PC building questions

[Eel O'Brian]

I'll close this when I am done, this is just a running thread of any questions I might have

Okay, I've got the processor, heat sink + fan, and ram installed

Am I supposed to hook up everything (PSU, vidcard, keyboard, monitor) outside the case for the post test?  From the illustrations in the "quick guide" the mobo came with it sure looks that way, but it doesn't sound right to me.

[Great Rumbler]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean there.

But you should be able to connect everything and just turn it on. If nothing is connected wrong it should boot up just fine.

[Eel O'Brian]

it's showing in the illustrations that to do the post test you hook everything up outside the case, before you install the motherboard inside the case

i said screw all that, that sound more problematic than just installing it

[Great Rumbler]

Oh okay. No, you don't have to do that. I mean, you can if you want, there's no harm in it and it COULD make installing things easier. But I've never done if that way, I've always installed the motherboard first and then everything else.

[recursivelyenumerable]

"post test" is redundant you know  

[dicklaurent]

probably easiest to install the processor/fan before nailing the board to the housing. but other than that. nah

edit: oh wait you already did that. nevermind hehe

[Eel O'Brian]

should i leave the dvd drive as the first boot device?

[Great Rumbler]

should i leave the dvd drive as the first boot device?

I don't think that'll be an issue. If there's nothing to boot from on the HD, it'll go to the DVD drive.

[dicklaurent]

yeah, sure. not really necessary. but if you should need to boot from disc later on you won't have to bios to set that again. it auto-skips to hdd or 2 on the list anyway on no disc or non-bootable discs if you should have any in the drive

[Eel O'Brian]

i will never build another computer again as long as i live

everything connected fine, but i have somehow fucked up installing windows and cannout get out of the "press any key to boot from DVD" screen - doesn't recognize any keyboard inputs

if i had money to burn i would take this fucking thing out into the parking lot and stomp it into a million pieces

[cool breeze]

has the keyboard been recognized at all? is it a usb keyboard? I remember one of the issues I ran into was that it didn't notice my USB keyboard and I had to break out one of those old USB to whateverthefuck that keyboard specific connector is called.

[Eel O'Brian]

okay, i finally got out of it by disabling the boot for the HDD altogether, and now windows is installing

the default is the HDD as the secondary boot, but i have it disabled now

when all of this is over, should i enable it again or what

[Eel O'Brian]

and now i find out i grabbed the wrong disc and installed win7 32-bit by accident

putting the hardware together went so smoothly, too, no errors or anything 

[Great Rumbler]

Man, you're really flubbing it on the home stretch, Eel. 

[Eel O'Brian]

software installation is my kryptonite

i must have reset the cmos 20 times

i finally figured it out, but now i just want it to be over with so i can set up this thing to download some games overnight, and forget about it until tomorrow morning

[demi]

Oh PC gaming, you never run out of feeding me troll material

[dicklaurent]

where is the pc gaming part?

[demi]

where is the pc gaming part?

> i finally figured it out, but now i just want it to be over with so i can set up this thing to download some games overnight, and forget about it until tomorrow morning

[Eel O'Brian]

man this thing is fast

[Eel O'Brian]

everything i do on it is like flipping through tv channels

[MyNameIsMethodis]

did they break ur shift key cause thats what mine did

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[Eel O'Brian]

hahaha

[Brehvolution]

everything i do on it is like flipping through tv channels

Feels good, eh?

[Eel O'Brian]

yeah man, gonna dl some games from steam tonight and break it in tomorrow

[Brehvolution]

It should also feel good that you won't have to put any money into it for a few years. I built mine 5 years ago:

AMD 3800 X2
nvidia 9800 gt 512 ($40 from Kestastrophe )
2gb DDR (yep, original DDR)

And I can still run Civ 5 (and most new games) on mostly high settings

I'm due for an upgrade soon though. I want all high settings, like you.

[Eel O'Brian]

that's the same processor i have on my desktop in the living room, with a hand-me-down 8800 gts for the vidcard

i think it's nearing the end of its life, though - runs really sluggish, hangs a lot

i'll use it to watch movies and play music until it dies for good, then stick an apple tv in there

[Eel O'Brian]

games for windows live is quite possibly the worst online service ever created

[demi]

GFWL

[Eel O'Brian]

i mean, five different goddamned updates where i have to log back in and restart each time, you can't put that shit into one download like something that makes a lick of fucking sense

[demi]

Tinker

[Great Rumbler]

i mean, five different goddamned updates where i have to log back in and restart each time, you can't put that shit into one download like something that makes a lick of fucking sense

I just went through this today as well. 

[Joe Molotov]

games for windows live is quite possibly the worst online service ever created

Good thing everybody's dumping GFWL for Steamworks.

[Eel O'Brian]

trying to deactivate a copy of windows 7 on one computer to activate on another computer is a fantastic experience

and by "fantastic" i mean a colossal pile of bullshit

20 fucking minutes for them to connect me to the same automated activation service which wouldn't let me do it in the first place

recite a bunch of numbers to the robot voice, get told i can't do that, call another number and go through 10 minutes of waiting to talk to a human, explain the problem

"you're only licensed to use it one one computer"

"it's not on the other computer anymore, i formatted it so i could put it on the new one"

"let me connect you to validation technician"

wait five minutes

SAME FUCKING ROBOT VOICE

now i don't know what to do other than go download a cracked version or find some keyhacker

what a bunch of bullshit

[Eel O'Brian]

so apparently when i talked to the automated thing i shouldn't have told it i had installed the copy on 2 machines, assuming i would be given the option to revoke the license on one machine at some point (i was basically just answering the question honestly)

when i tried again and told them i only had it installed on one machine, the problem went away

as usual, lying solved everything

[Phoenix Dark]

reported

[OptimoPeach]

What happened to the other thread? I tried to find it a few days ago but couldn't, and I guess I missed this one.

So you got everything set up okay? I had a busy weekend last week and didn't get around to finishing mine up until today, but I'm FINALLY done with all of the physical installation. It was a total pain in the ass and I was raging all the way through, but I was way happy when I finally got through the POST and onto installing Windows 7 without any disasters. All that's really left to do now is install drivers, games, etc.

This was probably the first thing I built from scratch since my egg drop project in 10th grade physics, and my best friend did most of that for me anyway

[Eel O'Brian]

the hardware installation was a breeze for me, all my problems were on the software end

now i'm going through a bunch of "key is already in use" bullshit on steam

this is why people steal pc games (well, besides "free games")

[Eel O'Brian]

all in all, though, i am very happy with the pc, and it pretty much rips through everything on very high settings with the exception of metro 2033 (which is just jankass to begin with) - and once i SLI later on when the GTX 460s price drop, i'll be set for the foreseeable future

[OptimoPeach]

How good of a PSU do you need for SLI anyway? I got a mobo that supports it just so I have that option if I ever choose to go down that route, but I think I would have to get a better PSU since I bought an older (550w I think?) one from a friend.

I don't have all that many recent PC games that can give it a proper test -- mostly because my last PC was a turd that couldn't run anything.  Just finished installing and patching SC2 now though, so I can check that out at least. I definitely know which platform I'm getting New Vegas for now

edit: Oh and thanks for recommending the 460 Cyclone. It's so quiet!

[Eel O'Brian]

i bought a 750w PSU with 4 6 pin PCIE power plugs (most cards need 2 plugs)

from what i've read, that's all i'll need with the 460 SLI setup

yeah, the cyclone is great, and runs really cool even under heavy load (it should, that fan looks like a futuristic helicopter blade)