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My name is Notorious Biggles, this is my story.
-------------------------------- ----------------------------------------
So after several years of not being able to play PC games made in full
Technicolor 3D, I took the plunge. I was going to build my own PC from
scratch. And I did.
Maybe to someone who has done something like this before it would be a
whole lot easier, more automatic, with less thought required. But this
was my first time. Sure, I had upgraded before, pretty much everything in a PC. But never a whole new PC from the ground up.
First of all I had to figure out what I wanted in the computer. Then
after figuring out what I wanted I then had to figure out what I could
get for a sensible price. Much shopping around ensued. Trawling the web
for an hour here, an hour there.
Eventually I was ready.
I started off nice and prepared. I cleared a nice big space on the table like you should. Apparently. I gathered all the components around me. I had a guide from a magazine. I had manuals and instructions and the computer on the net for any desperately needed information.
I grabbed a beer and turned on The Thomas Crown Affair. I really like
that movie and it was on TV that night. The time was around about 23:30. I thought maybe an hour at the most.
First things first, install the processor and heatsink onto the motherboard. Well thats simple enough. A quick check with the magazine
and I remember that I have to put thermal paste between the heatsink and the processor. So with another beer in hand I messed around for half an hour until I mustered up the courage to do something that could have such lethal consequences, at least for the processor. Eventually I thought what the hell and broke open the packet for the thermal paste.
And lo and behold, inside are nice wee templates so you put the paste on the right bit at the right thickness. Of course talking of thickness, guess who put some thermal paste on the processor as well as the heatsink? In my defense the magazine did say to do it like that. Of course they hadn't banked on the aforementioned wee templates now had they?
By this point I was getting rather anxious. I was getting wound up and
letting the fear of breaking a machine get the better of me. When with
another beer in hand I realised this, I bunged the processor into the
socket on the motherboard and clamped the heatsink on top.
Mind you, getting the heatsink and fan out of the plastic box was a
challenge in its own right. that stupid moulded and sort of welded shut
stuff is almost impossible to open. I stabbed it with a screw driver
and pulled it apart with my bare hands. Made me feel more manly. I got
blood all over my jeans.
By this time Rene Russo is well into the swing of things in the Thomas
Crown Affair. Stockings are one of the best inventions ever.
Next step according to the motherboard manual and its rather interesting Taiwanese to English translation, was to attach the motherboard, with the processor and heatsink on it to the case chassis.
What made it even easier in my case was that I had a really cool little
tray thing that came out the case to put the motherboard on easily. So I start screwing away and all seems well. Then I put the tray in case.
Well eventually I did, but with the stupidly large clip on the heatsink
getting in the way and the stupid socket on the motherboard being turned round to DELIBERATELY CAUSE AS MUCH HASSLE AS POSSIBLE.
Finally it gets manouvered in. Only for me to realise at this point that there were extra studs that you were supposed to fit for the motherboard to attach to that stupid wee tray with. So out comes the tray, off comes the board and on go the studs. Then on goes the board and in goes the tray. At roughly the same time in goes Rene Russo to Pierce Brosnan's bed. Not bad for a woman in her forties. Most other 40+ year old women look a bit ropey naked, not her.
Next part: connecting up the power button to the motherboard. Dead easy
the way the manual describes it. A 2 minute job. Oh no. You see my
first problem stemmed from the fact that I had a lot more wires to plug in than the manual suggested. 4 of them even now lie loose inside the case because I didn't know what to do with them. After deciding to
ignore all the wires that didn't have things like "power" or "HDD LED"
stamped on them, I prepared to connect them. And then I looked again at
the manual. And I saw that they had to be done to a correct polarity.
But no one thought to indicate which went in the positive and which the
negative. Sure the wires were coloured, even more so than Joseph's dreamcoat. But it didn't say which was which. So in the end I took a gamble. Seeing as everything now works I must have been right.
