Stupid build mistakes to avoid

allewellyn

allewellyn

allewellyn

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Joined
29 Jan 2011
Posts
52
Hey guys,

Firstly, a massive thank you to everyone who chipped in helping me spec up this machine in the first place.

All my parts finally came through today (good old dpd) and I'll be putting the thing together tomorrow.

Now, it's a first time build for me, and I know I'll end up doing something wrong at some point, but I was hoping to pick your brains for easy mistakes to make to watch out for.

Any other tips you may have would be most helpful too. If I'm in a carpeted room am I going to have to be more careful about static when I put it together? Is there anything I should do first, like installing the CPU and heatsink before putting the mobo in the case? That kind of stuff.

Build is as follows by the way:

Windows 7 Home Premium
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail
FX ATI Radeon HD 5670 1024MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Coolermaster Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU)
Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H AMD 880G (Socket AM3) microATX DDR3 Motherboard
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ)
OCZ Special OPS 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C8 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (OCZ3SOE1600LV4GK)
LiteOn IHAS124-19 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM
 
Pighardia said:
also, you might have to persevere with the heatsink. i have the same cpu on an am3 mobo and at one point i didn't think the heatsink would go on, i really had to force it.
Click to expand...

I knew it would probably be tricky when I unboxed it and it looked like the latch had come off a circa 1980s suitcase

Thanks for the heads up :)
 
If I assemble everything (or the minimum as you say) outside the case, what's my working process for testing it?

Will it need to be plugged into the monitor and the bios screen should just come up? If so, what next? Is there any shut-down from the bios? Or would I just turn off, take it apart and rebuild into the case?

As great as Greywolf's guide is, it would be brilliant if it had a small section on the first boot-up, I've got no idea what to expect with that.
 
I'm hooking up the front panel to the motherboard.

Rather than being lots of fiddly little plugs, they seem to be collected into two larger plugs.

One is labelled HD Audio, the other AC'97

They're both keyed the same, and look like they should fit alongside each other in the F_PANEL socket, but I'm not sure which way around to put them.
 
Just realised that's a completely different cable. The ones I thought it was were hiding around the back of the case.


Okay, so I have one of the tiny fiddly cables left over. It's labelled 'P LED' and is two small individual plugs (rather than two together like the others).

On the MOBO, there is a plug labelled 'pwr led', but it's on the other side of the socket from all the rest of the wires. Where the rest of the wires are, there's space for the two plugs and is marked as 'MSG'. As far as I can see I have no other little wires around.

Suggestions?
 
They're only 2 plugs though, and the part on the MOBO that's labelled as 'pwr led' has three pins?

Another query...the case fan plug had a molex adapter on the plug, which I've taken off. The plug is a 3-pin chap, but the SYS_FAN socket on the mobo has 4-pins.

The 3-pin fits onto this socket fine, but there's that stray pin..is this something wrong, or will it be fine like that?
 
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