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I am wrapping up the process of setting up my new PC.  I completed the build a few days ago but didn’t finish uploading the pics to Flickr until yesterday.  I think I did a good job writing a little blurb about each photo and what was being shown.  For the breakdown of parts I used, see this post.

Here’s what I started with:

Here’s what I ended with:

The process was pretty straightforward.  I’ve been reading books and webpages about PC building for the last few years.  Two months ago I went to a CompUSA seminar about building a PC.  I’ve replaced and upgraded individual parts many times, but this was the first time I built a whole computer from scratch.

I started with the easy stuff, installing the front intake fan, the power supply, and the drives.  I was nervous about removing the front panel of the case because I’ve worked on a few cases where the panel was hard to remove.  My case is well-designed – the panel is secure, but comes off easily when you want to take it off.  That will prove important later because it has foam filters for keeping dust out of the case.  They’ll need to be cleaned eventually.

The power supply came with rubber rings you could put around each end of the power supply to act as dampers.  This would prevent the power supply from directly contacting the case and making noise.  Nice touch, but they were a bit hard to attach securely.

I have three drives in my computer – the DVD burner, a solid state drive, and a traditional hard drive.  The SSD is intended to provide fast loading of Windows and programs.  The regular hard drive is for storing data, photos, videos, and music.  The drives were easy to install.  I found the tool-less drive retention mechanisms to be totally satisfactory.  They were easy to use and held my drives in place securely.  Easier than dealing with four tiny mounting screws for each drive.

Once the work on the drives and case was done, I moved on to the more nerve-wracking part of the build – stuff involving the motherboard.  I started with inserting the processor into its socket.  I decided to do this outside the case so I would have an easier time handling the processor and finessing it into the socket.  You have to take great care so as not to bend the pins on the motherboard.  My case is a mid-tower ATX case, but it is easier to work on the board outside the case.  Despite giving myself room, and the presence of gaps for my fingers, I still managed to drop the processor into its socket.  Fortunately, it was only a drop of about 3mm.

Going into the build, I was most nervous about installing the CPU heatsink.  I was worried about applying thermal paste correctly, because if incorrectly done, heat won’t be dissipated and I would cook my processor.  I watched numerous videos on YouTube about the various ways of applying thermal paste.  When it came time to buy the parts for the computer, I decided to go with the stock CPU cooler supplied with the processor to save money.  Good enough for Intel, good enough for me.  This meant I wouldn’t need to apply thermal paste.  The heatsink already has a thermal compound applied to it that melts on its own as you use the CPU.

What I did have a hard time with was screwing the motherboard to the standoffs and the case.  The stupid I/O plate Asus supplied with the motherboard had some foam on it that offered a springy resistance when I pressed the board against it while trying to line up the screw holes on the motherboard.  I nearly broke the PS/2 stack while trying to push the board against the plate to get the screw holes to line up.  I eventually noticed a sort of aluminum ring protruding upward from beneath the PS/2 stack that was causing me problems.  I broke the thing off.  It seemed useless and was made of the type of metal you are typically supposed to bend back and forth to snap off.  Once this was snapped off, I was more easily able to position the motherboard for screwing in.

I had to put the motherboard into the case before attaching the heatsink because pins from the heatsink need to go down below the level of the board.  The standoffs in the case raise the mobo off the case to prevent electrical interference.  The presenter at the CompUSA seminar said he had a hard time installing the Intel pushpin-style heatsinks.  Probably because he’s used to AMD heatsinks.  I had no problem.  I just pushed the pins down two at a time diagonally, as instructed in the mobo manual.

Next step was installing the RAM.  Super easy.  Never ever pay someone to install RAM for you, OK?  I think electronics stores charge like $25-50 for this “service.”  There are plenty of videos on YouTube about how to do this yourself.

