need help!!!!

[Mephistopheles]

I'm currently in the process of assembling my new system:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (Manchester)
2GB OCZ DDR400 Platinum EL
DFI LanParty UT nF4 Ultra-D
2x120GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 (8MB cache, NCQ)
Sapphire X550 with 256MB memory
OCZ PowerStream 520W PSU
Thermaltake Armor (silver)

Now I'm almost finished, but I have some questions I need answered:

1) When installing the CPU, I accidentally removed a very small patch of the thermal compound. I did so with my fingernail, because, silly me, for some reason I was expecting the thermal compound not to have the patterns that it had (it had small ridges on top, regularly), so I for some reason tried to peel a layer off. I probably affected an area no bigger than 1mm x 1mm on the edge of the thermal compound before realising my stupid mistake. Will this bring me any problems? Should I get more thermal compound, get rid of the old one? I wasn't really expecting this to be any problem since it's very much on the edge, and it affects such a small area that, in the end, it will probably only worsen cooling by a very small amount. Would you all agree?..... Should I be worried?

2) When installing the heatsink/fan, I installed the damned thing 180 degrees rotated, which means nothing for cooling but means that my fan wire has to pass right over the fan (a few centimeters above it, actually). Isn't so bad, I guess.... Right? Or should I redo the whole heatsink/fan installation before powering up?...... :frown:

3) The rest was relatively trouble-free. All the other cables presented no problem whatsoever, because most would only fit in only one way, but I'm a bit puzzled with the front panel connectors for the thermaltake armor. In particular, there seems to be no way of telling each wire apart in the Power On/Reset/LED bundles, which could, apparently, be installed the wrong way. However, each connector does have a small triangle pointing down (sometimes with an S written above it) for one of the wires. Question is, how do I make any sense of this? I don't want to connect these wires the wrong way. The USB wires are 5-wire bundles which are also not 100% clear to me, but are nonetheless much more understandable.

Any help would be appreciated. It's my first time actually building a computer from scratch, so please allow for some stupidity of mine... I'm also kind of afraid to mess up - what if I did something to my CPU, for example?... It's not like it's a budget CPU...

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Mephistopheles on 09/24/05 09:20 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[dhlucke]

1. I wouldn't be too worried, but combined with #2, I'd probably go and get myself some thermal paste (Arctic Silver), clean off the old thermal tape, and redo the whole thing. In the end you might only notice a 1C difference, but I'm not sure what HSF you got but am a bit surpised that you got it on backwards. You NEED to make sure that everything is flush, contact with the HSF and CPU is level.

3. Those case wires are always stupid. Just do the best you can. The manual should have a layout of what goes where. In some cases, like the speaker wire, you should be able to tell by the number of wires it has. The ones with only 2 are a pain if they're not labeled good.

<font color=red><b>Long live Dhanity and the minions scouring the depths of Wingdingium!

 

[Mephistopheles]

I'm currently using the stock solution for the X2 processor, which is actually a good-looking cooler. The damned thing is symmetrical (if it weren't for the damned wire), and so is the retention system....

Here are a few pictures to show you: this is the <A HREF="http://geocities.yahoo.com.br/david_chinellato/x2_4200_stock_cooler.jpg" target="_new">stock cooler</A>, and here are three pictures of the way it's currently in place: <A HREF="http://geocities.yahoo.com.br/david_chinellato/cooler01.jpg" target="_new">one</A>, <A HREF="http://geocities.yahoo.com.br/david_chinellato/cooler02.jpg" target="_new">two</A>, and <A HREF="http://geocities.yahoo.com.br/david_chinellato/cooler03.jpg" target="_new">three</A>.

I didn't actually apply any extreme force on the heatsink when placing it; it just simply fits in either position, apparently.

 

[Crashman]

Turn it on and check your temps.

As for the case wires, eh, you'll figure it out. The arrow means Pin 1, the power LED works if it's right or doesn't work if it's backwards, same for the HDD LED, and the power switch doesn't care which way it goes.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[Mephistopheles]

Hmmm..... there's actually no pin 1 on my motherboard, but the pins are counted on the motherboard (from 1 to 20 for speaker, HDD Led, Power LED, reset switch and power switch). It occurred to me that maybe the arrows mean "smallest-numbered pin on that bundle" or something.

