Building a Gaming Computer
 

I am.

I went to CompUSA yesterday and bought all the stuff I need. And some stuff I just wanted.

Here's what I got:

A big huge gaming case,CoolerMaster HAF 932 with 4 big fans inside, 4 USB 2.0 ports and 2 USB 3.0 , HDMI port on the front.

Attachment 38444
Corsair GS800 Watt power supply
Attachment 38446

Then I got the motherboard... a Gigabyte Z68ap-D3
Attachment 38447

Attachment 38448

dvd burners are way cheap I think this was $29

video card:
Attachment 38449

intel i5 3.30 ghz cpu

Attachment 38450


corsair H80 liquid cooler for that

Attachment 38451

solid state Primary drive to put the OS and current games on:: w00t!
Attachment 38452


Seagate 1.5TB LP Serial ATA Hard Drive
5900/64mb/SATA-6G
Attachment 38453

Also got a Wireless PCI adapter for like $19 .... some of these components are ridiculously cheap. You can't buy a good T Shirt for $19.

Attachment 38454

and I went with 16 GB of Ram... 4 x 4 with heat sinks on them



Attachment 38455

OK!

so now what do I do?

cool!

I was able to talk with Mr. James about some of these fine purchases, especially regarding the video card and I do believe you are right in the sweet spot with that one sir. Well done. I'm jelly, as the youth of today will say.

I believe this is overkill for reading The Cellar.

My first step is to study the docs for the motherboard and the case and figure out how all the wires for the power switch, case-mounted USB ports, etc. hook in to the motherboard.

Just plug things in wherever they fit, push the power button, and hope!

Is that i5 quad core?

You should be abble to run BF3 on modest settings

Having poked around a little bit, pretty much the sockets and plugs only fit in one place and one way round., it really doesn't look hard with a little patience and read the instructions (sacrilege I know)

If I remember correctly, the power button cable is the same as the various LED cables, but pretty much all of the other connectors really only plug in one way.

Yeah...lol... I was kidding a little. Spencer is assisting with the construction, and very excited about it. I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to teach him how computers work.

I thank you tony, for your advice. Helped a lot. I'm sure I will need some guidance along the way here, so I thought I should start this thread listing the components.

And I wanted to make sure tw was ok with my power supply.

He won't be until you build the thing, start it up, run a dozen different things at once, and then start taking measurements with your digital multimeter to 3 decimal places.

Lookin like a nice rig that, mate. What's your all in cost on that?

Helluva lot to play Solitaire. ;)

I'm of the envy.

Is your monitor going to be worthy now?

The jumbotron will be delivered tomorrow!

After I mail in 5 or 6 rebates, it is around $1100.

I plan to use my hd tv with a hdmi cable, but tony says I will want a monitor. Next bonus maybe.

Wow, that ain't half bad.

Pretty slick.

Are you sure about the i5? IIRC, thats a dual core, but each core can handle two threads. Don't ask me how that works. The i7 is quad core, my gamer friend swears by it.

And good call on the many fans and chunky power supply. My gamer mate had a system custom built, it all worked well except the power supply wasn't quite up to all the components and it had a tendency to overheat.

Great project for the lad to work on, too.

do you have all the cables you'll need ?

Don't know how this works, but the power supply came with 4 SATA pugs for the hrad drive etc, but there was another4-6 pin cable linking the SATA devices, hard drive and optical drive, together, maybe then to the mother board, this cable wasn't in with the new power supply, maybe it's included in with the hard drive.

I have not yet opened the hard drive boxes, but the power supply has a huge pig tail.

d'oh. I didn't get a sound card. There is a head phone jack on the mother board. Do I need a sound card, or is the one on the Motherbaord going to be sufficient?

On board sound is fine.

I want a solid state drive. I've also seen a spinning drive with ssd cache. Clever.

I wouldn't use the one on the mobo. Ya got all that other good stuff, don't start skimpin' now.