From there on it was simple though wasn't it? Well yeah, mostly. I
decided to fit the drives at this point so as to have fewer delicate
components to knock inside the case as I put the drives in. So after I
wrench off the metal blanking plates with a flat headed screwdriver I
realise that if I want to keep the really really bright LED on the
front of the case then I could only use two 5 1/4" drive bays. So I
bung in a fancy Coolermaster Musketeer thing which doesn't really do anything other than have more blue lights on it. The DVD burner fits nice and easily. So far so good. By this point the movie is nearly over and Pierce Brosnan is putting the painting back in the gallery.
Bung in the floppy disk drive. Unwrap the hard drive and figure it should be just as easy. But oh no no. First I have to grab a pair of pliers to bend bits of the case for hard drive to fit. Once that gets done I bung the hard drive in and grab another beer.
RAM fitting time. As usual the slots are so tight I worry about
physically snapping the motherboard in trying to fit it. However after a few minutes pushing it goes in.
Next up we have fitting the video card. Surprisingly that went fine
actually. You just bung it in the slot like it tells you to.
The sound chip was on board. A decent one mind.
So lastly case fans. Should be easy really. Well no. You see, I got an
LED fan. And it was fine. But the screws just would not fit. Simply too
big for the screw holes. Which is a shame. So I decided that I would
borrow some off another case fan. And these ones fitted great into the pre drilled hole. Which was nice. But it did leave me with the dilemma, how do I attach that other case fan?
Wire for tying up cables. Fed it though the screw hole and through the
case. Amazingly difficult to get it to loop through the holes in the
case. Not being able to reach it any other way meant I had to curl the
wire and sort of twist it as I put it in. Eventually I got it through.
A few tight twists and that fan was in as well. It doesn't even rattle or anything.
So at this point it is built. So I screw the sides on, put it in place,
connect everything up and hit the on button. Nothing. Zilch. Then I
remember the switch on the back of the PC, on the PSU. When I turn it
on and then hit the power button it works.
Cue a big sigh of relief and another beer.
Amazingly everything in the BIOS is set up fine from power on. Nothing
to tamper with. So I bung in the Windows CD and wait for it to start the installation process. But oh no, it couldn't go that well now could it?
Wouldn't recognise the stupid hard drive. I look into the PC (clear side panel) and see that the hard drive is connected up properly. And then I remember, the bit where it says did I have any SCSI drivers to install. Of course I didn't so I ignored that bit. Later on after yet more beer, probably whisky by this point as well, I thought to shove in that disk with stuff for the hard drive on it at that point in the installation procedure. And what do you know, it works.
After that, just wow. It all goes fine. And I had built my PC from scratch. The first time I had ever built one totally from the ground up. The time I finished: 05:45 Boxing day.
But I had shedloads of booze in the process, watched one of my favourite films, saw Rennie Russo get naked, and built a stupendously
fast PC. I once more have full Technicolour 3D for games.
Well worth it!
-------------------------------- ----------------------------------------
So after several years of not being able to play PC games made in full
Technicolor 3D, I took the plunge. I was going to build my own PC from
scratch. And I did.
Maybe to someone who has done something like this before it would be a
whole lot easier, more automatic, with less thought required. But this
was my first time. Sure, I had upgraded before, pretty much everything in a PC. But never a whole new PC from the ground up.
First of all I had to figure out what I wanted in the computer. Then
after figuring out what I wanted I then had to figure out what I could
get for a sensible price. Much shopping around ensued. Trawling the web
for an hour here, an hour there.
Eventually I was ready.
I started off nice and prepared. I cleared a nice big space on the table like you should. Apparently. I gathered all the components around me. I had a guide from a magazine. I had manuals and instructions and the computer on the net for any desperately needed information.
I grabbed a beer and turned on The Thomas Crown Affair. I really like
that movie and it was on TV that night. The time was around about 23:30. I thought maybe an hour at the most.
First things first, install the processor and heatsink onto the motherboard. Well thats simple enough. A quick check with the magazine
and I remember that I have to put thermal paste between the heatsink and the processor. So with another beer in hand I messed around for half an hour until I mustered up the courage to do something that could have such lethal consequences, at least for the processor. Eventually I thought what the hell and broke open the packet for the thermal paste.
And lo and behold, inside are nice wee templates so you put the paste on the right bit at the right thickness. Of course talking of thickness, guess who put some thermal paste on the processor as well as the heatsink? In my defense the magazine did say to do it like that. Of course they hadn't banked on the aforementioned wee templates now had they?
