Building a pc, need input and guidance!

Hey all, I am new here and hope to have the time to stick around, but I'm in the Army and came home on leave and figured since I was just back from Iraq I'd build myself a PC to take back to Germany with me. I hope this is the right place to post this, but it seems the most obvious.

I've been on a high-end WidowPC gaming laptop for about a year but I wanted to splurge on a PC due to better cooling and stability, and most brand new gaming laptops are still behind the curve a few months compared to PC. I have the parts ordered from newegg but was told by a couple people on other message boards that my video card wasn't that good, so I wanted to hear a different opinion. I got an 8800GT 1.0 GB with 112 stream processors, but was told by more than one person that the 1GB version actually performed worse than the 512mb version. Is this true? If so, I may be posting a GeForce 8800GT 1.0GB for sale on here soon. I was told I should instead for for the 9800GTX 512, or the 512 version of the 8800.

I am happy with the rest of my rig:
Intel Core2 Quad Q6600
BFG Tech 680i LGA 775 nForce mobo set up for ddr2
2x 2gb Kingston (4gb total) DDR2 800 SDRAM
NZXT Tempest Mid-Tower (already got here, it looks like an awesome case and has a ridiculous amount of fans, but is said in review to be quieter than a computer with one 80mm fan)
LG 20" flat panel monitor with f-engine
Antec BP550 psu 550w
WD Caviar 640gb HDD 7200 rpm 32mb cache (which was cheaper than some smaller HDD's for some reason

While I am happy, what do you guys think? Should I change anything? I could always return something and get something else.

Last but not least, I am somewhat inexperienced at PC building, so I was wondering if you guys knew where a tutorial was, that I could print out and reference when I need to, preferably with pictures. I just want to make sure I do everything in the right order. I know most of the cable connections are all different so it should be obvious what cables connect to where.

Any help you guys could give would be much appreciated.

 

Hey I just got back from Afghanistan, I am in Schweinfurt Germany. About your build, GO WITH THE 9800 GTX! You will not be disappointed. A German friend of mine just got his last week and is getting around 80 to 90 FPS on call of duty 4. Getting around 50 FPS on Crysis with a single card(thats what he says anyway) He told me the card is awesome. $314 from Newegg with shipping. For my build I just completed I bought a Evga 8800 GTX. I went to buy a second one and nobody sold it anymore:cry So I called Evga and they told me to send them my card and they would replace it with the Evga 9800 GTX as part of the step-up program. The chip set on the 8800 series is old is what the guy on the phone told me and Evga is doing an upgrade program for its customers. The specs on the 9800 GTX are awesome:cool Right now I have one ordered from newegg and waiting for mine from Evga SLI here I come!:major

XION II Mid-Tower Case
ANTEC Neo Power 650w SLI ready
Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q9300 @ 2.5GHz 1333FSB
CoolerMaster Hyper TX2 Gaming CPU Cooling
Asus P5N-E nForce 650i SLI Chipset LGA775 FSB1333
Corsair XMS2 800 MHz RAM 4 x 1 GB
Nvidia 7900 GT (waiting on my cards)
22'' Samsung SyncMaster 2253, 8000:1 contrast, 2ms
Two 160 GB WD HD
Sony 20x CD/DVD
Creative Labs SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio 24-BIT PCI Sound Card
MERC Stealth keyboard
Logitec G7 wireless mouse
Thermaltake 4 channel fan controller mounted in drive bay
Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium w/ Service Pack 1, 64 bit

 

Awesome outcome.

 

This is the place to ask this question.

Your specs look good overall with the except of the aging 680i chipset which can't do 45nm quads. If you plan to upgrade the cpu in the future, pick up either 750i or 780i which both support SLI x16 & DDR2.

There may be some truth to 1GB performing worse, depending on the specs.

http://techgage.com/article/palit_geforce_8800gt_super1gb/3

If the game doesn't take advantage of the extra memory, it's not gonna run faster. 512MB, IMO, is plenty for today's games. I suggest you consider getting 2 identical cards right off the bat or else you're wasting money on an SLI board. The 9600GT SLI is pretty sweet. The card can be had for a little over $100 after rebate. It beats out GTX & Ultra for LESS:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/geforce_9600_gt_sli_performance/page9.asp

For building a pc, print this out & look at a few youtubes:

http://www.corsair.com/systembuild/report.aspx?report_id=12472
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=diy+pc&search_type=

 

Okay, I got it all put together...

...plugged it in....

...connected it to the monitor...

....turned it on and...

