Building a new computer for christmas/new years

[hawk710]

ok finally got to work on the computer again!
here's where I want to be extra careful 🙂

my power supply came with an 8, 4, 8(6 with 2 hanging off the side) labeled pci-e, and a 6

I plugged the 8 into my atx 12v for the cpu. (is this the right one? Nothing was labeled on there and I couldn't find a detailed spec on antec's website regarding this powersupply)
My 5870 has 2 6pins in the back. which of these plugs am I suppose to plug into the graphics card? I read somewhere that the extra 2 plugs for the pci-e 8 is for grounding, so would I be plugging the 6 and the 6/8 into the 2 6slots? Sorry if that was totally confusing 🙂



edit: pretty sure I installed everything correctly....powered on and installed windows! 🙂
I also installed all the gigabyte drivers/utilities(easy 6, energy saver 2). Are all those necessary?
Should I be installing the graphics card drivers from the cd, then updating from the website? or download all new bios/drivers for the xfx 5870 and do everything fresh?

Thank you guys so so much for all your help in building my first computer. I know I could NOT have done this without all your help and guildance!!!! 🙂

 

[zi0n.]

Glad everything worked fine. You shouldn't install anything from the CD's or download anything labeled "energy saver". Download the GFX drivers from AMD and anything else you need from gigabyte.

 

[mfenn]

As long as you didn't plug the adapter labeled "PCIe" into your mobo, you are fine. The PCIe 6 pin and 6+2 pin should both be plugging into your GPU (without the +2 since there is no room!) Since everything has powered up, you should be golden.

I usually don't install any of the utilities that come with the mobo. In fact, with Windows 7, the only drivers I go out of my way to get are the GPU drivers straight from AMD/Nvidia's site.

You're welcome! 🙂

 

[hawk710]

I can reinstall win7, it only took like 20mins and i havent installed anything else yet. I want to install just the bare min 🙂

The only reason I installed the few drivers cause when win7 finished installing I couldn't get on the internet to work....I think the mobo driver pack installed the usb, the ethernet drivers..

What is the next step to make sure everything is ok? Do I need to run a ram testing software or some cpu tester? How do I test my SSD to see if it's running at max speed(is there such a thing?)

Once all this is installed...I want to try overclocking a little. Is the easy 6 util where I do all the overclocking? Or do I do that from bios?

 

[betasub]

BIOS, BIOS, BIOS. Software utilities are only a poor substitute if there are settings you can't access through BIOS.

 

[hawk710]

Well I'm completely new to overclocking. Aren't there alot of variable such as multipliers/voltage/ram speed? Is the program that comes with my mobo easier for noobies like myself? I'm reading up on the overclocking website right now to better educate/ask questions. probably run everything normal for a few days just to make sure everything's ok to start before attempting to overclock though.

Which programs and what should I be testing to make sure my build is "stable"?

EDIT: So I just installed the LAN and SATA drivers that came with my mobo cd cause i couldn't get the internet to work.
Do I need to install:
-INF Driver
-NEC USB driver for USB 3.0
-Browser config utility

For my 5870, I went on the website and there's a catalyst suite and just a plain display driver. do i need catalyst to overclock? I might as well install the whole package right? There's the normal catalyst software suite, and there's a bigger sized accelerated parallel processing edition with OpenCL drivers. Which one do I pick?

 

[mfenn]

I'm surprised than Windows 7 didn't come with a driver for your Ethernet chip. So yeah, that one was probably necessary to install from the CD. The only other driver that will be useful is the USB 3.0 driver, but you should get that from your mobo manufacturer's website. For the AMD drivers, yes you will need to get the Catalyst suite for overclocking. Just get the normal one, you don't need the OpenCL one.

On the subject of overclocking, you really need to understand what you are doing before you mess with things. The software tools might get you a bit of an overclock, but if you don't understand what they've done, you will have hell of a time sorting things out if they go wrong.

 

[hawk710]

absolutely agreed! 🙂
I'm reading up on overclock.net website on the basics before just jumping into ocing the CPU. And playing around with catalyst just to get a little overclock on the GPU(just couldn't help myself!)

Any other place that can get me some good tips for starters on CPU/GPU oc?


Oh, and what programs should I be running to stress test the ram/cpu just to make sure everything is ok to start out?
I've read prime95 is a good one. Does that test every component of your computer?

Thanks!!!

 

[betasub]

Prime95 (& others based on it, like Orthos, OCCT etc) is primarily used as a CPU test, checking for calculation errors. The Small FFT test fits into L1 cache, so is a highly localised stress test; Large FFT test fills up the cache and may use some RAM; Blend includes a large amount of RAM in the test, and so is also a broad check on the memory sub-system.

Use a bootable image of Memtest if you want a specific and detailed check of your memory modules.

 

[mfenn]

LinX with a large problem size is is also a good way to stress test the CPU and touch pretty much every byte of memory.

 

[hawk710]

ok ran this baby for a few days and it seems like without OC the cpu/ram/system is stable! Thank you guys for all the help on my first build!! 🙂 🙂

Im trying to buy an extra SATA cable for my harddrive but I'm finding there's SATA, eSATA, SATA II, SATA III? Does my Mobo support the highest SATA? Does it even make a difference(I'm reading somewhere that all the SATAs are pretty much the same? I'm a little confused about that since everywhere else it's 150/300 etc) Should I buy a SATA II or III if they are different for my SSD to take advantage of the higher transfer speed?

 

[mfenn]

SATA 3Gb/s and SATA 6Gb/s cables are the same. The only difference is that a SATA 6Gb/s cable has been certified for 6Gb/s operation.

That being said, neither your mobo nor your SSD support SATA 6Gb/s (not that it matters in the slightest).

 

[hawk710]

So everything's been working great. I haven't started overclocking the cpu yet(but planning on try it out this weekend). However I'm noticing tearing and flickering when I move things around in windows. I've read that this is due to the ati overdrive in the catalyst control center. Is that normal? seems to be fine except when I drag windows around

 

[Davidh373]

So everything's been working great. I haven't started overclocking the cpu yet(but planning on try it out this weekend). However I'm noticing tearing and flickering when I move things around in windows. I've read that this is due to the ati overdrive in the catalyst control center. Is that normal? seems to be fine except when I drag windows around

do you have any OC'ed settings on the graphics card? I don't think it would be overdrive unless you were tweaking with the settings.

 

[hawk710]

I have "enable ATI Overdrive" checked and moved the GPU clock to 875 and Memory clock to 1275. Ran the "test custom clocks" and it tested out fine.

when I uncheck the "enable ati overdrive" there's no more flickering in the screen

 

[mfenn]

I have "enable ATI Overdrive" checked and moved the GPU clock to 875 and Memory clock to 1275. Ran the "test custom clocks" and it tested out fine.

when I uncheck the "enable ati overdrive" there's no more flickering in the screen

Seems pretty conclusive that the overclock is causing rendering errors then.

 

[Davidh373]

Seems pretty conclusive that the overclock is causing rendering errors then.

yeah.