Just finished my 1st build over the weekend, few questions

[Jaffar]

First I'd like to thank everyone who posts in the "help me build a pc thread" - I know there's a ton of them, but reading them really helped me decide to give it a whirl on my own. Anyway, here's what I ended up going with (for only $960 after MIRs over black Friday weekend!!):

Intel E8400 CPU
Asus P5Q Pro MoBo
Sapphire HD 4870 1GB
OCZ Reaper 4GB DDR2 1066
LG 22x DVD+/-R burner w/Lightscribe
WD Caviar Black 500GB HDD
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
Vista Home Premium 64 bit
Cooler Master Cosmos S case - this thing is very nice, but huge like xbox
Cooler Master 700W PSU

Ok- so I was very excited that I got it to POST on first boot up attempt, but I have a couple of questions.

During boot up, it says no HDD detected- now I think i found the problem for this- I have my HDD attached to SATA 5, as opposed to SATA 1 I think. However, I do have the HDD selected as primary boot drive (after installing vista) and it goes on to boot fine. Should I swap the HDD to SATA 1 or is that not the cause? Or is it even anything to be concerned with?

Also, regarding my HDD, when I went to install vista, my system said ~469GB available. This had me confused as I bought an OEM 500GB HDD, and expected to see 500GB available. Does this mean there's a partition of ~30GB that my system isn't seeing?

Next, when I look at my memory info in bios the "First information" line (i think that's what its called, at work atm and can't check) has the advertised timings for the ram, but then there's a "second information" line that has a lot of other numbers that I'm not sure what it means. It doesn't look like the 5-5-5-12 format, and I'm hoping it has a different meaning (cause if the numbers are the timings of my 2nd stick of ram, they are way off from the first line).

Last, my Artic Cooler 7 pro heatsink- this was the hardest part of the build for me, and I'm still not 100% sure I did it right. Part of me thinks only 2 of the 4 pegs are locked in all the way, while the other 2 are only partially in. I was just afraid of cracking my cpu or mobo when pushing the pegs in- though it doesn't move at all when I try to wiggle it, I'm not sure if its making the proper contact with the cpu.

Thanks in advance for any insights/tips!

[Zeith]

Should I swap the HDD to SATA 1 or is that not the cause? Or is it even anything to be concerned with?

SATA supports up to 8 devices on one bus without a port multiplier, IIRC, so this shouldn't be an issue.

Also, regarding my HDD, when I went to install vista, my system said ~469GB available. This had me confused as I bought an OEM 500GB HDD, and expected to see 500GB available. Does this mean there's a partition of ~30GB that my system isn't seeing?

What filesystem is this drive formatted in? You can check in disk management to see how many partitions were created, I don't know offhand if Vista (if that's what you installed) creates a recovery partition during install, and 30 gb is too much for fs overhead. My suspicion is that it's just a partition that's got memtest, fixboot, etc. in case your primary partition gets mucked up.

Last, my Artic Cooler 7 pro heatsink- this was the hardest part of the build for me, and I'm still not 100% sure I did it right. Part of me thinks only 2 of the 4 pegs are locked in all the way, while the other 2 are only partially in. I was just afraid of cracking my cpu or mobo when pushing the pegs in- though it doesn't move at all when I try to wiggle it, I'm not sure if its making the proper contact with the cpu.

This is something I'd make sure of. If your heatsink is making uneven contact with the surface of your CPU, you're going to have heat issues. Even if it feels like it's on solid, I'd make sure it's clipped down all the way. This step always makes me think I'm going to crack a CPU or motherboard too, but you're guaranteed to ruin the CPU if you run it with insufficient cooling.

[Cephius]

During boot up, it says no HDD detected- now I think i found the problem for this- I have my HDD attached to SATA 5, as opposed to SATA 1 I think. However, I do have the HDD selected as primary boot drive (after installing vista) and it goes on to boot fine. Should I swap the HDD to SATA 1 or is that not the cause? Or is it even anything to be concerned with?

Go into the BIOS and disable every SATA port except the ones you're using, that should prevent you from getting this message. Also make sure there are no boot devices listed before the HDD in the BIOS.

Also, regarding my HDD, when I went to install vista, my system said ~469GB available. This had me confused as I bought an OEM 500GB HDD, and expected to see 500GB available. Does this mean there's a partition of ~30GB that my system isn't seeing?

No, this is just HD manufacturers screwing you over in their marketing schemes. Since there are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes in a megabyte, and 1024 megabytes in a gigabyte.. 500,000,000,000 bytes is actually equal to ~469GB. You aren't missing any space, just screwed like the rest of us

Next, when I look at my memory info in bios the "First information" line (i think that's what its called, at work atm and can't check) has the advertised timings for the ram, but then there's a "second information" line that has a lot of other numbers that I'm not sure what it means. It doesn't look like the 5-5-5-12 format, and I'm hoping it has a different meaning (cause if the numbers are the timings of my 2nd stick of ram, they are way off from the first line).

