super noobie question regarding new build

P

pseud0

n00b
Joined
Nov 6, 2005
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39
Okay, this is the first time I'll be building anything. Can anyone tell me what happens after I put everything together? The last of my parts should be comming in by week's end.

Do I just slap everything together and fire her up? Will it ask me for my Vista CD right away or what? How will the drivers work?... Should I boot it up with everything installed (vga and sound card) or just with onboard sound and onboard video and then add them on later?

Thanks!
 
You should be able to boot up with all your cards installed. Once you have everything together, just put the vista cd in the drive and it should begin the setup process if you boot from that cd. You may have to do some BIOS setup on the first boot as well.
 
Heres what I do:

#1) Take just your MB, memory, cpu/heatsink, PSU and your vid card and put them together outside of your case. Put the MB on its box and fire up just those parts to make sure everything comes up fine. Its a pain in the ass to put everything in your case just find out you MB is DOA.

#2) If step one goes well, you can drop eveything into your case, and hook up your HD and DVD drive. Turn it back on and hop into the bios to set your CPU voltage, mem. voltage and timings.

#3) Make sure you have a memtest cd handy and test your memory to make sure its running stable. I differ with alot of people around here who say memtest must run hours and hours without any errors to prove stablility. Generally I'll it for maybe an hour. If I have no errors then I'll move onto the next step.

#4) Now you can install Vista. Pop the dvd in your drive and boot the PC. Vista installs are very easy and self explanatory.

#5) Once you have Vista installed, you need to start installing all your drivers. Chipset, Vid Card, sound card and whatever else your installing.

#6) Once your drivers are installed, I would run one more stability test. This time running Orthos for a few hours. Here again I differ with alot of people here who say Orthos needs to run for 8,10,12 hours with no errors to prove stability. Personnally I think its a waste of time. 4 hours at full load in Orthos with no errors works for me.

All that being said, of fire up Orthos or memtest in and get fairly early then you will have to start playing with voltages, timings and all your other BIOS settings so you can get your rig running stable. The last thing you want is a blue screen when your in the middle of playing your favorite game.
 
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