recording) ST3250620AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM ($64.99) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148144). I didn't have any extra SATA hard drives laying around. I wanted a 7200 RPM drive for the raw platter speed, and the 16 meg cache to help sustain I/O. I kept this relatively inexpensive, as the real-world gains of much more expensive drives are not worth the cost in my opinion. I don't plan on implementing RAID in this system, so that wasn't a consideration for the motherboard.
G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ - Retail (4 x 1 gig total $93.98) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231098). I just couldn't pass up $40.00 off per 2 gig matched set for decent ram. I bought 4 gig, for a savings of $80.00 (4 gig for almost the price of 2 gig). I decided to go with the 4 gig because I wanted more than 2 gig in the machine. I know that I will only get an effective use of about 3.2 gig or so of ram due to my choice of XP, however the same limitations apply to Vista (NOT Vista 64).
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz LGA 775 Dual-Core Processor Model BX80557E6750 - Retail ($189.99) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115029). I chose to go with Intel because of the overclocking potential. That put my choices at the e4x00 series, the e6x00 series, and the q6x00 series. I didn't think that the intended use of this system would stress a quad core processor (no video processing), and among the dual-cores, the e6750 appeared to have the edge with a 2.66 mhz stock clock speed and a 4 meg cache. I discounted the e2xxx series just due to the cache - while they overclock very well, they are limited in performance because of the limited cache. That brought me into the e4x00 area, and those native clocks were slower and they had less cache for around $40-$50 less. Keep in mind that there are no guarantees to overclocking - so there is a chance I will be stuck at stock clock speeds. Taking that into consideration, I decided on the e6750 at a 2.66 stock clock. It was almost $100 cheaper than the q6600, and there are many documented cases of people getting the e6750 processor to 3.6 ghz on air - in all of my research, I've yet to see someone fail to get it over 2.8-3 ghz on air (but it may take replacing the stock CPU cooler).
APEVIA X-CRUISER-BK Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail ($64.99 + $15.00 MIR) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811144151). I didn't REALLY need a case, however I was concerned that among all of the cases I have sitting around here, none of them would offer good enough case cooling. Plus, my son thought the case was cool, and I agreed.
Rosewill RP550-2 ATX12V v2.01 550W Power Supply - Retail ($51.99) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817182017). Okay...I needed a power supply, and this provides enough power on the 12v rails to run the newer video cards, has enough power connectors to connect the auxiliary power to the new video cards and motherboards, and it has a cool blue LED fan that will match the case. Plus, it's a decent enough name in power supplies.
============================
Starting the build (updated 2 Jan 2008)
============================
[I was originally planning to document this day by day, however I haven't been able to keep up with it, so I'm just going to document the sequences rather than the days.]
The parts started to arrive, but I didn't get back from work until late.
Received the case, motherboard, processor, power supply, and video card. Shipment was late due to bad weather around Philly, and that postponed the hard drive and memory an additional day.
Shucks....well, we can get started building, checking BIOS, disabling onboard features to attempt the M-Audio installation, etc.
Opened the case....what a sweet case.....and a whole bunch of internal connectors....don't know what they're all for, but a zillion of them.
No documentation with the case - going to have to play the installation by ear.
Okay...after pondering all of the connections for a couple of minutes, we see that most of them are power connectors....many are the case front connectors (hard drive light, power switch, reset switch, front panel USB ports, front panel audio ports), some are fan connectors, and one strange looking wire that ends in a 1/2" flat braid....aha...that's the front panel ambient temperature sensor (or so we guess).
A few bags of screws and miscellaneous equipment is in there...and there's a funny black doohicky on a short cable....a second aha...that's the internal speaker....shouldn't that have been with the motherboard?
Sheesh.......got that all sorted out.
Unpack the power supply.....heavy thing, and exactly matches the case....how nice. A zillion cables and connectors....and a manual. We promptly disregard the manual (we're REAL MEN, of course).
Power supply installs without a hitch...takes about 5-10 minutes....hardest part is keeping the cables out of the way as we slide it into place.
Looking good so far!
We plug in the power supply, but keep the power supply switch in the "off" position - that way, the system is at least grounded so we don't accidentally discharge static electricity.
It didn't start on fire, or make a loud ZAP, so we figure we're doing well.
Unpack the motherboard...... Holy cow…lookit the size of that manual! Care to guess where it goes? Right! On top of the unused power supply manual. We’re men, remember?
Anyway…we look at the motherboard….exactly what I expected.....wait...how come there are 4-pin drive power connectors on the motherboard? We see two of them....never seen that before.
Oh...ok...one of them is for the extra fans, and one of them is additional power for the PCI-e 2.0 connector.
Still looking good.