ETA: Listen to someone (besides me, I mean) who knows more. I've just had bad luck w/onboard stuffs.

I wouldn't buy an after-market audio card unless you intend to use the PC as a recording rig, or amp simulator, etc.

All the Vinyl to digital conversions I did with my music collection were done with the onboard sound card. They sound great. Mine was stereo. I assume yours is too. If it's mono, you may not be happy. (Our laptop has a mono onboard sound card and it sucks.)

He got a hot-rod motherboard, I'm assuming the audio is as good as human ears need it to be.

Oooooh. I wonder what kind of cool recording/mixing I could get into if I got some funky kind of card.....

Get some onboard or external gadget that converts a quarter inch guitar jack into USB, and runs through an amp simulator.

That's what I would do.

Then you can do your recording on headphones.

Jim may i suggest that you ditch the wireless net work card and go Hard wired instead , wireless is convenient , but slow compared to hard wired

A little thing some people usually forget: if you go for more than 4 gigabytes of RAM, you'll need a 64 bits version of Windows. With the 32 bits version, the OS is unable to operate more than 4 gigabytes.

got 64 bit version, check.

youtube is a damned handy resource. It's one of those things that has not really been around all that long, but I can't think of what I used to do without it.

I installed the radiator side of the liquid cooling already... this video makes me think I should remove it and install the heat sink end on the MB first.

One thing from the Old school , I know that some of the mounting screws are in Hard to reach places to reach , But NEVER NEVER use a Magnetic tipped screwdriver , magnets and hard drives dont get along verry well ,
This may not be so much of an issue any more , but it used to be

It was never an issue even when some disk drives used motor oil to move heads.

Where is the most powerful magnet in your house? Inside the disk drive. Used to move those heads. If anything magnetic would harm data, then it is the most powerful magnet already inside the drive.

What Ever !!!

Tw, did I get a good power supply?!

Corsair is a popular brand name. Without a few sheet of spec numbers, I cannot say anything more.

Nobody really needs an 800 watt supply. But a majority of comptuer builders say it is needed due to hype and spin. Will your computer output heat like a toaster? Of course not. View supplies from brand name computers. Rarely do they exceed 400 watts. Most of the time, a computer consumes 200 watts or less.

Now, is that supply really 800 watts? To say more (again) means spec numbers. For example the 250 watt supply in a Dell would also be hyped as maybe 400 watts in stores selling to computer assemlbers. They did not lie. They just play games with the numbers to cite a different wattage measurement. Why are so many told to install an 800 watt supply? Generally, just double what you really need. Then any one current (for each voltage) that might be insufficient is now more than enough.

The supply is probably fine. That is the best I can say. But appreciate games played with computer assemblers mostly because so many ignore or never really learn the numbers.

Once built, tests recommended using the multimeter (while multitasking to everything as described in that other thread) can better say whether that one unique supply is up to the task. One of two tests recommended here to avert future failures.

One chassis fan should be more than sufficient (not to be confused with completely different fans on heatsinks). Sometimes people install more fans to eliminate hot spots. Or so that air still flows because they expect one fan to fail. So one fan blows in while another fan blows out the other side.

Routing of ribbon cables and other 'airflow restrictive' items is important so that hotspots do not form. One 40 CFM (cubic feet per minute) chassis fan should be more than sufficient to move air when the room is at 100 degreee F. Moving too much air usually creates another problem - excessive dust.

Best time to learn how reliable a system is will be is on a warmest day. Try executing heavily in a 100 degree F room. Some hardware defects that might cause failures months or years later can sometimes be identified when the room is that warm. And before a warranty expires. 100 degrees F will never cause hardware damage. But may identify weaknesses that only get worse with age.

So thats a yes. I cannot tolerate a 100° room, so no danger of me computing frantically in that environ.
Thanks!

I believe that was the Shortest Yes TW Has EVER Given !!!

chuckle @ zippy

So.

