Hardware Setup Questions

[Prince of Persia]

Boys and girls, thank you for all of your help with purchasing my new computer components. They should be in by Friday (hopefully), and I'll have the weekend to set it up. BUT, its been about 2-3 years since I built a complete pc, let alone an AMD one. So I have a few questions that I hope you can answer.

Hardware Questions
1) I ordered a tbird 1333 266 with the EPOX EP-8K7A. So how would I go about setting the jumpers/switches. I'm assumming mine is 10 (multiplier) x 133 (fsb). What jumpers do I set on the motherboard, and what do I do in the bios.

2) I mount my stuff in this order right. CPU to Motherboard, AS2 to core, heatsink/fan to cpu, then attach the MOBO w/ CPU into the case?

3) I ordered Crucial pc2100 512mb (2x256). I keep hearing about ram timings, what are they and is it really essential to my pc? (I'm not overclocking by the way)

4) Should I flash the epox mobo bios before setting everything up (if thats possible with just a boot disk and the flashing utilties), or should I install all my components get my system running stable then flash to the latest bios? (I'm concerned about the Phoenixnet thing on the bios)

5)Anything else I should keep in mind?

Software Questions
1) I'm installing win2k. After I install win2k, do I install the 4in1 drivers on the mobo cd or should I download the latest? Also after installing 4in1 drivers do I install SP2 or should I install SP2 then 4in1. Also I'm still not sure about the AMD agpminiport. Is that a part of the 4in1 drivers or is it a driver that replaces a part of the 4in1 drivers?

 

[Prince of Persia]

Shameless bump, please have mercy on my soul.

 

[NelsonMuntz]

You might want to put the RAM onto the motherboard while it is still outside the case so that it is easy to put the necessary pressure on the board without the fear of damaging it. It looks like you have everything else right. I think the only major change you will have to make as far as jumpers/switches on the motherboard is to switch the CPU FSB from 100 (default I think) to 133 MHz. That's just one switch and then you can do the rest in the BIOS if I remember correctly. I always try to get some things ready ahead of time like I burn a CD of the most recent drivers that I think I will need (particularly video card drivers). Also I will download the most recent BIOS for the motherboard and put it on a bootable disk for preparation. The Epox board had a special way to update the BIOS, I think, so you will want to check their webpage on that. I didn't actually update the BIOS on the one I put together.

 

[Prince of Persia]

Would you recommend updating the bios before i install everything or afterwards?

 

[Prince of Persia]

One last bump, I don't want to damage/setup a buggy system. Thanks ahead of time, this will be my last bump, honest.

 

[Gundam]

I'm interested to know too