The motherboard comes with a back panel cover plate.....we take the one out of the case and install the one from the motherboard. A bit hard to position properly, and I cut my finger a bit on a sharp edge. Takes about 4-5 minutes to get it installed and snugged. The original in the case was screwed in, but the new one snaps in - it isn't designed to be folded over and screwed in. It looks like it may fall out.
We mount the motherboard hex anchors (the 1/4" hex extenders that hold the motherboard off the side of the case), and position the motherboard. Takes a bit of wiggling to get the back panel ports to line up with the back panel cover plate, but it didn’t fall off...we have to slightly bend some of the attached spacers to get everything to fit. The motherboard screws in without any trouble at all.
Now, we have a case with a mess of wires....looks like a pot of multi-colored pasta exploded. We have wires coming from the power supply and also from the front of the case. After folding the wires outside of the case (laying them over the sides), we logically group them together.
We then unbox the processor. On top is a thick manual....who needs a manual for a processor? We quickly toss that aside also. I pick up the processor (after making sure I was grounded to the case) and we look at it with anticipation, probably expecting the Holy Grail. It looks like a processor - what a letdown. We pull off the protective covers on the motherboard by lifting the processor lock down plate, and make sure we have the processor oriented correctly - one of the corner nubs are missing (as designed), and we line that up with the proper corner of the socket - it goes in without any trouble, and we lock it down. It looks nice sitting there...all that power just waiting to be utilized. And, the Intel processors no longer have pins…they have little nubs, so NO MORE BENT PINS! YAY!
Shucks...I forgot my heatsink thermal grease....I usually use Artic Silver, and I can't find it. After a few minutes of searching through my stuff, I come back to re-check to see if any came with the processor - I didn't see any initially. I pick up the cooler/fan that came with the processor, and lo and behold...there's thermal tape already applied to the heatsink. All of my other processor purchases were oem purchases, so they didn't come with a heatsink. I usually received a tube of grease with the processor fan purchases, so I wasn't expecting thermal tape already affixed. Good....we can move forward. Probably would have saved a few minutes by reading the manual.
We position the heatsink over the processor, and line up the four mounting feet/pegs. It's a bit tricky pushing each down and turning the peg to lock it into place, but we finally get it - some of them pop back out as we move on to others. We finally get them all locked down, and are satisfied that they are locked and stable. We didn't think so pushing them in, but now that it's in, it does feel secure. We connect the fan connector from the processor heatsink to the CPU fan connector on the motherboard. It takes about 15-20 minutes to get the processor and heatsink in place, excluding the 10-15 minutes of looking for my thermal grease that I couldn't find and didn't need.
Now, our attention turns to that explosion of cables.
We start by connecting the front panel connectors - the connectors are labeled, but not the same as the motherboard. Close enough. We plug in the audio (it only fits one way, as one of the receiving pin holes is blocked off to correlate with the missing mating pin) - no problem. We're on a roll.
We plug in the power switch connector, the hard drive led indicator, the reset switch connector, the system power indicator, and the system speaker. There is a single USB connector from the front panel, so we plug that into one of the 4 internal USB connectors.
Looking good!
We plug in the SATA power cables that came with the motherboard, and start matching up power connectors. We have to decide how to plug in all of the fan connectors and still route the wires out of the way, but get that finished.
It took about 20-30 minutes to connect all the connectors, route the wires, and recheck the connections.
We unbox the DVD writer that I had sitting in a box, and go to install it. It's a pain trying to get the case top drive bay cover plate out, but it finally comes out with a squished finger and a bit of persuasion. The lower ones all have stamped metal blocking them - looks like we'll have to twist them off or cut them off. Not looking forward to that, but we don't need them now. The PATA cable that came with the motherboard plugs in nicely, and reaches comfortably to the DVD writer. Power goes next - no problems. We plug the analog audio cable into the back of the DVD writer, but the other end won't reach to the connector on the far side of the motherboard. Well, we don't really need it, so we remove it.
We unbox the video card, and pause in awe....truly a thing of beauty! We go to plug it into the PCI-e 16X connector, but a problem arises....the back plane card slot connectors are stamped into the case, and they have to be twisted off (they are anchored at both ends). That's a pain - we actually bend the back plane metal a tad as we twist them off to accommodate the dual-slot video card. We'll have to do that for each back panel slot we need. We bend the metal back into position as good as we can, but we won't see it from outside the case. The video card gets plugged in, anchored in the back plane with the screws, and we connect the 6-pin PCI-e power connector from the power supply to the video card.
FINISHED! Altogether, it took about two and a half hours, including the explanations to my son.
We didn't receive the RAM or hard drive...but wait a minute.....one of my two existing Dell machines uses DDR2...and it has 1.5 gig of ram!
I swipe the two 512 meg sticks of DDR2 from the Dell and plug them in - they look out of place (all dusty and grimy).
