building a new PC checklist review

[wengang]

Hey all,
I just bought all the components for a new PC.
I haven't built one in a few years, and the parts have obviously changed a lot.
This is what I bought:

Intel core I7 980x cpu
Asus Rampage III extreme mobo
Zotac GeForce GTX480 video card
Toughpower 1500W psu
2x4GB G.Skill DDR3 1600 RAM
full ATX tower

Thing I already have:
monitor
hard drives
DVD burners

I have ordered all of this in the mail, so I'm wondering what other things I'll need when it all arrives in order to put the computer together.
I'm wondering if it all comes with the necessary fans, heat sinks, heat sink compound, wires, cables, etc.

Anybody built anything like this lately, please let me know. I hope to be able to assemble it this weekend.

Thanks.

[Nightwalker83]

Yes, it should all come with the required components to assemble the product. Although, sometimes you might find that you are missing a screw, etc when putting everything together. So it might be a good idea to buy extra screws in-case you need them.

[stanav]

You will need a keyboard + mouse (they are not listed in your list yet)

[Lord Orwell]

Yes, it should all come with the required components to assemble the product. Although, sometimes you might find that you are missing a screw, etc when putting everything together. So it might be a good idea to buy extra screws in-case you need them.

i doubt this will be an issue with a new case. They usually come with at least twice as many screws as you need, not counting the screws the new components come with.

I would add a blue-ray drive to that list. I bought one a few months ago for $65 and it came with powerdvd, which automatically integrates into media center.

also, isn't 1500w a little extreme? Can you afford the electric bill? Will your wall circuitry stand up to that?

I have a 750 watt supply running:
tft display
2 remote control receivers
dual tv tuner card
dual-slot video card
quad-core processor
4 sticks of ram
dvd burner
blu-ray drive
three hard drives
three fans

you get the idea.

edit: I just looked that board up. Forget i said anything. I forsee two more gtx 480s in your future, and three of those cards will eat 1000 watts by themselves.

[Greyskull]

Is ur RAM dual channel? would have thought that for the I7s triple channel rams would suit better.

Lord Orwell has a point 1500W seems a bit overkill to me..I only have 700W (85% eff) running
BD Drive
Phenom X6 1075T
EVGA 1GB GTX 460 GC
2 x 2GB Ram
2 x 1TB 7200rpm HD

altough planning to up my CPU soon ^^ but still my PSU would be sufficient..

[TheBigB]

With a boxed CPU, you get a basic fan.
If you are aiming at straining the system a lot I'd consider getting a better cooler.

Don't know if the case includes it, but a case fan also might be a suggestion.

[Lord Orwell]

the factory fan has been shown to be acceptable for overclocking to a mild level. If you overdo it, you will actually lose performance because that chip throttles down when it gets hot.

[wengang]

all the parts came in and they were all there
(side note to those who don't know it, Rampage doesn't have IDE slotes, all SATA)

since it has been brought up,

on the RAM, yes it can be triple channel, I can buy another stick later, though

on the power supply,
I miswrote, it's the 1250W model
I'm sure a 20-amp line will run it just fine, but I'm glad you all pointed it out. I had planned to plug this in to a 15-amp line.
Also, doesn't the PSU only put out the amount of power you need, i.e. if 500W will run the system, it only puts out 500W, right?
Also, I might add one or two more of this video card later, and that will pull some power too.

OK, my bigger questions.
1. I'm totally stopped for the moment. This tower, seen here:
http://www.ikonik.com/Product/Ra2000Liquid.html
comes with an internal liquid cooling system.
also the cpu comes with an enormous heat sink/fan system.
I have read that liquid is a much better cooling system, but I've never used one.
Also, the mfr themselves mention "upgrading" to the external liquid cooling system, which seems to imply that this pre-installed system is not as good (but is it better than the giant heatsink?)

2. Once I get set up, I'm thinking of switching to 64 bit Windows. I have Windows 7 Ultimate and it came with the 32 and 64 bit install discs.
By my reading, the main advantage is that I can get access to all of the memory, rather than just the first 3+ gb, and the down side is complications with some 32-bit apps, and total incompatibility with old 16-bit apps.
OH! Will I still be able to use VB6 in Win64? And .Net 2003?

