im building a new computer.

I just bought some new stuff, and had just a few minor questions before i start putting it together.

One question is with the stock fan/heatsink on an intel e6750. There is already some thermal paste on the heatsink. I always hear of people using aftermarket fans and paste. Do i need to really concern myself about that? I don't overclock at all, and ive had a P4 for 6 years with the stock heatsink/fan and thermal paste, and ive never had any temp issues.

the other is with the memory and motherboard. the board is a gigabyte x38 gigabyte GA-X38-DS4 LGA 775

and the memory is gskill ddr2 1066. The specs for the mobo say the ram is 1.8v, and the memory says 2.0~2.1v . When I put this together, will my ram be at the said speed (ddr2 1066) or will i have to up the voltage to get it to that speed. that said, will there be any issues?

a couple of other small things...I currently have 2 IDE (PATA) hard drives, and i purchased a new SATA hard drive for this computer. I have heard of people having problems getting these to work together. I'd like to think i have an idea about how these things work, but i haven't had any personal experiences like that. anything i should be aware of with this?

and finally (thanks for reading all of this), i have installed winxp pro on sata before and i had to use a separate disk for the drivers. This time around, i don't have a floppy for the drivers, and i will only have one cd/dvd rom. Can I put those SATA drivers on a thumb drive to load during the windows install bootup? or will i get lucky and windows might already have a sufficient enough driver to do it?

thanks in advance for any responses.

 

1. Stock cooling should be fine if you are not overclocking. Just pay attention to the temps in the BIOS for at least the first few boots. The stock heatsink is semi-difficult to place correctly. I have spent a good hour trying to place it right. Your temps idle should never be above 40C as far as I'm concerned.

2. You may or may not have to bump up the voltages, timing, and frequency (in this case 1066.) It kind of depends. My mobo is designed (or so newegg says) for DDR2 800, but there is no way that the mobo will allow for that. I have tried many settings, but just accepted the 667 default. Play around with the voltages, but don't go beyond the recommended. If, at some point, it will not boot, you will have to reset your BIOS and start over.

3. I have never had a problem getting SATA and PATA to work together. You might want to try to put the SATA as the Master and the PATA as the slave, though. But that's just standard practice for anything.

4. I have had pretty good luck with XP Pro installing on Sata drives. There have been a few instances that I have had problems. Sad to say, however, that you will not be able to boot from a flash drive. Floppy is the ONLY way. I too asked myself this, once.

Hope this helps.

 

thanks for the response...i forgot to mention that the mobo will support up to DDR2 1200, but i opted for the 1066, so im hoping that maybe it will automatically figure everything out...btw, i am still waiting for the video card to arrive, so i will assemble this tonight, but i won't be able to turn it on yet.

 

seems everything is fine, i was able to install windows without having to install anything along with it...
one more question about the memory..it shows up as ddr2 1066 (which is what i wanted) but on the sticker for the ram, it says the cl is 5-5-5-10, but in my bios, those numbers are different (im not at my computer at the moment, so i cant check the exact numbers), the are something like 2-7-7-20?? or something like that....My bios allows me to change those values, should I? or should i just not worry about it? as i said earlier, i have no interest in overclocking or tinkering in any way, i just want to make sure that things are running the way they were intended to...thanks again.

 

so i decided to tinker...i put in the 5-5-5-10 settings in the bios for the ram, and it didn't boot...so i reset it back....anyone have any info on what this is all about? i read up a little on what it all means, but should i worry about not having the 5-5-5-10 numberst that are on the ram? or should i just leave it alone.