By this point I was getting rather anxious. I was getting wound up and
letting the fear of breaking a machine get the better of me. When with
another beer in hand I realised this, I bunged the processor into the
socket on the motherboard and clamped the heatsink on top.
Mind you, getting the heatsink and fan out of the plastic box was a
challenge in its own right. that stupid moulded and sort of welded shut
stuff is almost impossible to open. I stabbed it with a screw driver
and pulled it apart with my bare hands. Made me feel more manly. I got
blood all over my jeans.
By this time Rene Russo is well into the swing of things in the Thomas
Crown Affair. Stockings are one of the best inventions ever.
Next step according to the motherboard manual and its rather interesting Taiwanese to English translation, was to attach the motherboard, with the processor and heatsink on it to the case chassis.
What made it even easier in my case was that I had a really cool little
tray thing that came out the case to put the motherboard on easily. So I start screwing away and all seems well. Then I put the tray in case.
Well eventually I did, but with the stupidly large clip on the heatsink
getting in the way and the stupid socket on the motherboard being turned round to DELIBERATELY CAUSE AS MUCH HASSLE AS POSSIBLE.
Finally it gets manouvered in. Only for me to realise at this point that there were extra studs that you were supposed to fit for the motherboard to attach to that stupid wee tray with. So out comes the tray, off comes the board and on go the studs. Then on goes the board and in goes the tray. At roughly the same time in goes Rene Russo to Pierce Brosnan's bed. Not bad for a woman in her forties. Most other 40+ year old women look a bit ropey naked, not her.
Next part: connecting up the power button to the motherboard. Dead easy
the way the manual describes it. A 2 minute job. Oh no. You see my
first problem stemmed from the fact that I had a lot more wires to plug in than the manual suggested. 4 of them even now lie loose inside the case because I didn't know what to do with them. After deciding to
ignore all the wires that didn't have things like "power" or "HDD LED"
stamped on them, I prepared to connect them. And then I looked again at
the manual. And I saw that they had to be done to a correct polarity.
But no one thought to indicate which went in the positive and which the
negative. Sure the wires were coloured, even more so than Joseph's dreamcoat. But it didn't say which was which. So in the end I took a gamble. Seeing as everything now works I must have been right.
From there on it was simple though wasn't it? Well yeah, mostly. I
decided to fit the drives at this point so as to have fewer delicate
components to knock inside the case as I put the drives in. So after I
wrench off the metal blanking plates with a flat headed screwdriver I
realise that if I want to keep the really really bright LED on the
front of the case then I could only use two 5 1/4" drive bays. So I
bung in a fancy Coolermaster Musketeer thing which doesn't really do anything other than have more blue lights on it. The DVD burner fits nice and easily. So far so good. By this point the movie is nearly over and Pierce Brosnan is putting the painting back in the gallery.
Bung in the floppy disk drive. Unwrap the hard drive and figure it should be just as easy. But oh no no. First I have to grab a pair of pliers to bend bits of the case for hard drive to fit. Once that gets done I bung the hard drive in and grab another beer.
RAM fitting time. As usual the slots are so tight I worry about
physically snapping the motherboard in trying to fit it. However after a few minutes pushing it goes in.
Next up we have fitting the video card. Surprisingly that went fine
actually. You just bung it in the slot like it tells you to.
The sound chip was on board. A decent one mind.
So lastly case fans. Should be easy really. Well no. You see, I got an
LED fan. And it was fine. But the screws just would not fit. Simply too
big for the screw holes. Which is a shame. So I decided that I would
borrow some off another case fan. And these ones fitted great into the pre drilled hole. Which was nice. But it did leave me with the dilemma, how do I attach that other case fan?
Wire for tying up cables. Fed it though the screw hole and through the
case. Amazingly difficult to get it to loop through the holes in the
case. Not being able to reach it any other way meant I had to curl the
wire and sort of twist it as I put it in. Eventually I got it through.
A few tight twists and that fan was in as well. It doesn't even rattle or anything.