OK. That's all I have.
Thanks for all the responses.
I know the whole setup is massive overkill, I just wanted to set up a "dream machine" and I've been waiting a long time to do it.

[Greyskull]

Thoeritacally speaking the PSU would only output the needed power but you'r eeffectively 'wasting' (don't know the right term) the remaining power...
but an upside to that is, theoritically, since the PSU isn't always being pushed to it 100% load then it should last longer but that is just my theory..

IMHO though, it ain't worth having a psu that isn't pushed to the limits, but that's just me..

I'd say you got a nice case there matey! Go for the water cooling as it is way way much better than air cooling. Having said that though, if you have the time, I'd say run a few tests on both to see which one would give you a better temperature when the PC is stressed, my money is on the water cooling but it just depends on how good the actual parts are for it i.e. the radiator, how well the pump is...etc..

64Bit Windows is the way forward..64Bit will always be backwards compatible plus you will be able to maximise your RAM better on a 64bit compared to a 32bit...

I'm talking gibber now, bit tired from a days work, so I hope this makes sense..just hola if it doesn't...Enjoy your new PC..I envy your case

[Lord Orwell]

this is where the efficiency of the psu comes in. A low efficiency model will waste a lot of power as heat.

if you have six memory slots you may have to run either three or six sticks.

water cooling is better than air cooling... if you don't mind water leaks that ruin your motherboard, and having to refill the reservoir occasionally. More relevantly, a watercooled system can have issues with the motherboard chipset overheating due to low airflow in the case. The processor fan cools more than just the processor. It also blows air across the chipset heatsinks.

as for power usage, i was really exaggerating a little. to compute amp usage, it's p=i*e. plugging in the right numbers gives 1250watts=?*120volts
1250/120 equals about ten amps, worst case usage.

as for 32vs64 bit, 16 bit programs are pretty well incompatible with 7 anyway. Win64 when it is executing code in a 32-bit program actually switches the processor into 32 bit. There are some problems in some cases with the libraries due to the odd way microsoft decided to structure the filesystem. All 64 bit apps are where the 32 bit ones used to be and the 32 bit ones are moved. example: system32 = 64 bit, and the actual 32 bit files are in syswow64. This can cause problems occasionally.

you may not be able to natively run vb6 in x64, but you can always run it in the xp virtual machine it comes with (free download for win7 pro and ultimate) called "xp mode". It may work fine as-is though.

[CVMichael]

I envy you

In don't know what is your total amount, but here in Canada, just the I7 980 CPU is $1,099.99 + 13%tax = $1,242.98. That is my house payments for a month!

You really should have got a triple channel RAM, that is the only one that stands out from your selection.

The stock cooler is not really that good. I would change it even if I would not plan to overclock. On my I7 950 I got an Corsair H70, and I overclocked it to 4GHz.

Power supply: I think it would have been enough a 1000 Watt.

About the fans: it depends on the case... My case (Antec 300) did not come with fans in front and side, so I had to buy extra.

[CVMichael]

OH! Will I still be able to use VB6 in Win64? And .Net 2003?

I installed a Virtual PC for that... I have Win 7 as my main PC, and Win XP as a virtual PC for VB6 programming. Though I almost never use it

[wengang]

it sounds like i'm all set.
I just ordered a new hard drive, since all mine were IDE
(and i just may get that blu-ray and the 3rd stick of RAM)

but I am now kinda worried about water dripping on the mobo.
is that a common problem?

[CVMichael]

but I am now kinda worried about water dripping on the mobo.
is that a common problem?

If this is your first time water cooling, then I would be worried also...

That's why I got the H70, it's all sealed, and the risks are much lower. You don't have to change the liquid, very easy to install, it has 2 years warranty. Of course it does not cool as well as a real water cooler, but at least it's better than the top fan coolers which have a HUGE size!! (Just do some research on it)

[Greyskull]

@L Orwell: Not sure if I read your post wrong but are you suggesting 32Bit is better than 64? Because if you are, I would have to disagree with you..