I removed the fan, shmeared the heat paste on the cpu, attached the heat sync thingie, got pissed off at the ikea like directions that came with the cooling system and quit.
Then I started again, figured out that the 3 prong receivers go into the 4 pin fan connections, then the fans go into the heat sync thingie, and hooked it to power.

Then I hooked up the 24 pin main power, and got stumped on the secondary cpu power connection. the mb instructions show a 4 pin 12v, but there is no complimentary connector coming out of the power supply. Got pissed again and quit again.

Then I noticed step 4 at the bottom of the page in the ps book. Split the 8 pin connector. Oh sure...

Hook up the video card, monitor,(oh, I got an acer 23" monitor for $170) the little beep speaker, and the on off button..... Connect power, and hit the button..... It comes on, but no beep. Wtf.

Then I realized, I only have half of the power hooked up to the video card.... Fix that, and it boots! Yay.

That was right at midnight. So then spencer got re interested, and wanted to keep going.

So we took that all apart, installed the mother board in the case, mounted the video card, put the fan back in, installed the dvd drive, ssd and hdd, connected data and power cables.
I think all thats left is the front panel wires, the wireless adapter (which yells that you must install the software prior to physically connecting it...pain in the ass, that)... And the OS.

any set up tips? do I need to do anything fancy in the bios before I install w7?

Ok, its running!

The only fail is that there is a usb3 bracket the front of the case, but no where to plug it in to the mother board..

They end in a 19 pin rectangle female plug. Nothing even close on the mb. I have one remaining usb 3 port on the board. Do they make an adapter?

Omg. Skyrim is awesome.

this is the thing that is in the front of the case:

Attachment 38519

here's where they need to go:

there does not seem to be any such animal.

Other options would be to run the cable out the back and use a 19 pin to usb adapter to plug that front bracket up to one of the rear usb3 ports... which i don't like ... esthetically, and practically....

or get one of these:
Attachment 38523

and hook it right into one of the PCI express ports (which was one of the reasons the guy recommended this board over another I was considering)

Hey Jim.

I think you are mistaken about the diagram you posted above regarding your usb header.

The thing you circled and labeled USB 3.0, that's not a set of USB 3.0 headers, they're USB 2.0/1.1 headers. The blue one in the center "just happens to be" number three, in a series of four headers from right to left, usb1 (white) usb2 usb3 usb4 (blue blue blue). I don't know where you got that nineteen pin cable, but it doesn't connect to those usb headers. I know, "duh", right. Anyhow, I looked up your motherboard and the specs on gigabyte's websited *and* the motherboard manual pdf both say that your usb 3.0/2.0 ports are just the two pre-built pre-installed ports on the back of the motherboard (they're blue, surprise).

Links.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/pro...px?pid=3856#sp

look for info on usb resources.

manual for your mobo

http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList...a-d3h-b3_e.pdf

***

Good luck man!

Ah. I assumed they they were 3 capable because of their color.

Still, the cure is the pci card. Then I will have 4 usb3 ports.

Zoom.

Zoom on bro!

hmm... looking back at my initial post, the picture of that board is NOT the one I got. I'm intimately familiar with mine by now, and it's quite different. The one in the picture looks like it might have the port I need for my 19 pin.

Oh well.. that pci card is only $29. And it's not like there's any rush. I still have 6 regular usb and 2 usb3 ports.

I was using this picture as my reference. and the picture of the mobo in post #49 as my reference. Is that not your mobo?

YMMV

Looks more like mine, but the sata ports are different.

I'm just gonna order that card and maybe a memory stick reader thingy while I'm at it.

So, this is my first post from the new beast. I named it Magnus.


Magnus Vaughn Helm.



I know.



ghey


EAD

congrats!

you should smash a can of red bull across the bow or something!

Excellent!

hurrr.... shortly after that post, I installed avg, did windows updates, and restarted.

now it won't boot, and It doesn't see the SSD when I boot from the Windows7 disc. sigh.

what the fuck.