So at this point it is built. So I screw the sides on, put it in place,
connect everything up and hit the on button. Nothing. Zilch. Then I
remember the switch on the back of the PC, on the PSU. When I turn it
on and then hit the power button it works.
Cue a big sigh of relief and another beer.
Amazingly everything in the BIOS is set up fine from power on. Nothing
to tamper with. So I bung in the Windows CD and wait for it to start the installation process. But oh no, it couldn't go that well now could it?
Wouldn't recognise the stupid hard drive. I look into the PC (clear side panel) and see that the hard drive is connected up properly. And then I remember, the bit where it says did I have any SCSI drivers to install. Of course I didn't so I ignored that bit. Later on after yet more beer, probably whisky by this point as well, I thought to shove in that disk with stuff for the hard drive on it at that point in the installation procedure. And what do you know, it works.
After that, just wow. It all goes fine. And I had built my PC from scratch. The first time I had ever built one totally from the ground up. The time I finished: 05:45 Boxing day.
But I had shedloads of booze in the process, watched one of my favourite films, saw Rennie Russo get naked, and built a stupendously
fast PC. I once more have full Technicolour 3D for games.
Well worth it!
Page:
Aaah.... I want to make my own computer. This DELL Dimension 2400 with like, extra RAM etc is too slow... Even though I bought it this summer. I know. I shouldn't have. Takes nearly half an hour to load CM. And I've got like, nothing on it. Argh.
Is building your own one hard? + How much did it cost? + Could a 14 year old do it? (Is clever, yeesh.)
Is building your own one hard? + How much did it cost? + Could a 14 year old do it? (Is clever, yeesh.)
Ye I have been thinking about that and the dual channel bandwidth would give me a better performance than 1.5GB Ram at this stage.
I'd avoid getting 1.5 Gb unless it is 768 Mb chips, which I've never heard of. The reason for that is you would need to use all three DIMM slots and you wouldn't be able to run in dual channel mode, which double memory bandwidth.
In short you would end up with worse performance. 1 Gb is absolutely plenty for everything I've ever thrown at my machine.
In short you would end up with worse performance. 1 Gb is absolutely plenty for everything I've ever thrown at my machine.
I currently have a KT4 Ultra MSI (VIA Chipset) motherboard and 1GB PC 2700 RAM. I am chaging to the board you have, an Nforce 2 chipset (NF7) from Abit and 1.5GB of good quality Corsair PC 3200 RAM.
It wasn't actually difficult, I was trying to make it sound half funny.
What you changing the RAM and mobo to?
What you changing the RAM and mobo to?
I found building mine easy enough apart from the fact I was sold a dodgy motherboard that nearly blew the lot. I have just finished modding it with LED case fans and chassis neon lights. Looks mightly impressive. I will be changing my RAM and motherboard in a few weeks which is a bit gutting considering I have just finished sorting everything out.
I personally found building my PC very easy, once i had purchased all the parts, it was a simple task of putting the pieces on the MB, and previous to that i had very little hardware knowledge...
Urgh, look at the formatting. Never copy and paste from Word.
My name is Notorious Biggles, this is my story.
-------------------------------- ----------------------------------------
So after several years of not being able to play PC games made in full
Technicolor 3D, I took the plunge. I was going to build my own PC from
scratch. And I did.
Maybe to someone who has done something like this before it would be a
whole lot easier, more automatic, with less thought required. But this
was my first time. Sure, I had upgraded before, pretty much everything in a PC. But never a whole new PC from the ground up.
First of all I had to figure out what I wanted in the computer. Then
after figuring out what I wanted I then had to figure out what I could
get for a sensible price. Much shopping around ensued. Trawling the web
for an hour here, an hour there.
Eventually I was ready.
I started off nice and prepared. I cleared a nice big space on the table like you should. Apparently. I gathered all the components around me. I had a guide from a magazine. I had manuals and instructions and the computer on the net for any desperately needed information.
I grabbed a beer and turned on The Thomas Crown Affair. I really like
that movie and it was on TV that night. The time was around about 23:30. I thought maybe an hour at the most.
