Long post my friends. Cliffs at the bottom. =)
Antec P182
Corsair HX620 PSU
Q6600 G0 w/ Freezer 7 Pro
Gigabyte P35-DS3R rev 2.1 (using onboard sound)
G.Skill 2x2gb DDR2 800mhz 5-5-5-15
eVGA 8800GTS 512 (G92)
WD 500gb drive
Samsung DVD burner
Nintendo 64, I mean Vista 64
If your method isn't broke, don't fix it! For my first computer I built, I instinctively installed the mobo into the case first, then installed everything else. Cake. This time, I decided to actually listen to the case, mobo, and processor's manuals which all said to put the processor/heatsink/ram on the mobo before installing the mobo in the case.
PAIN IN THE A$$. God himself couldn't have reached the screws with that much stuff in the way. After working up a sweat and basically breaking every bone in my hand, I decided to just take it all back out and strip the mobo back down. Had to remove the heatsink/processor and re-clean them with alcohol and re-apply Arctic Silver 5. Speaking of which, I love how hardware makers design these things so they feel like they will break when you install them. I guess it's an inside joke. Too much force required to close the lever on the processor. I was scared. =( Even the mobo itself was fairly tough to install. It was an extremely tight fit in the I/O shield.
Anyway, after a few more hours of acrobatic cable routing, I'm ready to go. I turn the thing on, and the 8800 sounds like it is going to launch into the stratosphere. I was about to turn it off, thinking something was certainly wrong, but after a few seconds it quieted down. It does this every time I start the computer. I guess it's a normal "rev up" or whatever that the video card does. After that initial few seconds, this thing runs quiet (All three case fans on low)! Which reminds me, when will I want to change them to medium? High?
The lovely P182 case didn't come with a speaker, so I have no idea if I was getting any post error beeps, but it seemed to be working fine. Boot disk failure of course, so I stuck in the Vista CD. Talk about sluggish... Waiting between screens of the Vista install seemed to be taking forever. Nice job Microsoft leaving out those fancy things called "progress bars." Or even a "please wait" message. Half the time it wouldn't say anything, and I just had to assume it was working. I get to the drive setup/partition part, and I make a 30gb partition for the OS/apps (hope this is big enough, I wasn't sure how much space Vista would take up). Then the hard drive starts making disgusting sounds, which I thought weren't normal but wasn't sure. After about 30 minutes of going nowhere, I reboot. Now I can't get back into the Vista setup. I reboot again, get back into Vista setup, and it says "This hard drive may be about to fail. Please install Vista on a different drive."
Luckily I had ordered 2 drives, as I planned to get an enclosure for one of them. I swapped out the drive, and lo and behold, that first one was indeed bad or something. This time, Vista installation went considerably smoother/faster. Still had some longer waits than expected without any progress bars... But meh. At least it actually installed this time heh. A few mandatory reboots later, I'm in Vista. As for the bad drive, it actually LOOKS different than the good drive. On the bottom of the drive, towards the center, there is a data ribbon that connects to the little PCB on the drive. On the bad drive, this ribbon is green. On the good drive, this ribbon is pink. ???
I downloaded and installed 45 important/recommended Windows updates, downloaded the chipset drivers from Gigabyte, as well as the audio drivers. Audio was already working by the way, but it was just generic audio or whatever. Installed all that, then installed the nvidia drivers. By the way, it recognized my 4gb of RAM right off the bat. I've read of people needing to install Vista with only 2gb, then add the other 2gb after install. I'm not sure how old that info was, it may have been talking about back in Vista beta.
Prior to this, my Vista hardware rating was a 1.0, because of the standard VGA adapter driver Vista was using which gave me 1.0's in desktop and gaming performance. I had a 5.9 Procssor, 5.6 RAM, and a 5.7 hard drive. After the nvidia drivers, my graphics are a 5.9, but my RAM dropped a tenth to 5.5. Why is this? Also, while determining my new rating, it ran some tests for graphical capability and when it got to the Driect3D Texture test, my monitor got some funky colors and everything froze. After a hard reboot, I did the exact same test again, and it worked fine that time. *shrug*
Anyway, so here I am. All in all, a bit rockier than my first build experience, but not bad. Vista is obviously running like silk on a sytem like this, but I haven't put any movies/music/games on here yet to actually appreciate this thing. Vista is using the hard drive a lot, for what I don't know. Probably indexing or superfetching or auto-defragging or whatever new features it has. I should probably disable those things.
Once I'm sure everything is running in ship shape, I'm going to OC to 3ghz. But I need to make sure everything is in order first. I also need to get my data from my old PC onto this one. Can I use a router to do that? I'm sure it would be much faster than burning a bunch of DVDs. Now let me see if I can bombard you with questions!
Cliffs:
1. What things should I do, software should I run, etc, to make sure everything is running properly? Memtest, things like that? Speedfan? What else? My video card could be melting and I wouldn't know it. =p
2. Will the Freezer 7 Pro fan adjust its own speeds or do I need to manually adjust it?
3. Same goes for the 8800 GTS. In an intense game, will the fan be revving itself up to a million miles an hour like when I start my PC? And is it normal to rev up like that at startup?
4. When should I ever set the case fans on anything besides Low?
5. Why did my RAM Vista rating drop a bit after installing the video drivers?
6. How do I know if I'm getting post errors without a case speaker?
7. How do I setup a router so I can transfer my files from my old PC to this one?
I think that coveres everything.