But what you're saying is that if I mess up, nothing terrible will happen? Like, if it doesn't work, just turn it the other way around and that's it? That's good news. My worst case scenario was actually, erm, worse than that.

 

[Crashman]

If you mess up the USB cable, terrible things will happen. If you mess up the power button, it still works. If you mess up the LED's, they simply won't work until you reverse them.

For the LED's, there's probably a common color, either black or white, for the - wire, and a more flamboyant color for the + wire.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[Mephistopheles]

If you mess up the USB cable, terrible things will happen.

........what??? What will happen?

For the LED's, there's probably a common color, either black or white, for the - wire, and a more flamboyant color for the + wire.

I thought that too, but there seems to be no pattern. two bundles have black and red wires, there's another which is orange and white and yet another which is blue and white.... And the chassis intrusion bundle (2 wires) has white and black wires...

 

[Crashman]

If you were so silly as to reverse the USB wires, you would likely blow your USB controller circuit. As for chassis intrusion, it's just a switch, it can be wired either way.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[Mephistopheles]

Crosschecking the information about the USB ports in the case manual and mobo manual, I was able to find out just exactly how to place those USB port connectors, so I don't have a problem with the USB ports anymore.

About those other front pannel connectors: thanks for telling me that the LED ones and Power on switch are all safe, Crashman, but what about the reset switch and the speaker wires? I've just confirmed that there is no additional information in the case manual about those arrow markings, so I presume nothing terrible would happen if I were to invert those other switches and speaker wires?....

I'm also looking around the net to see if I find something about that.

 

[Crashman]

All the switches are momentary contacts (power, case open, reset) with no polarity, though polarity is often marked anyway so people don't get confused.

The speaker does have polarity, but reversing it makes the speaker suck in instead of push it, it still sounds pretty much the same.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[endyen]

Negative is usually black or white. For the speakers, + is red. For the power switch, + is usually orange or red The + for the reset is almost always blue. The hdd set is almost always red+, and white-.
So long as you connect these wires to the right set of pins, the worst effect is that the speaker is not as loud.
For switches, the polarity doesn't generally matter, though you can check for a diode, with an ohmmeter. You can also confirm conductors, and if the switch works, that way. If a connected L.E.D. is not working, you have the polarity reversed.

 

[slvr_phoenix]

When in doubt, drab colors (black and white) are negative and pretty colors are positive.
<pre><font color=green> ∩_∩
Ω Ω
(=¥=)</font color=green> - Cedrik says that electronics is all about good fashion sense.<font color=green>
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<i>The <font color=red><b>Devil</b></font color=red> is in the details.</i>
@ 198K of 200K!

 

[Mephistopheles]

hmmm... problem solved!!!!

Facing a new one though: stability.

I actually didn't reinstall the CPU cooler: it runs just fine right now. I seem to be getting reasonable temps (like 39C idle or so, with the cooler at an absolutely quiet 1000rpm!) - so the cooler is probably alright the way it is.

But I've just installed windows, and am faced with a stability issue. Well, to be accurate, I'm pretty sure the stability issue has something to do with the fact that the BIOS incorrectly detects the processor (it just says "Hammer Family Processor - Model Unknown" for the X2 4200). Because of that, the windows installation program installed the single-processor kernel only. And the system logs also seem angry at a registry problem at some sort of performance rating number or so, which is in line with an installation problem regarding bios/OS.

And right now, the system, which has been up and running for about 4 hours now, has had three lockups and one random reboot. I'm looking at it one thing at a time, so the first thing I'll do is flash the bios - it's probably going to help. And reinstall windows, of course.

My only problem, and the main one at that, is that I don't have a floppy drive installed. And I would actually flash it with a bootable CD with the flashing utility, but right now, I'm out of recordable CDs.

Too bad that damned DFI nF4 Ultra-D doesn't like being booted from a USB flash drive, apparently.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Mephistopheles on 09/27/05 02:44 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[liquidpaper007]

Do you have the latest bios?

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