I’ve you’ve seen my other post you will know that I’ve just built a new computer and a few people asked me to let them know how it went – so here my own personal guide to building a PC and nearly blowing it up.
Before deciding to build a new PC its important to decide what your build criteria is, be in pure power gaming, price, power consumption etc. Mine was to build as powerful PC as I could that was quiet. This last point being the more tricky part and one which does tend to cost a bit more.
Therefore the kit that I ended up with was this:
Case - Silverstone FT01 (uses 180mm fans that are almost silent but give excellent cooling)
PSU - Be Quiet - Dark Power 850W
CPU - Intel Core i7 - 920 2.66
CPU FAN - Akasa Nero
Mobo - Asus PT6 Deluxe
Memory - Corsair XMS3 6GB (3x20484MB) DDR3 Memory 1600MHz
GPU - ASUS 1GB RADEON HD 4870 DARK KNIGHT
Sound - X-fi
OS - Vista 64bit – essential as 32bit will only recognise about 3.5gb of total ram.
The only real compromise I had to make was not going for a 4870x2 – I couldn’t find one that was quiet enough. Also I’m using existing hard drives to save a few ££.
First thing was to fit the PSU, Hard drives, DVD drive and Mobo into the case. The was easy as the case is well made and easy to work in, hard drive bays are screw less sound dampened with rubber mountings which make a bi difference.
Next was to put the CPU in and apply the thermal grease. Again nice and east to put it in but you need to be careful not to put to much thermal grease on as too much can actually cause a heat build up.
Attaching the Akasa fan is a doddle – so much easier than my previous AMD CPU Fan. Just push the 4 pins in to secure firmly. The fan is attached after fitting to cooler and I left it off at this point till I have put the ram in.
Ram went in next. 3x2gb of Corsair – just make sure you put them in the correct slots as advised by the mobo manual.
So the CPU, Fan and RAM are all now fitted
Now the Graphic Card goes in. These are so big these days you need to make sure your case has enough room – mine does but only just. The 4870 Dark Knight has an enhanced cooling system which means it cooler and quieter. It takes two 6pin power leads which were quite tricky to fit once it was in.
It also essentially wiped out both spare PCI slots – this I wasn’t expecting. I could have just squeezed my X-fi card into the second slot but it would be block a lot of the GPU cooling. All I have accessible is another PCI Express slot meant for another GPU. There are some PCI Express Soundcard coming onto the market now so I may have to get one of them. In the meantime I’m using the built in HD Audio.
So there we have one built PC – at least so far so good.
Now it should be a simple case of tuning it on, installing Vista and away I go…….. oh if it were so easy.
What happened next
Turning the power on for the first time didn’t do anything. The fans moved a tiny bit, a light blinked and nothing happened. So I checked all the connections – they were all correct and still nothing.
Next stop was the Asus forum where after searching I found someone who had had a similar problem that turned out to be the mobo shorting on the case. So I unscrewed everything and took the mobo out of the case and attached the power to it with just the CPU / Fan and ram still fitted. Turned it on and the fans powered up fine – there was my problem the mobo was shortly against the case.
Fixing this is a bit of step by step process of putting it back in and testing it at each screw and fitting stage. So I fitted the mobo back into the case and attached the power – turned the PSU power switch on and BANG and a puff of smoke can out of the PSU and all the house electrics went out.
OMFG – pants wetting time.
Holy crapppppppp. Seriously I thought the worst and expected I’d blown the whole pc up. The power supply was dead so there was no way of testing if I’d damaged anything else. So I had no other choice but to jump in the car and go to PC World to get another PSU. Ended up getting a Jeantech 1000w – not quite as quiet but I couldn’t wait days for a replacement.
Fitting it was easy but I was seriously shitting myself when it came to turning on the juice again. Luckily for me it was just the PSU that had blown and the PC booted. PHEWW
Re-built the PC and everything worked as it should. Installed Vista 64bit which was surprisingly easy.
Haven’t done too much benchmarking as my hands are still shaking – however my previous system was based around AMD 6000x2 and an 8800 gt and I could get a 3Dmark score of around 10500. First run on the new system gave me 15000 - nice and happy and no overclocking applied.
Also it is really quiet (not silent) to the extent that I’m wondering if everything is actually working!
So what did I learn about building a PC
1. Its really great fun to build a PC, both the initial research and building it. Knowing I’ve done everything is a real sense of achievement – plus I’ve estimated a similar spec pc would be about £300 min more to buy already built.
2. Expect things to go wrong and have another laptop/pc available to search the internet for help and solutions.
Oh and Saint – you will be interested to know that Vista rated my Hard drives as weak point of the system! Looks like I will be changing them in the new year.
Hope you found this interesting and I'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone!
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