A
Andy
First of all, thank you to all those who responded to my questions
about building a PC. I thought I would share my experience of putting
it all together so if anyone else is in the position of wanting to
build their first PC, but is not quite sure if it feasible, they
hopefully can be encouraged by my experience.
Before I became a physician, I got my masters degree in comp sci,
and I have worked as tech support and network admin in the past
(distant past!) I do have experience with swapping cards, plugging in
jumpers, installing hard drives and the like. Even so, I don't
consider myself an expert by any stretch of the imagination.
Here's my set up
ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe
P4 3.2GHz
Corsair XMS PC3200 512MB x 2
ASUS ATI 9800XT
Seagate 120GB SATA HD x 2
Sony DVD RW 510A
TEAC 1.44 floppy
Antec SOHO case with 430W PS
After unpacking everything and checking that it was all accounted
for, I hooked up my anti-static wrist band, took the mobo out of the
the anti-static bag, and placed it on top of the bag on my desk. I
put the cpu in per instructions. I've never used a ZIF socket before
and it was extremely easy. I decided to leave the fan and heatsink
until the mobo was in place since it was rather heavy and I didn't
want the extra weight when trying to fit the board into the case.
The RAM was a little trickier, but with firm but gentle pressure I
got two sticks in the right places. I then replaced the shield
covering the ports on the back of the case with the one supplied by
ASUS and put the mobo in the case. I then tried to the put fan and
heatsink on the cpu... not so easy. I took the mobo out and tried,
much easier. I then but the mobo back in the case! I was very
worried that I might nick on the tracks on the underside of the mobo,
but I was careful not to scrape the board on any of the many sharp and
pointy bits of metal inside the case.
I had previously installed the drives in the case, very easy. Now I
had to hook up all the power leads and jumper cables. The power
cables and data cables are easy. The jumper cables for the pwer
switch, led, usb and firewire were fiddly, but not too bad. There did
appear to be a mislabeled lead on the Antec cables for the front USB
ports. I one too many grnd cables and one too few -D cables. I made
a guess as to which one to use and it seems to work.
I put the video card in next, that went in as advertised. With all
the components in, I hooked up the keyboard, mouse and monitor and
turned on the power. The green led on the mobo lit up. I pressed the
power button on the front of the case and the fans came to life and
the monitor turned on. "Holy crap" I thought... this thing is
actually working.
Not so fast. The message on the monitor told me that I hadn't
hooked up the power supply to the graphics card... oops. Easily
fixed. On the second attempt everthing looked good. It didn't find
the IDE drives because there were none. I went in the bios, made the
setting for the RAID drives per the ASUS manual and rebooted. I wait
for the screen to tell me to hit cntl-I to get to the Intel RAID bios,
but it never came. I tried a couple of more times, no luck. Hmmm,
something was wrong. Ah, I forgot to plug in the power cables for the
hard drives.
The boot-up sequence briefly showed the screen that said hit cntl-I
(it was on the screen for about .5 of a second) but I did and was able
to format the RAID volume following the instructions in the ASUS
manual.
I was now ready to install Windows XP, Pro Ed. I had made a floppy
with the Intel raid drivers. Do a google search for "intel raid
drivers" to get the web page. When prompted I put the floppy in the
A: drive and hit a key. The Windows setup program then told me that
it couldn't find the drivers. I realised that rather than just
copying the exe file from Intel on the floppy, I had to run it to
install the drivers... I did this and it worked.
From then on I just followed the windows instructions and to my
amazement I ended up with a WinXP installation on my new PC. I then
tried to access the internet via my Linksys router, no luck. After
some messing around I realsied that I had to install drivers for the
onboard gigabit lan (from the ASUS CD), which I did and got on the net
with no problem.
That pretty much sums it up. I'm going install the sound card
tomorrow and finish off loading the various drivers, testing the
components and such. It took about 6.5 hours from start to finish, a
little longer than I thought it would. I hope someone finds my
experience helpful. I will definitely build again when the time
comes. I save about $700 on the cost of a comparable Dell or Gateway.