Don't worry about the second line of numbers, just edit the first one to match the timings that were advertised, if you wish. Make sure you're giving the memory appropriate voltages. Your BIOS doesn't do this for you, so you have to manually set it.

Last, my Artic Cooler 7 pro heatsink- this was the hardest part of the build for me, and I'm still not 100% sure I did it right. Part of me thinks only 2 of the 4 pegs are locked in all the way, while the other 2 are only partially in. I was just afraid of cracking my cpu or mobo when pushing the pegs in- though it doesn't move at all when I try to wiggle it, I'm not sure if its making the proper contact with the cpu.

Check your temps. If they're okay (at or under 40C while idle) you should be fine. As long as the heatsink doesn't move or wiggle around if you touch it, you should be okay. The best way to tell is to stress test the CPU and make sure your temps stay low.

[Jaffar]

Thanks for the quick replies, glad to know about the HDD - I don't think i'll notice the 'loss' of 30GB, just wanted to make sure I hadn't done anything wrong.

I'm pretty sure I have the boot sequence HDD, then optical, i'll just double check to be sure.

Looks like my next step is to stress test, benchmark, then possibly look into overclocking if my heatsink is all set. My Vista performance rating was 5.7- which was based off my cpu's score of 5.7, while the rest were 5.9.

[Jaffar]

Ok, so my temp in the BIOS is 33C - does that sound like the heatsink is installed correctly? As far as in-use monitoring of temps- do people tend to use software, or a control panel/monitor in a drive bay? (suggestions for either would be appreciated).

[Kohan]

33C is a perfectly good CPU temperature. Additionally, plenty of people use software to determine their internal temperatures, although different programs can have peculiar inaccuracies. That doesn't mean they're worthless, it's just good to know their flaws so you can glean an accurate reading from them regardless.

[Olo401]

33°C is fuckin' fantastic, if it's an accurate reading. IIRC the average temp with stock cooling and no overclocks on most CPUs is around 43-45°C, just to to give you an idea.

[levish]

33°C is fuckin' fantastic, if it's an accurate reading. IIRC the average temp with stock cooling and no overclocks on most CPUs is around 43-45°C, just to to give you an idea.

most of my small form factor big name OEM computers are 40-50c at idle

[Epical]

Ok, so my temp in the BIOS is 33C - does that sound like the heatsink is installed correctly? As far as in-use monitoring of temps- do people tend to use software, or a control panel/monitor in a drive bay? (suggestions for either would be appreciated).

33C is a great temperature. For temp reading software, use CoreTemp. It's accurate and lightweight (making it auto-start ready). If you want something a bit more in-depth, go for Everest. It'll tell you all kinds of temperatures in your system, as well as FULL system details and a benchmarking/stress test program.

[Groovebox]

I recently did my first build as well. I can tell you from first-hand experience with an Arctic Cooler cpu heatsink/fan... it's a fucking monster, physically... and performance-wise. I have an AMD X2 5400+ Black Edition... I have it overclocked to 3.2+ghz... and it still stays ~33C when under stress

Grats on your first build, looks like you made some great choices. It seems like you sprung for an expensive case. Looking back, I wish I did the same. I bought a Cooler Master case for around $70 or so, it's nice... but looks somewhat poorly crafted. Oh well, there is always next time!

[Jaffar]

Ok so under load temps seem to be low-mid 40s, highest I saw was 47 while playing Warhammer.

As far as the case, they had a sweet deal for $240 for the case & PSU over black friday weekend. I had been looking at the NZXT tempest & pc power 610W, but figured I'd at least be re-using the case for future builds, and the psu has enough power & connectors to support cross-fire if i ever wanted to add another gpu.

[theo]

This thread got me started on monitoring my cpu temp. Thanks for mentiong CoreTemp, it works nicely with the G15 keyboard.

For starters, I use the basic heat sink that came with the cpu (intel e8400) and I tend to hover around 43C when doing basic stuff. Playing Crysis pushes me up in the 75C area. At one point it hit 80C so I turned some graphic settings down. Something tells me 80C is something to be worried about. Should I be purchasing a better heat sink or I am just overreacting?

Edit: Ok, a few pegs in that heat sink were not clicked in all the way. Now I'm running around 55C instead of 75C.

[Epical]

Edit: Ok, a few pegs in that heat sink were not clicked in all the way. Now I'm running around 55C instead of 75C.

I was about to say... 75C is NOT good on stock clocks lol. If you have $25 to spare you can get a Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7 and see amazing results. At the lower price brackets for aftermarket CPU coolers it has, by far, the best price:cooling ratio out there. Well worth the money.