newbie system builder

[concernedsophist]

I am putting together a DIY system for the first time. It will be a 3000 Athlon 64 939 NF4. I feel pretty confident about most of the hardware installation, but I have been trying to read up on the specifics of the bios settings and so forth. Does anyone know some good online builer's guides with that kind of detail? Most that I have found are either really outdated or skip over alot of details.

 

[airfoil]

MechBgon's system builder's guide. It doesnt get any better than this.

 

[concernedsophist]

Thanks, looks pretty useful! I will be using a SATA and ATA 133 for the HD and optical drive. This guide is using IDE. Will this cause me any hangups?

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: concernedsophist
Thanks, looks pretty useful! I will be using a SATA and ATA 133 for the HD and optical drive. This guide is using IDE. Will this cause me any hangups?

Nope, just make sure you have the correct SATA drivers on a floppy ready when installing Windows, so you can hit F6 to load them

 

[concernedsophist]

cool

 

[Boztech]

Originally posted by: airfoil
MechBgon's system builder's guide. It doesnt get any better than this.

Not really... he doesn't cover SATA installation, installation of K8 (socket 754, 939) HSFs, and he definitely does not go into any detail with BIOS options.

 

[mechBgon]

Also, an NF4 board will have at least some SATA ports that are operated by the motherboard's "native" SATA controller. Those ones, you should be able to install Windows without needing the drivers on a floppy diskette even although you may need to change the boot-device priority after the first, CD-ROM-based phase of Windows Setup has completed.

That last bit varies from motherboard to motherboard. If you run into trouble, send me a PM or post in the Motherboards section for assistance with your particular motherboard.

One of the key things is to make sure you've plugged your SATA hard drive into the fittings that the "native" SATA controller is operating... some boards also have secondary SATA controllers that would require drivers on floppy.

Another is to keep all IDE and USB drives unplugged while setting up Windows on your SATA drive, so that the SATA drive gets drive letter C: and not G: or something

Have fun and don't forget your snacks

 

[concernedsophist]

Thanks! Yeah, I am exited about my first build. It will be a big improvment over my current Athlon 1800!

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Boztech

Originally posted by: airfoil
MechBgon's system builder's guide. It doesnt get any better than this.

Not really... he doesn't cover SATA installation, installation of K8 (socket 754, 939) HSFs, and he definitely does not go into any detail with BIOS options.

True BIOS options and SATA installation vary so widely from mobo to mobo, that I want the newbies to fall back on the Forums if they need mobo-specific help. I have more than 700MB of mobo manuals in PDF format, and if there were any hard-&-fast rules that applied to all SATA implementations, I'd be very happy

I did buy a SATA drive for mass storage (still prefer my SCSI for boot, programs and I/O-intensive work, though :evil: ) and I'll take some photos of the drive, cables, and mobo fittings, and do an update with some general SATA advice.

Someone will be taking photos of an AMD64 retail heatsink installation for me soon, and then I can add a page for AMD64. If anyone with really good no-electronic-flash photography skillz wants to pony up some LGA775 photos (and a video clip?) using a retail Intel heatsink, I'll work up a page for that too, just drop me a PM.

 

[slash196]

If you have any questions, be sure to ask them! I just built my first rig less than a month ago, and I'd be happy to answer any questions I can. Also, in my experience, anyway, the SATA drive was the easiest thing about the installation. It's designed to be simple. On my board, I just plug the cable into SATA port #1. Depending on your mobo, though, #1 may not have a frequency lock, which can lead to data corruption when overclocking. Inform yourself ahead of time, and you;ll save yourself a lot of headaches. And study mechBgon's guide: it's the noobie builder's Bible.

 

[concernedsophist]

I certainly will ask if I run into problems! Thanks for all the input. I am new at posting here, but have been reading for a while. I have learned a lot from this forum!