3darchie84 said:
I just ordered parts for my new desktop yesterday from newegg and tiger direct. They should be here soon. The last system I built was 7 years ago and this is only my second build. I was just curious when I boot up for the first time if there is anything I should change in the BIOS or if I should turn it on and just install the OS. I know I need to check that everything is recognized and set my boot drives and all that...but as far as memory or processor speed...is the default settings ok? I don't plan on overclocking as of yet I just want a stable system. If I adjust memory how do I know what the voltages and timings are supposed to be?? My specs are posted below
EVGA X58 Classified mobo
EVGA nVidia GEforce GTX 295 video card...I bought the 509.99 one...is there a diff between that and the 559.99?? should I have splurged the extra 60.00??
3 x 2GB Corsair Dominator ram 1600mhz PC12800 DDR3
Ultra X3 ULT40311 1000-Watt Power Supply
Intel Core i7 950 Bloomfield 3.06 ghz cpu
2 x Western Digital WD1001FALS Caviar Black Hard Drive - 1TB, 7200 RPM, 32MB, SATA-300 (TSD-1000WD)
Also, I don't really know if i need to run RAID on this system I just want one harddrive for the os and all my programs and the second hard drive is simply for storage of data...do I just set one up as a master and one as slave?? Is this done in BIOS or how do I go about that? Sorry for all the noob questions..haha...but ya any suggestions would be appreciated...
The more expensive card is a factory overclocked version. The stock GTX295 is already so strong that overclocking seems pointless to me. You can run anything out there well. There will be no real need to go sli in the future.
Sata has no master/slave. Just plug the cables in to the drive and to the mobo.
I would not bother with raid. It helps with sequential operations, and hurts with random operations(like what the OS uses)
Your plan to put the OS on one and use the other for storage is a good one.
Just use the default ram settings. Do not worry about ram speeds. It makes less than 3% difference in real application performance. To verify that your ram is good and running properly, download memtest86+ and run it for a full pass on your new machine. It should run with NO errors. Then, install the OS.
I would download the manuals for the motherboard and for the case now and read them cover to cover before the parts arrive.