My first build, do any nasty surprises await?

TwoShedsJackson

After years of buying Dells etc i'm going the self build route with my new pc, have ordered all the various bits: Case, cpu, motherboard, gfx card, power supply etc. and am taking the dvd writer, cd drive and ram out of my last Dell to reuse.

Now i have installed and replaced plenty of pc components so i dont have a fear of connecting power cables etc. but have no experience with configuring a motherboard and know next to nothing about Bios setups etc.

The new pc will have a SATA 2 hard disk and I have heard that XP will not install without having the sata drivers on a floppy as it won't recognise the hard disk as such without them. I wasn't intending to put a floppy drive in the new machine as I didn't miss one the last couple of years with the Dell.

Is there anyway around this problem save getting an external floppy drive just for this purpose? The motherboard is an EPoX EP-9NPA+ SLI and the hard disk is a Samsung SpinPoint P120

Anything else i should watch out for whilst installing etc?

gline

slipstream the drivers

other then that you will have to use a floppy or maybe a usb flash drive might do the trick?

Stephen

Some BIOSes (particularly those in new dells, heh) have an option to set the SATA controller to run in "compatibility mode", allowing operating systems that don't know about SATA (such as DOS and the default xp installer) to install onto a SATA disk.

Anyways, gline's suggestion is the best option. Burn your own XP cd with the SATA drivers slipstreamed onto it.

nLite is an easy way to build the disc. You can slipstream service pack 2 onto it too.

Alkers

Before you do anything just try and install XP normally.
I was able to install with no floppy drive just as easily as on an IDE drive.
Drive was recognised when I first booted up and off I went.

gline

Simona1986 wrote:

Before you do anything just try and install XP normally.
I was able to install with no floppy drive just as easily as on an IDE drive.
Drive was recognised when I first booted up and off I went.

this is actually true on some setups, no harm in trying it

art

Simona1986 wrote:

Before you do anything just try and install XP normally.
I was able to install with no floppy drive just as easily as on an IDE drive.
Drive was recognised when I first booted up and off I went.

Likewise. I just did a build (with no floppy attached) and installed an XP (SP2) OS without any issues at all picking up the SATA HDD. It surprised me how smooth it was actually.

po0k

depends on the chipset, and whether you're using raid.

Most controllers (and therefore disks) can be accessed using basic IDE drivers included with windows.
Suck it and see.

TwoShedsJackson

Thanks guys - decided on the 'try it out first and see' approach and it worked, although after XP failed to partition the hard drive first time around, the system then couldnt see the dvd drive and i had to change the ide channel connector to get it to see it again. After that, no probs.

The cpu temp seem to be around 36-38 idle to around ten degrees hotter under load - is this sort of temperature ok? I want to try and keep the pc quiet if possible so dont want to be installing lots of fans if not needed.

The X1900XT card seems to heat up a lot after playing Oblivion or whatever for a while but no apparent problems with it so far - roughly how long would be needed to ensure it's stable?

gline

TwoShedsJackson wrote:

Thanks guys - decided on the 'try it out first and see' approach and it worked, although after XP failed to partition the hard drive first time around, the system then couldnt see the dvd drive and i had to change the ide channel connector to get it to see it again. After that, no probs.

The cpu temp seem to be around 36-38 idle to around ten degrees hotter under load - is this sort of temperature ok? I want to try and keep the pc quiet if possible so dont want to be installing lots of fans if not needed.

The X1900XT card seems to heat up a lot after playing Oblivion or whatever for a while but no apparent problems with it so far - roughly how long would be needed to ensure it's stable?

those temps are fine and x1900xt should be fine, it will naturally heat up when playing oblivion

gamer

have you not got a fan on that graphics card,i have large zalman heatsink and fan on mine, its completely silent.

art

TwoShedsJackson wrote:

Thanks guys - decided on the 'try it out first and see' approach and it worked, although after XP failed to partition the hard drive first time around, the system then couldnt see the dvd drive and i had to change the ide channel connector to get it to see it again. After that, no probs.

The cpu temp seem to be around 36-38 idle to around ten degrees hotter under load - is this sort of temperature ok? I want to try and keep the pc quiet if possible so dont want to be installing lots of fans if not needed.

The X1900XT card seems to heat up a lot after playing Oblivion or whatever for a while but no apparent problems with it so far - roughly how long would be needed to ensure it's stable?

Your idle temp will depend on the cooler you have and the airflow within the case but your temp there is certainly within acceptable bounds alright. The X1900XT is the hottest (literally) card around at the moment - in 2D mode (ie normal navigation) it stays in a low clock mode which keeps the temp down but as soon as you play a 3D game it ramps itself up and the temp rises considerably (the fan will also start whirring faster). So long as it drops again after you've quit playing I would be happy (think mine goes from about 45 degress up to around 65 and back again).

conzy

Nvidia and ATI have crazy Safe temperatures values anyway.

They say its safe up to 115degrees:eek:

So it will be fine, ATI wouldnt be selling it if the reference cooler wasnt up to the task:)

Richard Dower

USB floppy drives don't work!...i tried doing the whole F6 thing, there is a knowledgebase article at Microsoft explaining the known OS limitation, it only supports a few USB floppy drives.