Okay.....ready to turn it on to check BIOS version - I may have to update it to the latest version. Also, I want to disable the onboard audio so I am prepared to monkey with the M-Audio mixer.
Cross my fingers and power on...the system comes on...fans spin up... blue led's come on illuminating the case. How pretty.....sweet...really cool!
THEN...the whole system shuts down!
What the?
It powers itself back on.............and shuts down again!
It then powers on, and stays on, but nothing happens (no monitor signal, no DVD drive spinup...nothing....it just sits there spinning the fans.
Crud....I unplug it and start checking all of the connections.....everything looks fine.
Plug it in again, and power back on.....same thing!
Not even a system beep!
Great....a defective part in there somewhere.
Okay...tired enough to go to bed....gotta work the next day!
The ram and hard drive come while I'm at work...and I work late again.
I finally get home, grab a bite to eat, and drag my dejected self over to the machine.
My son opens the new ram....geez...it looks SWEET! I pull out the old ram and my son puts in the new ram......it really looks nice in there.
We try to power it up......the fans spin up, the blue leds light everything up...and it shuts down again!
It powers itself back on, and IT POSTS! WE GET A SYSTEM BEEP! No boot drive found! Well...duh...we didn't put one in!
The manual says that the system will automatically reboot after an unsuccessful boot, or an initial boot. I actually found that on the internet, but would’ve learned that if I (we) read the manual.
We're excited.....I check out the BIOS, and everything looks good.......CPU temperature looks good (great…..CPU fan and heatsink have a good connection)......everything checks out......looking good to go!
We install the SATA hard drive, and I put in a Windows BOOT XP. We start going through the installation process - since it's an upgrade version of XP, I dig out my Window ME installation disk and put it in when asked to.
It takes about 15 minutes for the full install, and then we're up and running. We haven't installed any extra motherboard devices, but we go ahead and reboot a few times to make sure everything is working.
Wow.......it boots to a usable XP desktop in just under 8 seconds...from post!
Sheesh...this system has some raw power!
Okay...now to burn a DVD image of the system. I boot off of my Ghost 2003 disk (my old standby just for these situations)...and it won't recognize the DVD-RAM drive....even though it's a PATA connection, it looks like some software is running from the motherboard on boot to emulate a SATA connection for it, and my version of GHOST won't work with a SATA writer.
Darn.
I reboot into Windows and install Partition Magic to make a 150 gig partition in the drive. Then, I installed Ghost, and ran it that way - I selected the options to make an image of the first partition to a file on the second partition, and it asks me to reboot....the system reboots, and GHOST starts the imaging process. Wow...we get over 1.3 gig/minute of throughput, and the backup is done in under 3 minutes.
That's our base installation backup.
We reboot, and install the video card drivers, then all of the remaining motherboard devices - including the audio.
I decide not to mess with overclocking or the M-Audio device until after my son goes back to school - that way, he'll be able to game with the many friends that come over.
But I can't help it.......I have to quickly try overclocking it. I reboot and go into the BIOS, and there are some simple settings there to change. I up it to 2.8 ghz (from the defaul 2.66 ghz) and reboot......it boots right into Windows and runs fine...Windows reports it at 2.8 ghz. Wee!....a bit of an overclock without any pain!
I reboot, make another BIOS change, save it, and reboot.....it reports 3.2 ghz at startup...then just beeps.
It figures......that was just too easy.....and too big of a jump. I power it off, then power it back on. It reset itself to default settings, and booted without a problem at 2.66 ghz.
I install and configure ZoneAlarm (firewall) and Grisoft's AVG (anti virus) and update them both.
My son installs Steam...and everything he runs gets eaten up by the system. Half-Life 2 at 1920 x 1200 with all settings maxed looks absolutely gorgeous!
My son and his friends are into a new MMORPG in beta called SHAIYA (or something like that) - it also looks fantastic at 1920 x 1200.
Got CoD4 and Crysis for Christmas....my son installed them both, and they both look amazing!
He's so infatuated with Crysis that he hasn't played CoD4....and I haven't had the time to try either of them.
The system won't run Crysis at max graphic settings at that resolution, but I never figured it would - I intend to run that system at either dual 1280 x 1024 (19" LCD) monitors, or at 1680 x 1050 (22" LCD) monitor, and that graphics card will be plenty.
Gawd....I'm amazed at how good everything looks on it.
I backup the system again after he has his games installed (about 30 gig on it already), and we sustain a ghost backup transfer speed of over 1.3 gig/minute…wow.
I’ll post back once I get a chance to play with it in some detail.
Overall, it would have taken us about 4-5 hours from scratch to a working system (including the knowledge I was imparting to my son).
A pretty easy build - the hardest part was figuring out all of the case cables, and I (we) should have waited until we had all the part for the system.
Yourself (Dave)