- Jun 27, 2005
- 6,010
- 1
- 76
I got in my new parts from egg yesterday and put my new box together. I bought an antec p180b, E6600, evga 680i, seasonic 550ht, zalman 9500, and the crucial ballistix pc2-8000 ram that was on sale. I'm reusing my hard drive, cd drive, and 7900 gt from my previous box.
First, I definitely love the p180 case. It is very sexy with excellent build quality. It is about as quiet as my sonata II case, even though it has 3 120 mm fans running instead of just 1, and the case is even cooler still. However, I think I will need to ditch my IDE cd and floppy drive to replace with sata ones because the ide cables are just too cumbersome. I will also want to get a 8-pin eps12v extension cable so that I can tuck it away more neatly. At the moment my case is a horrible rats nest of wires.
I have a few questions and problems with my build though.
1) what is the PWR3 12v molex connector on the motherboard for? The manual says it is an auxiliary power connection for the video card, but I haven't had a board that required this before. Is it required for a 7900 gt, or for an 8800 gtx that I will get later?
2) Where are the power and HD led's on the case? I thought I had the headers connected correctly, even though the power led is only two pins, I think the p180 has a 2-pin header to match. Also the case has 2 separate HD led headers. But, I can't see any led lights on the case anywhere. I'm not sure if I just have the headers installed incorrectly or what.
3) What is the deal with the sata drive channels being out of order from what is listed in the manual? Are the channels correct as displayed in the bios screen or is the bios reading incorrect and I should follow the motherboard's manual?
4) With my crucial ballistix ram, do I need to set the ram voltage to 2.2v for stock, non-overclocked operation to be stable?
Here are the problems I am having. On my first boot after assembly, the mobo made a couple beeps and I had no video, but from the sound of the hard drive it seemed to post and boot into windows. My first thought was that I was not supposed to connect that aux video power connector, so I unplugged it. Afterwards, the computer seemed to boot fine. It booted into windows even though I haven't reinstalled since the hard drive was in my previous AMD/nforce4 box.
Next I started to reinstall windows xp. About half way through the installtion, after entering my CD key and it was copying files, the computer just powered off spontaneously. When I turned it back on, again there were a couple beeps and no video, although I believe it did post correctly as before. I turned the machine back off and tried to reset the bios jumper, but I couldn't reach it so I gave up and just turned the computer back on anyway. This time, there was some weird wavy lines on the bios logo screen, but it managed to post and go into the bios menu.
I didn't know what was wrong so I first tried upping my memory voltage to 2.1 v. I then restarted installing windows. This time it worked correctly, I finished installing windows and installed all the drivers and updates before going to bed. I left the machine on and when I woke up it was still on with no problem. So, my issues is what was causing the mobo beeps and no video and what can I do to fix it?
Thanks.
First, I definitely love the p180 case. It is very sexy with excellent build quality. It is about as quiet as my sonata II case, even though it has 3 120 mm fans running instead of just 1, and the case is even cooler still. However, I think I will need to ditch my IDE cd and floppy drive to replace with sata ones because the ide cables are just too cumbersome. I will also want to get a 8-pin eps12v extension cable so that I can tuck it away more neatly. At the moment my case is a horrible rats nest of wires.
I have a few questions and problems with my build though.
1) what is the PWR3 12v molex connector on the motherboard for? The manual says it is an auxiliary power connection for the video card, but I haven't had a board that required this before. Is it required for a 7900 gt, or for an 8800 gtx that I will get later?
2) Where are the power and HD led's on the case? I thought I had the headers connected correctly, even though the power led is only two pins, I think the p180 has a 2-pin header to match. Also the case has 2 separate HD led headers. But, I can't see any led lights on the case anywhere. I'm not sure if I just have the headers installed incorrectly or what.
3) What is the deal with the sata drive channels being out of order from what is listed in the manual? Are the channels correct as displayed in the bios screen or is the bios reading incorrect and I should follow the motherboard's manual?
4) With my crucial ballistix ram, do I need to set the ram voltage to 2.2v for stock, non-overclocked operation to be stable?
Here are the problems I am having. On my first boot after assembly, the mobo made a couple beeps and I had no video, but from the sound of the hard drive it seemed to post and boot into windows. My first thought was that I was not supposed to connect that aux video power connector, so I unplugged it. Afterwards, the computer seemed to boot fine. It booted into windows even though I haven't reinstalled since the hard drive was in my previous AMD/nforce4 box.
Next I started to reinstall windows xp. About half way through the installtion, after entering my CD key and it was copying files, the computer just powered off spontaneously. When I turned it back on, again there were a couple beeps and no video, although I believe it did post correctly as before. I turned the machine back off and tried to reset the bios jumper, but I couldn't reach it so I gave up and just turned the computer back on anyway. This time, there was some weird wavy lines on the bios logo screen, but it managed to post and go into the bios menu.
I didn't know what was wrong so I first tried upping my memory voltage to 2.1 v. I then restarted installing windows. This time it worked correctly, I finished installing windows and installed all the drivers and updates before going to bed. I left the machine on and when I woke up it was still on with no problem. So, my issues is what was causing the mobo beeps and no video and what can I do to fix it?
Thanks.
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