Need some advice

[mikeny]

I thought I made a thread here for advice on building but I can't find it. I was looking for advice on putting a system together and doing a clean install on a SSD. This is my first SSD. So I put together in this order:

-PSU installed

A- Motherboard out of case and put RAM, Heatsink/fan, processor in first (have Artic Silver Thermal compound).
_Does it matter using a pea sized amount or enough that can spread/cover the CPU? I was under the impression of putting a pea sized and then sit the heatsink (direct pipe) on it and let it spread it.

B- Put motherboard in tower case

c- Install sound card and video card (so the case can anchor the motherboard because the sound card is heavy)

d- SSD installed and connected to motherboard, HDD (Velociraptor SATA II and 1TB WD SATA II installed but not connected to motherboard)

e- install power cables and SATA cables as well as cable management (modular PSU)

F- Turn on system, go to BIOS and change BIOS setting for ACHI and install from DVD (Windows 7)

G- Follow prompts to install Windows 7 on SSD.

H- From motherboard disk, just install to make the eathernet active?

I- go on Asus website for latest drivers for motherboard? (ASUS Gen3 pro board)

J- Go to MSI for Nvidia drivers

K- Auzentech for Forte sound card drivers

L- DVD drivers/Monitor drivers

M- connect the 2 HDD's and reformat them?

Sound good?
Any trick to installing case wires as in which one is the right pin tha goes in the correct socket? Most of the times I look in manual and make a guess. I've been right so far but wondering if there is an easier way.

 

[geofelt]

I would suggest you do lots of work before putting the motherboard back in the case. Just leave it on top of the motherboard box.
Yhat way, you know you have a good set of parts without the possibility of shorts.

If the mobo does not have a pwr button, use a screwdriver to touch the two pwr pins.
You should be able to boot into bios and set sata mode to ahci, and run memtest86+ to verify that all parts are ok before installing in the case.

There is no standard for front panel polarity colors. Sometimes a small delta is moulded into the connector indicating +.

For the pwr and reset switches, it does not matter.

For the led switches, +/- polarity counts. If it is connected wrong, the lights will not work, but no harm done, just reverse the leads.
ASUS usually has a nice connector block so you can insert all of the front panel headers first, and then insert the block into the mobo pins.

Sound cards can be tricky. If you have any problems, omit the sound card and install it later.

On H, use the motherboard cd to install the chipset drivers and the ethernet drivers.

Otherwise, your sequence looks good.

 

[mikeny]

I would suggest you do lots of work before putting the motherboard back in the case. Just leave it on top of the motherboard box.
Yhat way, you know you have a good set of parts without the possibility of shorts.

If the mobo does not have a pwr button, use a screwdriver to touch the two pwr pins.
You should be able to boot into bios and set sata mode to ahci, and run memtest86+ to verify that all parts are ok before installing in the case.

There is no standard for front panel polarity colors. Sometimes a small delta is moulded into the connector indicating +.

For the pwr and reset switches, it does not matter.

For the led switches, +/- polarity counts. If it is connected wrong, the lights will not work, but no harm done, just reverse the leads.
ASUS usually has a nice connector block so you can insert all of the front panel headers first, and then insert the block into the mobo pins.

Sound cards can be tricky. If you have any problems, omit the sound card and install it later.

On H, use the motherboard cd to install the chipset drivers and the ethernet drivers.

Otherwise, your sequence looks good.

Thank you. The sound card is carrying over from my other system. It definitely works. I thought it would be better to get the chipset drivers off Asus' website since they would be the latest or it doesn't matter?

 

[geofelt]

Thank you. The sound card is carrying over from my other system. It definitely works. I thought it would be better to get the chipset drivers off Asus' website since they would be the latest or it doesn't matter?

As a rule, it does not matter. The motherboard was tested with the drivers on the cd.

 

[mikeny]

As a rule, it does not matter. The motherboard was tested with the drivers on the cd.

Great, thanks....gonna start tomorrow. Last part came today...video card!