First Time Start Up Question / First Time Builder

[sirgamesalot1234]

first off thank you for taking time to read my post and offer any advice.

New Pc Is
Intel i7 2600k
Asus P8P67-M PRO
2 GIGABYTE GTX460 SLI (i already owed one so went with sli)
CORSAIR| CMPSU-950TX 950W RT
8Gb/s Patriot DDR3 1600
Asus DVD-burner etc ect
1 Tb Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 SAta6
Cool Master V6 GT
CASE ROSEWILL|BLACKHAWK RT

1.is there really going to be a huge difference in temps depending on how i apply my thermal paste? (tuniq's tx-4)

2.when i finally get done putting all my pieces together and make sure there instaled right. when i turn it on for the first time is there anything you have to do to install your os besides just inserting the windows cd in the drive?

3.once i have the windows installed and updated cant i just download the Asus bios updates and install them from windows?

these are the last few things im confused on before putting together and firing that baby up. its my first time so im being extra careful i dont do anything wrong .

THanks For Any Help You Can Give

 

[sandybridge]

1. Not huge, but a tiny difference. Like a few degrees C less if the thermal paste is quality and properly applied. You can use an old credit card to spread the paste evenly on the cpu. The less paste the better. Make sure the surfaces of both the cpu & cooler are dust free. Use an air purifier or use a compressed air to blow onto both surfaces.

2. Yup, plently. Preferably, reset CMOS by reading the manual. Then power up for the 1st time, press a key printed on screen for BIOS menu, load BIOS defaults, set date, time & boot order at a minimum. I'd go through each & every option to see if it should be enabled or disabled. Like Plug-n-Play OS (on for Windows), RAID, AHCI (on for Vista & 7), USB legacy (on just in case), USB keyb/mouse (on), etc.

3. Fork, no! Don't update bios in Windows. You're asking for trouble. Use the built-in BIOS update. ASUS calls it EZ (easy). You download the bios, unzip it, put it on a USB drive, reboot to BIOS, go to EZ, select that file from the drive, wait for flashing to complete. After that, redo step 2. Why? Cuz new BIOS may have new parameters that conflict with old parameters.

 

[sirgamesalot1234]

thank you for the feedback
what does resetting the cmos do ive read my manual from front to back and it shows how to do it but not what its for.

also it say i only use a fat32 formated usb thumbdrive so how do i format my 2 gb thumbdrive i got free with my part to fat32?

sorry if these are novice questions but this being my first build from scratch im learning as i go

THX

 

[sandybridge]

CMOS stores settings. The previous settings may conflict with your hardware. Also, old settings may conflict with new settings. It's best to clear CMOS when you buy a mobo, then load BIOS defaults.

Doesn't matter. Just format the usb drive as fat32 with a lesser size. The goal is to flash the bios. You can always reformat the drive to 2gb as NTFS.