Is this normal?

[jdurg]

Okay, here's my question. I have an EVERCASE E4252 case that I bought from NewEgg, an MSI 845 Ultra-ARU mo-bo, 512 megs of Micron PC2400 DDR RAM, a Teac 1.44MB fdd, SoundBlaster Audigy soundcard, Toshiba 16x DVD-ROM, Lite-On 32x burner, and three case fans. I have all the parts that I currently have installed into the case. I've hooked the motherboard and all peripherals up to their respective cables/slots, and am just waiting for payday to get my 1.8A Northwood, 40GB 7200rpm Seagate Barracuda, generic NIC, generic 56k, and GeForce4 Ti4600. (Well, make that a few more paydays. I've already got my AS3 and Thermaltake P4 Volcano 478 just waiting for that tasty 1.8A. lol.)

To see if I've gotten everything installed right, I plugged the "computer" into the outlet and turned on the system with the power button. All the fans came on (and this system is gonna be loud when it's all together), the LED on the power button came on, and things seem like they are alright. However, the power button won't turn the computer off. I'm assuming that this is because the CPU isn't installed so the BIOS can't load and give the power off signal. Also, the HD LED comes on when I turn the system on and stays on. I have no HDD installed yet, so I'm wondering if this is normal? Or do I have the HD LED plugged-in in reverse? (I always thought that an LED wouldn't even come on if it was installed in reverse.) The activity LED on my Lite-On also turns on when I push the power button, but it stays on. The IDE cable is plugged in correctly since it can only plug in one way. I tried this with the drive set on both cable-select and slave. (Toshiba is the master drive.) Finally, the tray open button doesn't seem to work on either of the drives. Is all this normal and just because I don't have the whole thing built yet? Should I just not worry about it until it's all together? I guess I'm just being careful because this is the first computer I've built from scratch.

 

[smp]

I don't think you have to worry. It sounds like you have a while to wait before you get your GF4, NW and hard drive... I hope you have a good job.

 

[jdurg]

Yeah. It'll be about four weeks before I have everything in my hands. I may have to go and use that evil credit card of mine and just put the CPU on that. Looks like my paycheck this Friday will pay for my GeForce 4. Man this computer building is an addiction!

 

[bravesfan258]

Jdurg -

Congrats on the build. I just finished my first build this weekend, so here are my thoughts:

Try holding the power button in for 4+ seconds - this is the only way I can turn off my machine (I haven't loaded the OS yet, but I think you can set the machine to 'sleep' with a brief press of the power switch, and will turn off with an extended one).

You're doing the right thing testing everything this early. Next build, I'm gonna add a part, test the system, add a part, test the system. This is much quicker than add a bunch of parts, test the system, find out that it won't post, dissasemble the system, try to remove HSF to see if I fried the processor, give up on that, add a part, test the system, add a part, test the system.

Good luck!