64Bit would allow you to handle more of the allocated RAM in a sys, and for a sys like wengang's I'd say make full use of the RAM available..you could always get Virtual XP running on a machine anyhow

@wengang: As for water dripping on the mobo from the watercooling sys, kinda depends I guess on the build quality of it..looking at the case's built in water cooler, the tubes are slightly smaller than what I'd like it to be which would mean pumps would have to work harder to cycle the water around..but if you are careful with your setup and tidy with the cable management...you could minimise this to happen..

my friend had water cool leaked on his system due to poor cable management but none of the parts (mobo, cpu, etc..) got damaged..all is in perfect working order..but now he has learnt to do better cable management ..
I guess it depends on how much overclocking you would do in the end to determine what kind of cooling you want on it..if it was me, wouldn't rely too much on the built-in water cooling sys, I'd most likely buy my own one..but before I do that though, I'd do a lot of reading online of reviews of similar / same cooling as you would do..before finally deciding on what you would want to have on yours ^^

[Lord Orwell]

no i wasn't saying 32-bit is better. In fact, unless you order one of the esoteric server operating systems, it's pretty hard to use all the ram with a 32-bit os. The sweet spot with triple-channel is six gigs, and obviously 32-bit versions of windows 7 are going to be wasting about half of that. It's been mentioned before (but not here) but i would have went for 12 gigs of ram. One of things that win7 does is that if ram isn't being used by a program, the OS will use it all for superfetch. And it works really really fast. You can cache the entire OS in memory.

[wengang]

I put everything together last night. I haven't connected the monitor or anything yet.
I filled the reservoir, turned it on, saw huge pockets of air, turned it off, the reservoir was only half full .
filled it again. pockets turned to bubbles. filled it again, most of the bubbles bled out.
There were no instructions at all on the tower other than the basic stuff.
It came with 600 ml of blue liquid.
I managed to get 500 in and it almost touches the top. I read somewhere online to leave some room for expansion and to let the bubbles out. I wish I had some confirmation instructions.

From what I can see of the design, they took great pains to have the tubes run clear of the motherboard when it was installed (except on the cpu of course)
The case also has a roughly 6 inch fan in the back, another one in the top, and two 4 or 5 inch fans in the front. Then there are 4 medium-sized fans across each of the two radiators (one top, one bottom)
the graphics card came with its own fan system. The chassis fans have speed controls.
I'm thinking it's adequately cooled.
I'm ready to connect everything and see what it does.
Thanks all.

[Lord Orwell]

turn the chassis fans to full speed. Your motherboard will have automatic fan control based on motherboard temp and it works fine as long as you hook them to fan headers and don't use a molex adapter. Plus modern boards are capable of powering a 120mm fan off of the fan header.
fyi if your processor fan has more wires than the motherboard connector don't be concerned. there are two different ways to control fan speed. Voltage level and pulsing the voltage. The 4th wire is the 2nd method. If any of your fans only have two wires, the motherboard won't be able to auto-throttle their speed as the 3rd wire (yellow) is rpm. A final possibility is if you have a really really large fan in the top it might have a molex adapter but still have a single wire running to a fan header. This is the rpm sensor. The fan won't be controlled by the motherboard but the motherboard will still be able to see if the fan is defective/not turning. I had one going bad recently and my motherboard warned me. It turned out the sensor for rpms in the fan was bad though. It was bouncing between reading 0 to about 20,000 rpms and the fan was really going about 4000.

[wengang]

well,
i had it all set up
got the 64bit windows installed, was transferring my old drives when the board started sending a really loud hum through the speakers.
I looked at everything, took it all apart (tried other speakers to eliminate that)
stripped it down to just board and cpu, and it was still humming.
So I'm sending the board back for a replacement.
That'll be a minimum one week delay

[Lord Orwell]

don't blame the board for that. That's poor grounding and it probably is caused by the power supply as speaker hum is almost always stray noise from a transformer. Unless you have a flourescent light on the same circuit? If your new board makes the same noise, try plugging it into a different outlet. Say, i don't suppose that new case is plastic? you should also have verified the microphone input was muted.