Regards,
Andy
about building a PC. I thought I would share my experience of putting
it all together so if anyone else is in the position of wanting to
build their first PC, but is not quite sure if it feasible, they
hopefully can be encouraged by my experience.
Before I became a physician, I got my masters degree in comp sci,
and I have worked as tech support and network admin in the past
(distant past!) I do have experience with swapping cards, plugging in
jumpers, installing hard drives and the like. Even so, I don't
consider myself an expert by any stretch of the imagination.
Here's my set up
ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe
P4 3.2GHz
Corsair XMS PC3200 512MB x 2
ASUS ATI 9800XT
Seagate 120GB SATA HD x 2
Sony DVD RW 510A
TEAC 1.44 floppy
Antec SOHO case with 430W PS
After unpacking everything and checking that it was all accounted
for, I hooked up my anti-static wrist band, took the mobo out of the
the anti-static bag, and placed it on top of the bag on my desk. I
put the cpu in per instructions. I've never used a ZIF socket before
and it was extremely easy. I decided to leave the fan and heatsink
until the mobo was in place since it was rather heavy and I didn't
want the extra weight when trying to fit the board into the case.
The RAM was a little trickier, but with firm but gentle pressure I
got two sticks in the right places. I then replaced the shield
covering the ports on the back of the case with the one supplied by
ASUS and put the mobo in the case. I then tried to the put fan and
heatsink on the cpu... not so easy. I took the mobo out and tried,
much easier. I then but the mobo back in the case! I was very
worried that I might nick on the tracks on the underside of the mobo,
but I was careful not to scrape the board on any of the many sharp and
pointy bits of metal inside the case.
I had previously installed the drives in the case, very easy. Now I
had to hook up all the power leads and jumper cables. The power
cables and data cables are easy. The jumper cables for the pwer
switch, led, usb and firewire were fiddly, but not too bad. There did
appear to be a mislabeled lead on the Antec cables for the front USB
ports. I one too many grnd cables and one too few -D cables. I made
a guess as to which one to use and it seems to work.
I put the video card in next, that went in as advertised. With all
the components in, I hooked up the keyboard, mouse and monitor and
turned on the power. The green led on the mobo lit up. I pressed the
power button on the front of the case and the fans came to life and
the monitor turned on. "Holy crap" I thought... this thing is
actually working.
Not so fast. The message on the monitor told me that I hadn't
hooked up the power supply to the graphics card... oops. Easily
fixed. On the second attempt everthing looked good. It didn't find
the IDE drives because there were none. I went in the bios, made the
setting for the RAID drives per the ASUS manual and rebooted. I wait
for the screen to tell me to hit cntl-I to get to the Intel RAID bios,
but it never came. I tried a couple of more times, no luck. Hmmm,
something was wrong. Ah, I forgot to plug in the power cables for the
hard drives.
The boot-up sequence briefly showed the screen that said hit cntl-I
(it was on the screen for about .5 of a second) but I did and was able
to format the RAID volume following the instructions in the ASUS
manual.
I was now ready to install Windows XP, Pro Ed. I had made a floppy
with the Intel raid drivers. Do a google search for "intel raid
drivers" to get the web page. When prompted I put the floppy in the
A: drive and hit a key. The Windows setup program then told me that
it couldn't find the drivers. I realised that rather than just
copying the exe file from Intel on the floppy, I had to run it to
install the drivers... I did this and it worked.
From then on I just followed the windows instructions and to my
amazement I ended up with a WinXP installation on my new PC. I then
tried to access the internet via my Linksys router, no luck. After
some messing around I realsied that I had to install drivers for the
onboard gigabit lan (from the ASUS CD), which I did and got on the net
with no problem.
That pretty much sums it up. I'm going install the sound card
tomorrow and finish off loading the various drivers, testing the
components and such. It took about 6.5 hours from start to finish, a
little longer than I thought it would. I hope someone finds my
experience helpful. I will definitely build again when the time
comes. I save about $700 on the cost of a comparable Dell or Gateway.
Regards,
Andy