Now for the installation of the video card.  That was easy too, and an upgrade a Regular Joe can do.  Just line up the card with the slot, and push down until the card locks in place.  My case, continuing with the tool-less design theme, has a sort of plate or clamp that holds add-on cards in place.  No need for screws.  Again, some people felt this setup wasn’t secure, but I found it plenty secure.  You can see this plate in the flipped-up position on the left side of the pic.  I was concerned the video card would be right up against my hard drives, but I still had a little bit of room for the power and data cables to pass through.  High-performance video cards these days are huge.

The final major step was cable management.  Connect the data and power cables to the mobo, video card, and drives.  By the way, I don’t actually say mobo.  I always say motherboard, but it’s a lot easier to write “mobo.”  The cable management process for me was like trying to figure out a maze.  I had to route cables in a way so they wouldn’t be hanging loose all over, getting tangled or touching something they shouldn’t.  I did make a boo-boo while attaching cables from the case’s front panels to the motherboard.  They were cables for the power switch, lights, and front panel ports.  Asus supplies a handy little “bridge” to which you can connect all the case cables, than take this bridge and connect all these cables to the motherboard in one shot.  Trying to line up all the cables with the little pins on the motherboard would have been a total PITA otherwise.  Well, I managed to bend one of the pins for the case’s reset button on this bridge.  I was able to bend it back.  Honestly, I don’t care if the reset button doesn’t work.  On my old computer, I think I only used it once. 

Speaking of boo-boos, I drew blood when trying to connect SATA power cables.  Those things suck.  They don’t snap or click when you connect them, so you have no way of knowing if you pushed the cable in far enough, besides the cable just not going in any farther.  My thumb slid and my nail pulled away a tiny bit.

I moved cables around and connected them in a way so they wouldn’t tangle or criss-cross a lot.  The SATA power cables were longer than I needed, so I put the excess in the 5.25″ drive bay underneath the DVD burner.  They’re just sitting there unsecured.  Provided I don’t try juggling my computer, they should stay put.  I did have to use a cable tie and saddle to keep a motherboard power cable from sagging onto the heatsink.

After this, I was done.  Closed up the case, waited for a thunderstorm to pass, and turned on the computer.  In the BIOS, I enabled XMP (Extreme Memory Profile) for my RAM so it could run faster.  However, I found I was missing my two of my three drives.  The DVD burner showed up in the BIOS among SATA devices, but not my hard drive or SSD.  Did a couple of reboots, they still didn’t show up.  I opened the case and found I had forgotten to connect their power cable to the power supply!  Hey, it’s my first build.  I’m sure seasoned pros have done this as well.  On the next boot, the SSD showed up among the SATA devices, but my hard drive didn’t.  I then found it on a later hard drive page in the BIOS.  I suspect this is because that hard drive is connected via the other SATA 6.0Gb/s controller.

The Windows 7 install went by in about 15 minutes, likely thanks to the SSD.  Motherboard/CPU/video card temperatures seem to be staying around 35C, which is healthy.  I did have a problem with one of the case’s front USB ports.  Only one would work.  This morning I moved the cable from those ports to a different connector on the motherboard.  Now both front USB ports work.  The front headphone jack seemed weirdly sized and didn’t want to hold onto my headphone plug.  That’s OK, because I would normally plug into the jack on my speakers.  This new computer seems a bit louder than my old one.  My new PC has twice the number of fans.  The front fan is audible, and I am not used to hearing a fan in front.  If I got rid of that fan, the new PC would probably be quieter.  I’d like to keep the front fan though, as it seems to be keeping case temperatures down.

Performance has been good.  Here are the Windows Experience Index scores.  Take them for what they’re worth, which is probably not much in terms of benchmarking.

I have installed most of my productivity software.  It’s kind of funny.  I’m using the most current OS with big-pimping hardware, but I’m using really old software like Photoshop Elements 2 (they’re on 8 now), Macromedia Freehand 9 (replaced by Adobe Illustrator years ago), and Microsoft Office XP (three revisions old).  All I have left to install are some games and ArcGIS 10, which comes out very soon.

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