[wengang]

hey all.
i just got the new board today.
I've set it all up again (I did swap the dual ram for triple, and added the blu-ray)
but I've hit a snag.
I have 1 TB in PATA HDDs and no way to connect them to the new board.
I have a Silicon Image 680A multiple controller card, but no matter what drivers I download, Win7 64 won't allow me to install them. It just keeps saying that the drivers in the folder are not compatible with 64 bit.
I tried to flash the card's bios, but it says No Silcon image..... detected.
Next solution?
I'll probably get rid of the drives once i get the data transferred.
Thanks all.

[jareeb]

hey all.
i just got the new board today.
I've set it all up again (I did swap the dual ram for triple, and added the blu-ray)
but I've hit a snag.
I have 1 TB in PATA HDDs and no way to connect them to the new board.
I have a Silicon Image 680A multiple controller card, but no matter what drivers I download, Win7 64 won't allow me to install them. It just keeps saying that the drivers in the folder are not compatible with 64 bit.
I tried to flash the card's bios, but it says No Silcon image..... detected.
Next solution?
I'll probably get rid of the drives once i get the data transferred.
Thanks all.

ik im new but ik computers, try some vista 64bit drivers that is what i had to do with my mobo drivers

[stanav]

You should do away with IDE drives on your new build. Get a SATA drive and don't worry about the data in your old IDE drives right now. You can always use an IDE to USB adapter later to connect them to you already built rig to pull the data off them. Since you are building a system with a very respectable specs, you should throw in an SSD for the boot drive and use a regular mechanical drive for the data. You won't regret once you feel the speed of an SSD.

[wengang]

hey stanav
that's kinda where I already am. The point is, all my data is on these PATA drives and I am ready to move it over. What about this USB adapater? These are internal drives. Are you saying the ide plugs into an external converter and the power cable uses one of the internal pata connectors? If that's the case it seems strange as a product, but it would work for a one shot data transfer.

jareeb, I did try both the Win7 and and Vista 64-bit drivers. It just won't let me install them. those were from silicon image's site. I even tried several of the x-drivers, drivers.com, etc, but the same result.

[wengang]

ok. i just looked at this adapter online. looks like it has an external AC adapter. that'll work if they have it at Best Buy. otherwise, I'm stuck waiting for three or for more days.
Thanks.

[wengang]

another quick question.
The tower has four USB connectors on top, and there is a USB/SATA card (well no card, but fits in an expansion slot) and plugs onto the board. Problem, for all its benefits, this board appears to have only one USB port. I've plugged in one of the tower's cables and two of the topside USBs are now working, two are dead. and there is just nowhere to plug this expansion USB in.
and lastly,
I have one last cable from the tower that I can't figure out.
This tower, for all its benefits, does not come with any kind of manual to speak of, just a one-sheet quick setup.
The cable is off-white. the harness has five pin hole positions with the fifth one being filled in. The wires are three in all, a white, a dark green, and a black. The other two slots have no wire. The other end of the harness is plugged into a small board on the side of the tower (on the same plane as the mobo) where all of the fans and topside devices are plugged in. All fans are running and I can't find any place on the board to plug it in (Well, i can see some places but nothing that looks made for it) It's also the only harness that isn't labeled.

[stanav]

hey stanav
that's kinda where I already am. The point is, all my data is on these PATA drives and I am ready to move it over. What about this USB adapater? These are internal drives. Are you saying the ide plugs into an external converter and the power cable uses one of the internal pata connectors? If that's the case it seems strange as a product, but it would work for a one shot data transfer.

This is the adapter I mentioned.
http://www.meritline.com/usb-to-ide-...--p-60576.aspx

It works with all 2.5/3.5/optical drives with IDE or SATA interface. It's very handy to have in your tool box.
Since you're in Bejing, China, you can probably get it a lot cheaper locally.

[wengang]

oh. I should have updated. I've been in the U.S. for about five years now.

I bought that one the other night. According to UPS, it will be here this afternoon. What a neat little device.