Help tycho assemble his comp!

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-09-28 12:32am

Yes, its finally here, and so far I've gotten the cpu/HSF, RAM, and motherboard installed. But now I'm having trouble mounting the harddrive in the tray (Im using an Antec P180 case) The manual says to use the scews provided, but there aren't any that would be appropriate. Any quick fixes I could use?

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2005-09-28 01:51am

Captain tycho wrote:Yes, its finally here, and so far I've gotten the cpu/HSF, RAM, and motherboard installed. But now I'm having trouble mounting the harddrive in the tray (Im using an Antec P180 case) The manual says to use the scews provided, but there aren't any that would be appropriate. Any quick fixes I could use?

There should be a bunch of screws with hex tops with about 2mm or thereabouts lengths, if you don't have any of those look around because its the same ones you use to hook up drives to the driverails and most cases inculd about 30 or so of them.
If your sure you don't have them you can bring the 5.25 Drive rails with you to your local hardware store and look around of a screw the right size and length.

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-09-28 01:57am

Also, the 7800GTX Ko I installed seems to be sitting very close to the chipset fan. Will this cause any problems in regards to heat dissipation, or is this placement normal?

Miles Teg · Post by **Miles Teg** » 2005-09-28 02:20am

With a P180, the correct mounting srews depend on which cage you are putting the drive in. With the P180, all the hardware comes packed in the hardware storage box attached to the upper 3.5" drive cage.

If you are putting them in the upper tray, the correct screws are the one that are about ~3/4 of a inch long, and have really large washers on them. You have to pull out the drive bay (via the bing silver ring), and then there are 2 slide out carriages for the drives with big rubber gromits.

Here's a shot of the cage with the hardware and carriages:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article255-page4.html (3rd pic).

The lower cage uses the standard ~1/4 inch coarse thread screws =)

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-09-28 02:29am

Ack, I was doing it totally wrong. I was trying to mount it by the little holes in the sides.

Thanks Miles.

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-09-28 05:27am

Well, thats fucking great. I get everything plugged in fine and dandy. Then I do 'the smoke test.'

It failed miserably. An IC near the PS/2 ports caught on fucking fire. Everything else was fine, but it wouldnt boot into BIOS. Luckily, I have the exact same DFI board here, unopened, that I was gonna use for my bro's comp. But, I really don't feel like messing around, taking it out, putting everything back in, etc, after having spent 9 hours on it already (no joke).
Looks like its off to the comp shop for me. Anyways, I'd like to thank Ace for all his support in choosing parts and assembling this stuff, plus putting up with my insomniac weirdness. You're a great guy.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2005-09-28 10:07am

And another DFI board commits sucide!

As for the KO sitting over top the NB, that's normal. Expect NB load temperatures of in the 50s.

Shadowhawk · Post by **Shadowhawk** » 2005-09-28 10:22am

Caught fire? Geez.
Make sure you didn't accidentally put a standoff/spacer where you shouldn't've. That's the #1 cause of motherboard installation failures.

Miles Teg · Post by **Miles Teg** » 2005-09-28 01:07pm

Check your standoffs and power connectors! Motherboards don't just catch fire (even DFI QA is better than that, lol). Most likely the board shorted on the backplane and/or a standoff. The P180 is a pain since there are 4 standoffs soldered to the backplane in standard ATX mounting locations (which DFI might not be 100% standard). You might have to remove them in order to install the board without shorting it.

Another possibility is a bum power supply. If it delivered too much voltage to the board that could cause a catastrophic failure (read: fire).

As to your time investment, it's always a wise choice to test a bare bones configuration (Motherboard, cpu/HSF, 1 stick of Ram, and Vid card) before installing *everything*. I even assemble things outside the case (on a non-conductive surface!) if I feel the hardware is suspect or the case is difficult to work in.

Hope things go better for you in the future!

Miles Teg

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2005-09-28 01:15pm

Thats what he did, no drives connected.

He checked, all were good, however, whats done is done, RMA that thing and give the second set of components to that lab.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2005-09-28 02:25pm

Miles Teg wrote:Check your standoffs and power connectors! Motherboards don't just catch fire (even DFI QA is better than that, lol).

Mine did...

Glocksman · Post by **Glocksman** » 2005-09-28 02:42pm

Arrow Mk84 wrote:
Miles Teg wrote:Check your standoffs and power connectors! Motherboards don't just catch fire (even DFI QA is better than that, lol).
Mine did...