Antec P182
Corsair HX620 PSU
Q6600 G0 w/ Freezer 7 Pro
Gigabyte P35-DS3R rev 2.1 (using onboard sound)
G.Skill 2x2gb DDR2 800mhz 5-5-5-15
eVGA 8800GTS 512 (G92)
WD 500gb drive
Samsung DVD burner
Nintendo 64, I mean Vista 64
If your method isn't broke, don't fix it! For my first computer I built, I instinctively installed the mobo into the case first, then installed everything else. Cake. This time, I decided to actually listen to the case, mobo, and processor's manuals which all said to put the processor/heatsink/ram on the mobo before installing the mobo in the case.
PAIN IN THE A$$. God himself couldn't have reached the screws with that much stuff in the way. After working up a sweat and basically breaking every bone in my hand, I decided to just take it all back out and strip the mobo back down. Had to remove the heatsink/processor and re-clean them with alcohol and re-apply Arctic Silver 5. Speaking of which, I love how hardware makers design these things so they feel like they will break when you install them. I guess it's an inside joke. Too much force required to close the lever on the processor. I was scared. =( Even the mobo itself was fairly tough to install. It was an extremely tight fit in the I/O shield.
Anyway, after a few more hours of acrobatic cable routing, I'm ready to go. I turn the thing on, and the 8800 sounds like it is going to launch into the stratosphere. I was about to turn it off, thinking something was certainly wrong, but after a few seconds it quieted down. It does this every time I start the computer. I guess it's a normal "rev up" or whatever that the video card does. After that initial few seconds, this thing runs quiet (All three case fans on low)! Which reminds me, when will I want to change them to medium? High?
The lovely P182 case didn't come with a speaker, so I have no idea if I was getting any post error beeps, but it seemed to be working fine. Boot disk failure of course, so I stuck in the Vista CD. Talk about sluggish... Waiting between screens of the Vista install seemed to be taking forever. Nice job Microsoft leaving out those fancy things called "progress bars." Or even a "please wait" message. Half the time it wouldn't say anything, and I just had to assume it was working. I get to the drive setup/partition part, and I make a 30gb partition for the OS/apps (hope this is big enough, I wasn't sure how much space Vista would take up). Then the hard drive starts making disgusting sounds, which I thought weren't normal but wasn't sure. After about 30 minutes of going nowhere, I reboot. Now I can't get back into the Vista setup. I reboot again, get back into Vista setup, and it says "This hard drive may be about to fail. Please install Vista on a different drive."
Luckily I had ordered 2 drives, as I planned to get an enclosure for one of them. I swapped out the drive, and lo and behold, that first one was indeed bad or something. This time, Vista installation went considerably smoother/faster. Still had some longer waits than expected without any progress bars... But meh. At least it actually installed this time heh. A few mandatory reboots later, I'm in Vista. As for the bad drive, it actually LOOKS different than the good drive. On the bottom of the drive, towards the center, there is a data ribbon that connects to the little PCB on the drive. On the bad drive, this ribbon is green. On the good drive, this ribbon is pink. ???
I downloaded and installed 45 important/recommended Windows updates, downloaded the chipset drivers from Gigabyte, as well as the audio drivers. Audio was already working by the way, but it was just generic audio or whatever. Installed all that, then installed the nvidia drivers. By the way, it recognized my 4gb of RAM right off the bat. I've read of people needing to install Vista with only 2gb, then add the other 2gb after install. I'm not sure how old that info was, it may have been talking about back in Vista beta.
Prior to this, my Vista hardware rating was a 1.0, because of the standard VGA adapter driver Vista was using which gave me 1.0's in desktop and gaming performance. I had a 5.9 Procssor, 5.6 RAM, and a 5.7 hard drive. After the nvidia drivers, my graphics are a 5.9, but my RAM dropped a tenth to 5.5. Why is this? Also, while determining my new rating, it ran some tests for graphical capability and when it got to the Driect3D Texture test, my monitor got some funky colors and everything froze. After a hard reboot, I did the exact same test again, and it worked fine that time. *shrug*
Anyway, so here I am. All in all, a bit rockier than my first build experience, but not bad. Vista is obviously running like silk on a sytem like this, but I haven't put any movies/music/games on here yet to actually appreciate this thing. Vista is using the hard drive a lot, for what I don't know. Probably indexing or superfetching or auto-defragging or whatever new features it has. I should probably disable those things.
Once I'm sure everything is running in ship shape, I'm going to OC to 3ghz. But I need to make sure everything is in order first. I also need to get my data from my old PC onto this one. Can I use a router to do that? I'm sure it would be much faster than burning a bunch of DVDs. Now let me see if I can bombard you with questions!
Cliffs:
1. What things should I do, software should I run, etc, to make sure everything is running properly? Memtest, things like that? Speedfan? What else? My video card could be melting and I wouldn't know it. =p
2. Will the Freezer 7 Pro fan adjust its own speeds or do I need to manually adjust it?
3. Same goes for the 8800 GTS. In an intense game, will the fan be revving itself up to a million miles an hour like when I start my PC? And is it normal to rev up like that at startup?
4. When should I ever set the case fans on anything besides Low?
5. Why did my RAM Vista rating drop a bit after installing the video drivers?
6. How do I know if I'm getting post errors without a case speaker?
7. How do I setup a router so I can transfer my files from my old PC to this one?
I think that coveres everything.
