- May 10, 2012
- 8
- 0
- 10,510
Last night I upgraded my home desktop machine with some new components and noticed some oddness and before I really dig into it I wanted to see if these are perhaps known or expected issues.
The complete system is (new components in bold):
Biostar TPower X79
Intel i7-3820 3.6ghz
nVidia GeForce GTX 670 2gb
2x4gb G.SKILL Jaws
3xWestern Digital SATA HDD
1xPlextor SATA SSD
Corsair 750TX PSU
CoolerMaster HAF 932 Case
I think that's everything relevant anyway. I was a bit of an idiot and didn't realize that the motherboard doesn't have an IDE connector and so I would not be able to connect my ancient DVD drive and thus could not install Windows 7 last night. But I do have a LinuxLive (Mint, for the record) USB stick and did some tinkering before bed. I did install the Mint Linux on the SSD but that did not boot. Or, rather, the system kept loading GRUB from the HDD which was my primary boot device in my previous machine, and the SSD was not listed in the BIOS boot options and I'm not enough of a GRUB pro to figure out how to add a new boot option on the fly. More on that below. I'll remedy the DVD drive issue with a stop at Fry's on the way home tonight.
So, the issues I noticed were:
First that the image on the screen was clamped into what I guess is the "safe zone" for TVs. The resolution was set to the monitor's native 1920x1080, but there was a thick black area around the actual display which was centered and clearly being scaled down (text was blurry, etc.). I searched around in my monitor's OSD for some related option but could not find one. I reset the monitor settings to factory default and that changed nothing. I have the monitor plugged into the video card's DVI-1 port. It never did this before.
Second, on initial startup I saw the full-screen BIOS boot no problem, however if I restart the machine the link goes dead until the OS starts up and meanwhile the monitor cycles through inputs. I would not see the full-screen logo, or if I went into setup and turned that off nor would I see the init text screen. If I hammered delete (not knowing exactly what was going on) then eventually after cycling through inputs for a couple minutes, the setup screen would appear. The monitor has never behaved this way before. It's a 24" Samsung SyncMaster, but I wonder if it might be the video card not outputting a signal for some reason. If I power down the machine then power back on, the screen will come up right away. It's just if I restart it either by pressing the reset button or via the OS then it takes a while. With my previous video card (GTX 480) the screen was always shown instantly on startup or reboot, no delay whatsoever.
Third, and I don't know why I didn't check in the LinuxLive what drives were shown, but in OS setup I noticed that it only recognized 2 of the 4 disks I had connected to the SATA ports. It recognized the SSD which I had on SATA2-L, and a HDD that I had on SATA3-L, but the HDDs on SATA2-U and SATA3-U were not listed in the BIOS setup screen / hardware information. Even though the SSD was listed in hardware info, it was not an option in the BIOS's "boot from" menu options. I think I recall seeing more than 2 drives listed in the Mint install partitioner, but I didn't pay much attention to those as at the time I hadn't yet noticed the issue in the BIOS setup. I was only interested in the SSD that I was going to install it on.
I know what things I can do to debug more such as swapping back in the GTX 480, plugging the drives in 1 at a time to different ports, etc. At this point I'm just looking for responses on whether these issues are known and if there might be common solutions I can try first.
Thanks for any help. I'll be able to debug this more thoroughly tonight. I'm hoping it won't take long, Diablo 3 isn't going to play itself.
ETA: I noticed this motherboard has 2 8-pin power connectors. The manual says they should both be plugged in if overclocking. I don't plan to overclock (just yet) and my PSU only has 1 of those plugs. But I do wonder if it will be enough with 3 HDDs + SSD + GTX 670 + i7-3820 + fans?
The complete system is (new components in bold):
Biostar TPower X79
Intel i7-3820 3.6ghz
nVidia GeForce GTX 670 2gb
2x4gb G.SKILL Jaws
3xWestern Digital SATA HDD
1xPlextor SATA SSD
Corsair 750TX PSU
CoolerMaster HAF 932 Case
I think that's everything relevant anyway. I was a bit of an idiot and didn't realize that the motherboard doesn't have an IDE connector and so I would not be able to connect my ancient DVD drive and thus could not install Windows 7 last night. But I do have a LinuxLive (Mint, for the record) USB stick and did some tinkering before bed. I did install the Mint Linux on the SSD but that did not boot. Or, rather, the system kept loading GRUB from the HDD which was my primary boot device in my previous machine, and the SSD was not listed in the BIOS boot options and I'm not enough of a GRUB pro to figure out how to add a new boot option on the fly. More on that below. I'll remedy the DVD drive issue with a stop at Fry's on the way home tonight.
So, the issues I noticed were:
First that the image on the screen was clamped into what I guess is the "safe zone" for TVs. The resolution was set to the monitor's native 1920x1080, but there was a thick black area around the actual display which was centered and clearly being scaled down (text was blurry, etc.). I searched around in my monitor's OSD for some related option but could not find one. I reset the monitor settings to factory default and that changed nothing. I have the monitor plugged into the video card's DVI-1 port. It never did this before.
Second, on initial startup I saw the full-screen BIOS boot no problem, however if I restart the machine the link goes dead until the OS starts up and meanwhile the monitor cycles through inputs. I would not see the full-screen logo, or if I went into setup and turned that off nor would I see the init text screen. If I hammered delete (not knowing exactly what was going on) then eventually after cycling through inputs for a couple minutes, the setup screen would appear. The monitor has never behaved this way before. It's a 24" Samsung SyncMaster, but I wonder if it might be the video card not outputting a signal for some reason. If I power down the machine then power back on, the screen will come up right away. It's just if I restart it either by pressing the reset button or via the OS then it takes a while. With my previous video card (GTX 480) the screen was always shown instantly on startup or reboot, no delay whatsoever.
Third, and I don't know why I didn't check in the LinuxLive what drives were shown, but in OS setup I noticed that it only recognized 2 of the 4 disks I had connected to the SATA ports. It recognized the SSD which I had on SATA2-L, and a HDD that I had on SATA3-L, but the HDDs on SATA2-U and SATA3-U were not listed in the BIOS setup screen / hardware information. Even though the SSD was listed in hardware info, it was not an option in the BIOS's "boot from" menu options. I think I recall seeing more than 2 drives listed in the Mint install partitioner, but I didn't pay much attention to those as at the time I hadn't yet noticed the issue in the BIOS setup. I was only interested in the SSD that I was going to install it on.
I know what things I can do to debug more such as swapping back in the GTX 480, plugging the drives in 1 at a time to different ports, etc. At this point I'm just looking for responses on whether these issues are known and if there might be common solutions I can try first.
Thanks for any help. I'll be able to debug this more thoroughly tonight. I'm hoping it won't take long, Diablo 3 isn't going to play itself.
ETA: I noticed this motherboard has 2 8-pin power connectors. The manual says they should both be plugged in if overclocking. I don't plan to overclock (just yet) and my PSU only has 1 of those plugs. But I do wonder if it will be enough with 3 HDDs + SSD + GTX 670 + i7-3820 + fans?
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