First things first, install the processor and heatsink onto the motherboard. Well thats simple enough. A quick check with the magazine
and I remember that I have to put thermal paste between the heatsink and the processor. So with another beer in hand I messed around for half an hour until I mustered up the courage to do something that could have such lethal consequences, at least for the processor. Eventually I thought what the hell and broke open the packet for the thermal paste.
And lo and behold, inside are nice wee templates so you put the paste on the right bit at the right thickness. Of course talking of thickness, guess who put some thermal paste on the processor as well as the heatsink? In my defense the magazine did say to do it like that. Of course they hadn't banked on the aforementioned wee templates now had they?
By this point I was getting rather anxious. I was getting wound up and
letting the fear of breaking a machine get the better of me. When with
another beer in hand I realised this, I bunged the processor into the
socket on the motherboard and clamped the heatsink on top.
Mind you, getting the heatsink and fan out of the plastic box was a
challenge in its own right. that stupid moulded and sort of welded shut
stuff is almost impossible to open. I stabbed it with a screw driver
and pulled it apart with my bare hands. Made me feel more manly. I got
blood all over my jeans.
By this time Rene Russo is well into the swing of things in the Thomas
Crown Affair. Stockings are one of the best inventions ever.
Next step according to the motherboard manual and its rather interesting Taiwanese to English translation, was to attach the motherboard, with the processor and heatsink on it to the case chassis.
What made it even easier in my case was that I had a really cool little
tray thing that came out the case to put the motherboard on easily. So I start screwing away and all seems well. Then I put the tray in case.
Well eventually I did, but with the stupidly large clip on the heatsink
getting in the way and the stupid socket on the motherboard being turned round to DELIBERATELY CAUSE AS MUCH HASSLE AS POSSIBLE.
Finally it gets manouvered in. Only for me to realise at this point that there were extra studs that you were supposed to fit for the motherboard to attach to that stupid wee tray with. So out comes the tray, off comes the board and on go the studs. Then on goes the board and in goes the tray. At roughly the same time in goes Rene Russo to Pierce Brosnan's bed. Not bad for a woman in her forties. Most other 40+ year old women look a bit ropey naked, not her.
Next part: connecting up the power button to the motherboard. Dead easy
the way the manual describes it. A 2 minute job. Oh no. You see my
first problem stemmed from the fact that I had a lot more wires to plug in than the manual suggested. 4 of them even now lie loose inside the case because I didn't know what to do with them. After deciding to
ignore all the wires that didn't have things like "power" or "HDD LED"
stamped on them, I prepared to connect them. And then I looked again at
the manual. And I saw that they had to be done to a correct polarity.
But no one thought to indicate which went in the positive and which the
negative. Sure the wires were coloured, even more so than Joseph's dreamcoat. But it didn't say which was which. So in the end I took a gamble. Seeing as everything now works I must have been right.
From there on it was simple though wasn't it? Well yeah, mostly. I
decided to fit the drives at this point so as to have fewer delicate
components to knock inside the case as I put the drives in. So after I
wrench off the metal blanking plates with a flat headed screwdriver I
realise that if I want to keep the really really bright LED on the
front of the case then I could only use two 5 1/4" drive bays. So I
bung in a fancy Coolermaster Musketeer thing which doesn't really do anything other than have more blue lights on it. The DVD burner fits nice and easily. So far so good. By this point the movie is nearly over and Pierce Brosnan is putting the painting back in the gallery.
Bung in the floppy disk drive. Unwrap the hard drive and figure it should be just as easy. But oh no no. First I have to grab a pair of pliers to bend bits of the case for hard drive to fit. Once that gets done I bung the hard drive in and grab another beer.
RAM fitting time. As usual the slots are so tight I worry about
physically snapping the motherboard in trying to fit it. However after a few minutes pushing it goes in.
Next up we have fitting the video card. Surprisingly that went fine
actually. You just bung it in the slot like it tells you to.
The sound chip was on board. A decent one mind.
So lastly case fans. Should be easy really. Well no. You see, I got an
LED fan. And it was fine. But the screws just would not fit. Simply too
big for the screw holes. Which is a shame. So I decided that I would
borrow some off another case fan. And these ones fitted great into the pre drilled hole. Which was nice. But it did leave me with the dilemma, how do I attach that other case fan?