...got a loooong beep whine.

I turned it off almost immediately.

I must have missed something but I can't think of what!

It's frustrating, I want to set up the BIOS but I fear the worst...I don't wanna fry the mobo or the chip sooooo......

any thoughts?

 

This is the motherboard I use and love it, a lot of options with it.

Asus P5N-E nForce 650i SLI Chipset LGA775 FSB1333

Even with a 650 chipset It supports 45nm quads. I have a Q9300 in it and everything works great. He is right though, I would make sure your motherboard you buy supports 45nm...that is the future for procs.

Here is a quote from the BFG spec sheet on that board from the web site

Minimum System Requirements
Intel Core™ 2 Extreme (dual and quad core), Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Duo, Pentium® D, Pentium 4,and Celeron® D Socket 775 processors (Does not support new Intel Core®2 Yorkfield-based Quad-Core processors)

Here is an eVGA board for the same price that supports 45nm procs.
EVGA nForce 750i SLI The board has great reviews from what read. Just an idea for ya!:major

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188026

 

Scout, that's odd that you're running Yorkie on 650i as ASUS doesn't have a bios to support that cpu:

http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=P5N-E SLI

The only 650i board that does Yorkies officially is ASRock's.

Back on topic.

Have you hooked up everything right? The links I posted will guide you through the build. Double check your connections.

If your connections check out, but the pc won't power on. I think it may be the memory settings. Try each stick of ram in each of the slots until you get the pc to power on. Don't forget to unplug power cord & press front power button to discharge the capacitors. Or else you may damage the ram. It's an nvidia thing.

Once your pc powers on, go to bios, load defaults, increase the memory voltage to 2.1v, save & exit. Shut down, unplug cord, discharge caps, install the rest of memory.

The 680i is no stranger to 65nm cpu's. The 680i/Q6600 combo is pretty standard. It's rare that you get a bios that doesn't support the Q6600. If you can't get the pc to power on, lug it to a computer store for a quick check-up.

 

Oh it powers on all right, but just screeches. I rechecked the connections and found some discrepancies and fixed them: I had two sticks of memory in adjacent DIMMS (for dual channel, I used slot 0 and slot 2, both blue) so I fixed that. Then I realized the the header cable from the PSU that goes to the CPU power header wasn't connected to I did that as well. Lastly, I had used for aux power, the 6 pin header with two molex ends, on the graphics card. This is what the video card documentation called for, but I found a double sided 6 pin header cable specifically for dedicated graphics power, connected one six pin to the PSU and the other six pin end to the graphics card header.

The kicker is, that I removed the CPU fan and used alcohol to remove the thermal paste that came stock on the heatsink, because I had been told that this was not going to suffice for a Q6600 chip, so I did all this in anticipation that I would have thermal grease laying around the house. No dice. Now I'm waiting to go to Fry's so I can buy some more Arctic, then I will put the fan back on after applying Arctic and test out the other discrepancies I found.

I hope it works. I hope to God I haven't already fried the CPU or memory! But as soon as I heard the screeching I switched the PSU off so maybe did not give the CPU time to burn in hell.

 

If Frys carries this, get this instead of AS5. It's non-conductive & can be used on anything:

http://www.arctic-cooling.com/further_prod2.php?idx=140

While Kentfield does put out a bit of heat, it's ok even with the stock cooler. Also, modern cpu's are pretty rigid. I doubt anything is fried. Even if you broke a pin in the cpu socket, the worst case scenario would be no boot or missing features. Just the config.

 

I've heard that the newest generations of Intel chips can get fried in ten seconds or less if the cooling isn't working or the thermal paste isn't working.

There were no pins in the socket...that I saw.

As long as I can get it to BIOS to set it up and install Vista Ultimate tonite, I'm happy. I don't think any other connections are messed up. Triple checked them, found other things that were wrong, and corrected them.

*crosses fingers*

And I will look for that paste, if it's non-conductive that's awesome, so I don't have to worry about getting it on the motherboard as much. Gotta be careful with conductive paste...I've seen the aftermath.

In general, lucky for me, I also have human tech support in the form of my Microsoft coder step-dad who's built a couple PC's for me in the past. He's like a walking encyclopedia on computers and got hired at Microsoft with no degree. So if anything else goes wrong I think he might be able to help along with the expertise that resides on this forum :-D

 

Sorry for the double post...

