First look at my motherboard

[Mrvile]

Anyway I was tired of waiting for my vid card and case to arrive so I got started on some simple things with my computer today...

I took off the stock heat sink that Monarch gave me for free, made a mess with their thermal paste, scrubbed my Winchester 3500+ with some rubbing alcohol, and proceeded to put the XP-90 on. First weird thing I noticed was that the mounting plate screws that came with the original motherboard were too long for the XP-90's mounting plate (when screwed all the way in they stuck about a cm out from the back of the motherboard), so I had to use nuts to compensate for the length. I put the Arctic Silver 5 on (hopefully the right amount, it looked fine) then smacked the heat sink on. Snapped it down to the mounting plate, put the fan clips on, and snapped my 92mm Panaflo into place. Looks great, everything fit perfectly (except the little thing with the mounting plate but no big deal) and the XP-90 is surprisingly light. My dad walked in, took one look and was like, "Is that the heat sink?? Jesus that must weigh a thousand pounds" I was at CompUSA the other day and looked at some of Thermaltake's copper HSFs and the XP-90 is much lighter than a lot of TT's 80mm models. Awesome.

But a few questions. I plugged my memory sticks on the DIMMs that were right under the heat sink (so the fan can blow accross them) but I noticed that the purple and green ones were labeled differently. Does it matter which two I use?

Fans spin counterclockwise right?

Can I leave the stickers (bar codes, labels, Made in China) on the motherboard? I don't feel like taking all of them off.

Thanks!

 

[RealityTime]

before you go any further.. take apart that damn contraption you've made for hsf, remove the existing backplate (first try gently pushing on one of the standoffs that come through the mb from the backplate, if that does not work use a hairdryer alongside the backplate edge to heat up the adhesive than gently remove) put on the included xp-90 backplate and reinstall properly. That contraption you have is not appropiate at all.

 

[Mrvile]

Haha wow your post scared me for a second, then I realized that I had used the XP-90 backplate. Thanks anyway.

 

[rcomo]

I think what he is referring to, is this: did you remove the orignal backplate that came with the motherboard? Take that one off and then put the new one back on.

 

[rcomo]

And t your ram question, make sure you do it in this order:

1. Read your motherboard manual front to back. Do not screw this up, make sure you understand everything, I know its great being young and all and not reading manuals for games before you play them, but this is a different game. One that will cost you $149+ if you screw it up.
2. Inside the manual it will tell you which slots to place your ram in. It definately makes a HUGE difference on which one you place them in, so it is a big deal.
3. When you first boot up the computer you should only do it with 1 ram stick installed. This isn't entirely vital, but you should do it this way.