Wire for tying up cables. Fed it though the screw hole and through the
case. Amazingly difficult to get it to loop through the holes in the
case. Not being able to reach it any other way meant I had to curl the
wire and sort of twist it as I put it in. Eventually I got it through.
A few tight twists and that fan was in as well. It doesn't even rattle or anything.
So at this point it is built. So I screw the sides on, put it in place,
connect everything up and hit the on button. Nothing. Zilch. Then I
remember the switch on the back of the PC, on the PSU. When I turn it
on and then hit the power button it works.
Cue a big sigh of relief and another beer.
Amazingly everything in the BIOS is set up fine from power on. Nothing
to tamper with. So I bung in the Windows CD and wait for it to start the installation process. But oh no, it couldn't go that well now could it?
Wouldn't recognise the stupid hard drive. I look into the PC (clear side panel) and see that the hard drive is connected up properly. And then I remember, the bit where it says did I have any SCSI drivers to install. Of course I didn't so I ignored that bit. Later on after yet more beer, probably whisky by this point as well, I thought to shove in that disk with stuff for the hard drive on it at that point in the installation procedure. And what do you know, it works.
After that, just wow. It all goes fine. And I had built my PC from scratch. The first time I had ever built one totally from the ground up. The time I finished: 05:45 Boxing day.
But I had shedloads of booze in the process, watched one of my favourite films, saw Rennie Russo get naked, and built a stupendously
fast PC. I once more have full Technicolour 3D for games.
Well worth it!
-------------------------------- ----------------------------------------
So after several years of not being able to play PC games made in full
Technicolor 3D, I took the plunge. I was going to build my own PC from
scratch. And I did.
Maybe to someone who has done something like this before it would be a
whole lot easier, more automatic, with less thought required. But this
was my first time. Sure, I had upgraded before, pretty much everything in a PC. But never a whole new PC from the ground up.
First of all I had to figure out what I wanted in the computer. Then
after figuring out what I wanted I then had to figure out what I could
get for a sensible price. Much shopping around ensued. Trawling the web
for an hour here, an hour there.
Eventually I was ready.
I started off nice and prepared. I cleared a nice big space on the table like you should. Apparently. I gathered all the components around me. I had a guide from a magazine. I had manuals and instructions and the computer on the net for any desperately needed information.
I grabbed a beer and turned on The Thomas Crown Affair. I really like
that movie and it was on TV that night. The time was around about 23:30. I thought maybe an hour at the most.
First things first, install the processor and heatsink onto the motherboard. Well thats simple enough. A quick check with the magazine
and I remember that I have to put thermal paste between the heatsink and the processor. So with another beer in hand I messed around for half an hour until I mustered up the courage to do something that could have such lethal consequences, at least for the processor. Eventually I thought what the hell and broke open the packet for the thermal paste.
And lo and behold, inside are nice wee templates so you put the paste on the right bit at the right thickness. Of course talking of thickness, guess who put some thermal paste on the processor as well as the heatsink? In my defense the magazine did say to do it like that. Of course they hadn't banked on the aforementioned wee templates now had they?
By this point I was getting rather anxious. I was getting wound up and
letting the fear of breaking a machine get the better of me. When with
another beer in hand I realised this, I bunged the processor into the
socket on the motherboard and clamped the heatsink on top.
Mind you, getting the heatsink and fan out of the plastic box was a
challenge in its own right. that stupid moulded and sort of welded shut
stuff is almost impossible to open. I stabbed it with a screw driver
and pulled it apart with my bare hands. Made me feel more manly. I got
blood all over my jeans.
By this time Rene Russo is well into the swing of things in the Thomas
Crown Affair. Stockings are one of the best inventions ever.
Next step according to the motherboard manual and its rather interesting Taiwanese to English translation, was to attach the motherboard, with the processor and heatsink on it to the case chassis.
What made it even easier in my case was that I had a really cool little
tray thing that came out the case to put the motherboard on easily. So I start screwing away and all seems well. Then I put the tray in case.