The DFI boards I've used haven't had any QC issues at all, but any maker can turn out a lemon.
The only bad board I've run into was an Intel branded board.

That's rare as hell, but it happened.

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-09-29 12:04am

My power supply is an expensive PC Power and Cooling 510watt unit, which are supposed to be pretty reliable and safe. Either I didn't install the motherboard right (quite possible, given it was my first time) or it was defective. Still, I'm glad I had a replacement on hand (the board I was going to use in my older brother's comp, exact same thing).
Edit: And yes, now that I think about it, I probably didn't have the motherboard grounded, since the side panel covering the backplane had to be taken off when I was installing the PSU, and I didn't put it back on. Oops.

Shadowhawk · Post by **Shadowhawk** » 2005-09-29 08:34pm

Captain tycho wrote:Edit: And yes, now that I think about it, I probably didn't have the motherboard grounded, since the side panel covering the backplane had to be taken off when I was installing the PSU, and I didn't put it back on. Oops.

The motherboard becomes grounded when you screw it onto the standoff posts. The side panel has nothing to do with it. The motherboard doesn't even need to be grounded this way: that's what all the black wires in the ATX connector are for. I've run plenty of motherboards sitting on rubber mats, wood desks, sheets of paper, and cardboard boxes.

Check to make sure that there are NO standoff posts where there is not a screw hole in the motherboard.

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-09-30 02:33am

Probably an inane question, so I didnt want to start another thread for it: Will my Sennheiser HD595s work just fine with an AudigyZS, or should I shoot for an Xi-fi, or just grab a headphone amp and use it with the Audigy?
While these sound infinitely better than the crappy 19 dollar ones I was using, its quite difficult to gauge their actual sound quality on crappy integrated sound.

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-09-30 02:06pm

Its here!

3dmark05 score on stock?
Thats right, 8400.

Also, this thing is insanely quiet. Its amazing.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2005-09-30 03:24pm

Well, that's the correct score for a single GTX. Just watch the GPU heat.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2005-09-30 03:26pm

Well, after you flash that thing, I'll post what I think is a good stability check here, if anyone has any comments or explanations why it sucks.

Do several memtest runs, differant configurations, try at 2-2-2 timing also.
Inside the OS, Prime95, also to see if 2-2-2 timings are stable(they should be with that RAM).
PCmark04, ALOT.
3dmark05 loops, many, while watching partially, you want to see if theres any corruption.

Then you start loading it with games.

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-09-30 03:34pm

BIOS flash performed flawlessly, everything is now up to date. Will now begin running Prime95 stress test.

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-09-30 03:46pm

Holy hell. Running Prime95 torture test and the cpu is at 39c...AND I can run just about anything in the background with no slowdown while the test is going on! Fucking awesome.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2005-09-30 04:23pm

Captain tycho wrote:Holy hell. Running Prime95 torture test and the cpu is at 39c...AND I can run just about anything in the background with no slowdown while the test is going on! Fucking awesome.

Well then, run a second instance of Prime95. On with affinity set to CPU 0, the other to CPU 1. Run one instance with the Blend torture test (CPU core and memory), the other with the small FFT (the other CPU core only).

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-10-01 01:17am

Sigh, something has been bugging me. Far Cry runs with really fucked up graphics, shadows in the middle of the floor, overexposed surfaces, etc, on all settings. I'm running the latest drivers, and every other game runs insanely good. Is this a common problem with FC?

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2005-10-01 08:48am

Captain tycho wrote:Sigh, something has been bugging me. Far Cry runs with really fucked up graphics, shadows in the middle of the floor, overexposed surfaces, etc, on all settings. I'm running the latest drivers, and every other game runs insanely good. Is this a common problem with FC?

Which latest drivers? The GTX drivers aren't the most mature things, and I know there was a driver bug that did very similar things on BF2. I'm using the 78.11 drivers with SLI GTXs and FC runs great with no problems.

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-10-02 03:14am

Okay, it seems all FC needed was a patch, the graphics are fine now...but I get random hangups, sound loops, etc, in game, and even had a BSOD yesterday.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2005-10-02 09:51am

I had the random hang ups and sound loops as well. In my system, it was a heat problem (but in a P180 with the PCI coolers, it shouldn't be overheating). Video drivers could also be the source of the problem.

Failing that, do a memtest or a Prime95 Blend test for a day, and see what happens. Could be the memory timings are bit to aggressive.

StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Help tycho assemble his comp!

Help tycho assemble his comp!

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