I have narrowed my search for my first barebones kit down to one with
the asus P4S800 and one with an MSI KT4AV-L. I am by no means a
serious gamer or a serious compugeek. I have experience installing
hard drives, CD drives, memory, video cards etc but no experience with
a new board.
The two barebones systems I'm planning to start from are
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=775450&CatId=1223
and
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=722242&CatId=114
I'm planning to transfer most of the guts from my old system (hard
drive (maxtor 40gb), cd drives (HP 9500 cd writer and Benq DVD drive),
vid (ATI Radeon 9500) and sound cards (Soundblaster Live 5.0) etc)
I guess what I'm asking is what system will allow me to jump into the
21st century from the current dinosaur I'm using (600mb athlon
processor and a gigabyte board) And what is the real meat and
potatoes differences between these two systems (other than the obvious
200 dollar price diff) and would they mean anything to me?
Thank you so much for not laughing at the newbie builder.
I'm not laughing. We all had a first time, and most of us never tell
about the boards we smoked in the process. If you really want to jump
into the 21st century, then you should build an Athlon 64 system. This
will prepare you for the next generation of Windows when it is
introduced in a year or so.
You can buy the necessary parts from a reputable supplier, such as
Newegg, and get away for around $500. Here are some random thoughts:
1- If you build a system then the parts with the longest potential
lifetime are the case and power supply. Barebones systems give you
no-name brands. I strongly urge you to purchase name brands, such as
Antec, for these components. You can get a god Antec 400W supply for
around $70 and an Antec case and power supply for around $100.
2- Don't mix ATI videocards and nVidia chipsets, there are known
incompatibilities.
3- You probably won't need your sound card because most mobo's have
built-in sound, but you can always disable the onboard stuff if you
like.
4- Don't build it without a 3.5" floppy drive because you'll probably
need it to flash your BIOS.
5- If the board you buy doesn't come with some kind of BIOS recovery
utility, then it might be worth the money to purchase the BIOS savior
for your board. It allows you to recover from a bad flashing session.
6- Be sure to go to the manufacturer's website and download all the
latest dirvers before you start to build the system. Most of the
drivers that come with the mobo are out-of-date anyway.
7- Don't try to reuse your old C: drive with O/S on it. Do a clean
install. The mobo and the operating system are just too intimate with
each other to try to save time. It is possible to move the O/S to a
new motherboard and lots of people do it, but I don't recommend it.
8- If possible, have your hard drives reformatted by your new
motherboard. This guarantees that the sectors will be properly
recognized, because not all chipsets do the logical block translations
in the same way. This was told to me by a hardware designer who knows
his stuff and builds PC's on the side. He said that 90% of the time
you can do it, but when it fails, you may have corrupted data.
9- Before you think about putting the system together, carefully read
the manual. Or, as we use to say at HP, "RTFM".
10- When you build you system, proceed in baby steps. For example, on
a table top, making sure that you are grounded, or are continually
touching a grounded piece of metal. You could plug the power supply
into the wall, but leave it turned off. This gives you a gounded
chassis to touch so you won't build up a static charge and zap
anything.
11- Carefully insert the CPU in the mobo. Be expecially careful to
make sure the orientation is correct and that you didn't force
anything. The CPU should just drop in. If you need to apply any
pressure at all, then you are probably tring to plug it into a locked
ZIF socket, or there is a bent pin.
12-Attach the fan. Make sure to follow the procedure for removing the
protective tape from the heat sink compound on the fan. Make sure to
plug the fan into the correct connector on the mobo. If you plug it
into the wrong connector the system won't start because the fan
tachomenter signal won't be detected by the mobo.
13- Insert one memory stick into the correct slot, being careful to
follow the insertion instructions.
14- Insert the video card. in either the AGP slot or the PCI slot. you
can prop up the edge of the board to prvent the card from working out
of the slot.
15- Attach the monitor to the videocard and the power supply to the
ATX power connector.
16- Take a break. Go away for a while then come back and examine
everything.
17- Turn on the power supply. Use a small screw-driver to
short-circuit together the two pins on the motherboard that go to the
front panel power switch. The system should power-up.
18- Watch the monitor. You should see the boot-up process begin. When
it gets to the part about complaining that there is no keyboard, you
can turn it off.
19- At this point you can put the mobo in the case and add connect the
drives. Don't cover it yet. Add additional memory if you have it.
Connect the front panel switches and lights to the connector on the
mobo.
20- Take a break. Return and inspect.
21- Power up. Watch for the boot-up screen. When it says to press a
key to enter the BIOS, press the key. In the BIOS, make sure all of
your drives are identified, as well as all of your memory.
22- Exit the BIOS and run MEMTEST86 for 4 or 5 hours until you are
satisfied that it is stable and you don't have any errors.
23- Now you can install Windows.
ab