Well eventually I did, but with the stupidly large clip on the heatsink
getting in the way and the stupid socket on the motherboard being turned round to DELIBERATELY CAUSE AS MUCH HASSLE AS POSSIBLE.
Finally it gets manouvered in. Only for me to realise at this point that there were extra studs that you were supposed to fit for the motherboard to attach to that stupid wee tray with. So out comes the tray, off comes the board and on go the studs. Then on goes the board and in goes the tray. At roughly the same time in goes Rene Russo to Pierce Brosnan's bed. Not bad for a woman in her forties. Most other 40+ year old women look a bit ropey naked, not her.
Next part: connecting up the power button to the motherboard. Dead easy
the way the manual describes it. A 2 minute job. Oh no. You see my
first problem stemmed from the fact that I had a lot more wires to plug in than the manual suggested. 4 of them even now lie loose inside the case because I didn't know what to do with them. After deciding to
ignore all the wires that didn't have things like "power" or "HDD LED"
stamped on them, I prepared to connect them. And then I looked again at
the manual. And I saw that they had to be done to a correct polarity.
But no one thought to indicate which went in the positive and which the
negative. Sure the wires were coloured, even more so than Joseph's dreamcoat. But it didn't say which was which. So in the end I took a gamble. Seeing as everything now works I must have been right.
From there on it was simple though wasn't it? Well yeah, mostly. I
decided to fit the drives at this point so as to have fewer delicate
components to knock inside the case as I put the drives in. So after I
wrench off the metal blanking plates with a flat headed screwdriver I
realise that if I want to keep the really really bright LED on the
front of the case then I could only use two 5 1/4" drive bays. So I
bung in a fancy Coolermaster Musketeer thing which doesn't really do anything other than have more blue lights on it. The DVD burner fits nice and easily. So far so good. By this point the movie is nearly over and Pierce Brosnan is putting the painting back in the gallery.
Bung in the floppy disk drive. Unwrap the hard drive and figure it should be just as easy. But oh no no. First I have to grab a pair of pliers to bend bits of the case for hard drive to fit. Once that gets done I bung the hard drive in and grab another beer.
RAM fitting time. As usual the slots are so tight I worry about
physically snapping the motherboard in trying to fit it. However after a few minutes pushing it goes in.
Next up we have fitting the video card. Surprisingly that went fine
actually. You just bung it in the slot like it tells you to.
The sound chip was on board. A decent one mind.
So lastly case fans. Should be easy really. Well no. You see, I got an
LED fan. And it was fine. But the screws just would not fit. Simply too
big for the screw holes. Which is a shame. So I decided that I would
borrow some off another case fan. And these ones fitted great into the pre drilled hole. Which was nice. But it did leave me with the dilemma, how do I attach that other case fan?
Wire for tying up cables. Fed it though the screw hole and through the
case. Amazingly difficult to get it to loop through the holes in the
case. Not being able to reach it any other way meant I had to curl the
wire and sort of twist it as I put it in. Eventually I got it through.
A few tight twists and that fan was in as well. It doesn't even rattle or anything.
So at this point it is built. So I screw the sides on, put it in place,
connect everything up and hit the on button. Nothing. Zilch. Then I
remember the switch on the back of the PC, on the PSU. When I turn it
on and then hit the power button it works.
Cue a big sigh of relief and another beer.
Amazingly everything in the BIOS is set up fine from power on. Nothing
to tamper with. So I bung in the Windows CD and wait for it to start the installation process. But oh no, it couldn't go that well now could it?
Wouldn't recognise the stupid hard drive. I look into the PC (clear side panel) and see that the hard drive is connected up properly. And then I remember, the bit where it says did I have any SCSI drivers to install. Of course I didn't so I ignored that bit. Later on after yet more beer, probably whisky by this point as well, I thought to shove in that disk with stuff for the hard drive on it at that point in the installation procedure. And what do you know, it works.
After that, just wow. It all goes fine. And I had built my PC from scratch. The first time I had ever built one totally from the ground up. The time I finished: 05:45 Boxing day.
But I had shedloads of booze in the process, watched one of my favourite films, saw Rennie Russo get naked, and built a stupendously
fast PC. I once more have full Technicolour 3D for games.
Well worth it!
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