After applying thermal grease, using the psu supplied six pin connector for the video card, and installing the HDD, the computer now powers on to the BIOS fine but Phoenix BIOS won't detect the HDD or the optical drives, and I even checked to see if RAID was enabled for whatever reason. Of course it wasn't. The optical drives aren't getting power for me to turn them on. Am I missing something? I need the optical drives to turn on and be recognized so I can open them, put the disc in, and install Vista Ultimate, but more importantly, I need the HDD to be auto detected (I shouldn't even have to tell BIOS to detect the SATA HDD, it just should. But it doesn't, meaning that I effectively don't have a hard drive to install Vista on! I tried two hard drives as well and tried almost every SATA cable that came with the mobo! What gives? I am definitely at a loss now....

 

Well after looking at the MOBO website it states you have 6 SATA ports on the board to plug a HDD into. With my P5WDH the manual was very specific about which SATA port I used for differing HDD Arrays. In other words if I had a single HDD the manual stipulated that the HDD was to be plugged into Socket 1 only. But for RAID0 then socket 1 and 2.....etc etc. So have a good look at your manual for anything along those lines and ensure that the HDD is plugged into the "right" socket?

Here is a link for the MOBO user guide....gonna have a bit of a read and see if I can help:

http://www.bfgtech.com/CMDocs/BFGTech/BFGRINF680iS_Users_Guide.pdf

 

Okay after having a brief read I may have solved your problem. Hope you have DL the above link.

Lets start from the start:

Make sure your DVD burner and HDD are both set to Master (jumpers on the back of the devices).

Plug the IDE cable into your DVD burner and into the MOBO, next plug the power socket from the PSU into the back of the DVD burner.

Lets plug the HDD into the "SATA 1" port of the MOBO (be specific) look at p.20 of the Users Manual and then plug in the power socket from your PSU.

Make sure your "Front Panel Header Pins are matched up properly, p.22.


Now here is the "Important" part on pp.35 " you need to "Press ENTER to Auto-Detect the IDE and SATA channels in the system". So it looks like you need to manually press the "ENTER" for IDE-Master and SATA Channel 1 Master "before" they will auto-detect. A little further reading indicates that you can manually configure your HDD and partition etc so that is why you need to activate the auto-detect. Damn complex BIOS!

Finally find were you establish the Boot Order and make it read your DVD drive first and then your HDD. Hopefully that is all the problem is.

 

I'm pretty sure your harddisk is SATA, but your dvd drive is IDE/SATA? If IDE, connect like above:

Code:

[PSU ]----------[IDE/SATA POWER ON DVD/HDD]
[MOBO]----------[IDE/SATA DATA ON DVD/HDD]

Always use up the first connectors. i.e. 0 or 1 & so on. If in doubt, plug in one drive at a time until you get it detected.

If that doesn't work, you might want to clear cmos, load default in bios, save & exit, enter bios, & check on your devices. Some HDD needs to be set to LARGE/LBA. Most can be on AUTO.

 

Okay, it's all worked out now.

Just used the cable that came with the PSU that had six pin and SATA.

Now I have to flash my BIOS because Vista won't install correctly...installs but restarts and flashes blue screen of death before going back to the POST. So I am thinking this means I need to flash the BIOS because maybe it's a little old to support Vista but I'm not sure yet.

Input?

 

This comment really caught my attention today;

"Warning!!! Aside from pouring molten lead on your motherboard, flashing the bios on a system before first ensuring stability is without a doubt the single most popular method of permanently damaging it"

From this thread:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/guides-how-s/914-10-step-no-post-bios-recovery-guide.html

Maybe have a look at that but would hold off on the BIOS flash for now.

 

Have you checked the support CD that came with the MOBO for any files related to Vista installation? You may need to copy some files to a USB stick?!?

 

I ended up not flashing it...just turned out that it need SP1 to be installed so I burned an iso of it onto a dvd and booted with it, voila, Windows works and now the system works like a dream.

Except I had to get all the mobo and graphics and network drivers for x64 from the laptop and onto a flash drive to get most of the stuff working correctly...but the optical drives still won't autoplay...and in the beginning I had to right click on the drive to explore the directory and run any installs manually, but the disc that came with the mobo for all the drivers wouldn't do anything. It spun up and the program started, but once I clicked the button for install drivers it just acted like I hadn't done anything, so I was forced to use the flash drive after downloading all the drivers from a laptop...

It's still got a couple bugs to be worked out I guess but it's working amazingly otherwise.

 

Wooot gratz dude thats the sort of outcomes I like. It is a pretty complex MOBO but should be able to do some sick gaming. Hope I helped in some ways.