Building a computer

[Dittohead]

Here's the deal. Yesterday I "finished" assembling all of my parts. Now as far as I know, I'm done with all of the assembling. But I want to be 100% sure. I'm going to walk through the process. I'd appreciate it if anyone could tell me "That's everything" or "Hey, you missed something".

Lifted up the lever on socket A, stuck the processor in, pulled the lever back down.

Connected the heatsink and fan above the processor.

Plugged the fan into the motherboard.

Stuck two sticks of SDRAM into the DIMM sockets (is that right?) and flipped the ejector tabs up.

Screwed the motherboard onto the motherboard mounting and screwed that back onto the case.

Connected the power supply to the motherboard.

Screwed the DVD/CD drive in and connected it to a power cord, a ribbon cable to IDE2, and an audio cable. (One quick Q about the audio cable. Would that connect to the sound board in a slot labeled CD-IN?)

Screwed the floppy in and hooked it to some smaller power (I think) cable and made it master to IDE1.

Screwed the hard drive in and attached a power cable to it and made it slave to the floppy.

Stuck the video card into the AGP slot and screwed it in. Stuck the sound card into the third PCI slot (with the audio cable from the DVD attached) and screwed it in. And stuck the modem in the last PCI slot and screwed it in.

Hooked the Power Switch, Reset Switch, and LED (hdd led, power led, etc.) cords onto the motherboard.

And that's it. I haven't put the side panel back on yet. So did I miss something? Or did that sound like it'll work? Thanks.

 

[Descend492]

That sounds like a pretty good job, but I'd suggest making the hard drive primary master, since you're going to be using that the most. Also, yes, the audio cable goes from the CD player to the sound card labelled CD-IN. So that should be all set-up. Of course, the problem with computers is always in the software, so you've finished the easy part in my opinion, but the first time that computer boots up is a good feeling nonetheless.

 

[Stosh]

I would have put some thermal paste between the processor and heat sink.

As for your question, only one way to find out. What the hell are you waiting for. Power that bad boy up.

 

[Descend492]

yeah, I was thinking about saying something about thermal paste too, but that can be done anytime, doesn't need to be right away, considering I dont' think he'll be o/c'ing this right away.

 

[hubbs]

Make sure there is no extra standoffs underneath the motherboard to short it out.

 

[Moving Target]

I would install and setup your OS with only the vid card, then install the SC, then Modem.

Every thing else looks great.

 

[Lightingguy]

Please note that the floppy drive should be on a separate data cable from the MB, doesn't fit the standard IDE cable. I suspect you want the HDD as master and the DVD as the slave on the Primary IDE channel. Be certain you set the jumpers correctly!

BTW, you may wish to enter the bios at first power-up to correctly set some of the fields to agree with the hardware you are using. Pressing DELETE as the MB begins to Power on self test will do that. Follow the MB manual, and you should be AOK.

Good luck, and happy building!

 

[whizler]

Phew, I'm glad someone caught the floppy/harddrive error. You couldn't even connect the two because they use different cables. The floppy drive cable does not fit into IDE1 slot. It goes into it's own slot, the only one it fits into.

One side of the floppy and IDE ribbon cables should be red. That corresponds to pin 1 both on the hard drive and floppy drive, and the IDE and floppy slots on the motherboard.

Ideally, you'll have two IDE ribbon cables so that each device, the hard drive and DVD drive, will have a dedicated IDE channel. If you just have one IDE ribbon cable, make the hard drive the master and the DVD drive the slave, and connect the ribbon cable to IDE1.

In answer to your question, yes the audio cable does connect to CD-IN on the sound card.

When I build a machine, I typically add the unnecessary cards (e.g., sound, network) in one at a time after I've got the OS up and running. This way, you avoid possible install problems should two devices want the same resources.

It's easy to put the Power Switch, Reset Switch, and LED cords into the motherboard backwards. If something is not quite right, just switch the connector around.

Have fun!

 

[ArkAoss]

the ram clips should have popped up on their own, and stand perfectly vertical, that type of ram slot is the worst out, cause it does take force to get them arms to pop up on their own, eyeball the chips make sure the bottom contacts are in so you cant see most of it, just in case