What will happen when I turn my new build on for 1st time?

[bendy86]

Here's the situation, everything is new apart from the HDD. It's an old HDD which is from a older system and currently has vista installed on it.
I have a new copy of windows 7 64bit that I'm going to use to format the HDD during installation of windows 7.
The question I have is ,

1.what is going to happen when I hit that power button the first time?

2.Is it going to attempt to load vista and what damage will it cause?

3. Will I need to press the reset button once the official checks are done when you 1st power on so I can get to bios or can I just spam F2 when I first power on and get into bios to select boot from optical drive before it attempts to load vista?

Hope someone can help as I'm just waiting for the DVD drive to be delivered and then I will be powering on.

 

[nafoni]

1. Your computer will (hopefully) turn on.

2. It shouldn't cause any damage. Whether it will attempt to load Vista or not depends on how the BIOS is set up now.

3. Just spam the key to enter the BIOS, move the optical drive to the top of the boot list, turn off your computer, insert the Windows 7 DVD, turn on, wait till Windows 7 installation loads. You will be able to format your HDD from the Windows 7 installation.

If you're really worried about any damage being caused if it attempts to load Vista, then just enter the BIOS and put the optical drive on top BEFORE plugging in the HDD (you don't need a HDD/SSD to enter the BIOS).

Remember to put the HDD that you install Windows 7 on on top of the boot priority list after installation.

 

[Hazle]

1) if you're using said old HDD as a boot drive, more likely than not if all the rest of the parts are different from your old PC, Vista may not load.

2) see 1)

3) get into BIOS/UEFI, boot from DVD and make a fresh install of W7.

 

[bendy86]

I didn't realise that I would be able to get into bios with no HDD installed. I'm waiting for the delivery man to turn up with the optical drive at the moment. Will I still be able to enter bios and select boot from cd drive without one being installed?

 

[nafoni]

You will only be able to select boot devices that are connected, so you'll have to plug in the optical drive first.

There is always a possibility that the HDD tries to sneak it's way to the top of the list once you plug it in, but you'll find that out when you try turning on.

 

[bendy86]

Well i dont really believe it but ive put all parts together, turned it on and away we went. Ive installed windows, ive installed drivers and ive installed the latest bios update and everything is running great.
The only thing i have noticed is in cpu-z that it showing my core speeds as 1600mhz and my ram at 800mhz when it should be 1600mhz?

Any ideas?

 

[nafoni]

It's normal. It will increase once your system gets more work to do.

At the time of writing my memory is running at 680MHz (should be 1333-1600) and core speed at 1600MHz.