Pre-booting up of built PC question...

Hey all,

Some of you may have seen some of my cries for help on this board, regarding buying and piecing together PC components.

Well finally, I have everything necessary to run the thing...
DVD-R/RW Drive
Sony 1.44" Floppy Drive
Corsair 2x512mb modules
WD 200GB HD
Powercolor Radeon 9600 AGP 8X
Abit IS7 Motherboard
Intel Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz

I've pieced together these parts over the past few weeks and my graphics card only arrived today (no onboard VGA) so I can finally boot it up and see what happens.

Everything seems to have clicked together fairly nicely, apart from the processor at the beginning (one or two pins were slightly bent) and the motherboard seems to have bent a bit after pressing in the heatsink and fan on the CPU.

But one question remains...should I boot this up without any additional case fans? The only fans at the mo are the onboard fan on the mobo, the psu fan and the fan that came with the cpu...should I have more or could I get by for the moment?

Thanks for the help towards this goal, it was all very helpful.

jessy

you can boot it up to see if it works, but if your going to be spending long periods of time on the machine, then you will need to buy some extra fans to reduce the heat. But what you have is fine for now.
What make of a cooler is on the chip?

Not too sure, it's the one that comes with the intel chip, this big chunky fan/heatsink thing.

I was thinking of getting two fans but I won't have them before this evening, and I was hoping to test the thing and install windows on it.

stevenmu

I wouldn't worry too much about case fans, as long as you have the cpu, psu, an mobo fans it'll be fine for a while, you'll just need to keep an ey on your temps if you're running anything heavy duty for a while.

MoonHawk wrote:

apart from the processor at the beginning (one or two pins were slightly bent)

This though would worry me a lot, I hate to bring bad news but processors are very very delicate, the pins or their connectors inside the unit can break really easily. When you go to boot you may find that it's dead, hopefully not but it's better to be prepared for it.

quarryman

you can run the system without more fans to check everything is working. after that, its best to set it properly

(one or two pins were slightly bent)

how did this happen? that's not a good thing.

the motherboard seems to have bent a bit after pressing in the heatsink and fan on the CPU.

were you using a hammer to put this together?
the mobo shouldn;t be a problem.

Not sure how it happened, I was aware that they are very delicate, it seemed though to click into place once I tried slowly moving them back, what should happen if the CPU just goes dead? the machine will just stop?

Also, if the CPU pins did break inside the motherboard slot, would the broken pins remain in the motherboard and I would have to get both a new mobo and cpu?
Or would they pop out fairly easy?

I'm hoping it runs smoothly.

ps. no hammer was used in the production of this PC.

stevenmu

If they break in the slot they would probably fall out if the slot was in the open postion and you turned it upside-down, not sure though. If the cpu is dead, the effect will depend on your motherboard. The manual should give you any error or beep codes that it uses for a CPU. Many motherboards just won't do anything, or will start to turn on and then just turn off again, which is a pain because that could be caused by other problems too. If you run in to problems it would be best to try and get hold of a known working cpu and try that. Still, it's all just hypothetical at the moment, you might get lucky

jozi

Just fire it up and see what happens, we'll be here if there's any issues

Jozi

hey all, just finished and startup my new pc...and it works!

thanks for the help which ye all gave over the past few weeks, especially in deciding which components to use and all that.

Now i can be more cocky

just two questions left though, i have a motherboard utility which monitors the temperature of the fans and the cpu and all that on the desktop.

At the moment (without any additional case fans), the cpu temp is on average 40 C ...is this alright for the moment, the highest i have seen it jump to is 43 C...i intend on getting case fans for the back of the pc but would this suffice for the moment?

Also, the only hard drive i have in the system is a SATA WD hard drive, 200 gb. Whenever it is accessed however, the light for the hard drive (at the front of the case, connected to the motherboard connectors) doesn't flash or light up at all...is this because i have the connector the wrong way around or because SATA hard drives don't utilise this?

Thanks for the help all, it's great to realise that the thing works

quarryman

Average temp isn't really a great indicator since the max and min temps might differ a lot.

43c is excellent if the cpu is at load. google a program a called prime95 and use it to get your cpu working hard and figure out what the highest temp is.

good job.

quarryman, you'd be happy with 43 C? It fluctuates a lot, but there really isn't much in the machine (not too much clutter), so i'd imagine the air circulates pretty well...the motherboard is set to warn when the CPU temp gets to 85 C so maybe that might be too high...i just don't want to be using the computer, then the cpu gets too hot and either the thing melts (does that happen?) or it is inoperable again.

BloodBath

Is that a Prescott or a Northwood P4?

Use the second torture test on prime 95 to test your load temps.

Download cpu-z to check your processor information. Check if it's a Northwood or Prescott and check the stepping.

If it's a Northwood, set your cpu shutdown temp in the BIOS to 65c. If it's a Prescott set it to 70c. You can set the warning temp 5c below these.


BloodBath

quarryman

Like i said if 43c was at load (operating at high speed) then I would be very happy with it. get prime95 or play a high end game for a while and keep an eye on the max temp the cpu reaches.

set the temp warning on the mobo to 60-65c to be on the safe side. In most systems the CPU will get hotter than the mobo though.

Use Motherboard monitor http://mbm.livewiredev.com/ to record the temps over a period of time. It will make a log and show temps at regular intervals.

Really though, i wouldn't be worried at all if your temperatures are <65 at load for that setup. You'd even get away with more. As long as you're not careless about airflow PC systems nowadays are pretty solid with heat. A P4 will rarely ever burn itself out.

No need to go overkill on the fans as you're just creating excess noise.

hope this helps.

-q

edit:
<65 for a Northwood
<75 for a Prescott

jozi

MoonHawk wrote:

Also, the only hard drive i have in the system is a SATA WD hard drive, 200 gb. Whenever it is accessed however, the light for the hard drive (at the front of the case, connected to the motherboard connectors) doesn't flash or light up at all...is this because i have the connector the wrong way around or because SATA hard drives don't utilise this?

Might be that you have the connector the wrong way round, i have sata drives and the led does show when there hd is busy

Jozi

Adam

Sorry for piggybackin, but i've just gotten hold of Everest an don't know too much about temps of the different components. so i got prime95 and ran the torture test, then took this screenie after about fifteen mins while the test was still running. Can anyone tell me if these figures are good/bad/indifferent? Thanks!

jozi

jozi wrote:

Might be that you have the connector the wrong way round, i have sata drives and the led does show when there hd is busy

Jozi

Jozi, yeah I checked the connector earlier on, just moved it around and it worked looks like things are in good shape for the moment, i'll try that prime95 thing lads, thanks for the help

quarryman

fade_to_grey wrote:

Sorry for piggybackin, but i've just gotten hold of Everest an don't know too much about temps of the different components. so i got prime95 and ran the torture test, then took this screenie after about fifteen mins while the test was still running. Can anyone tell me if these figures are good/bad/indifferent? Thanks!

your CPU temp seems very low at load.

what is your setup? CPU, mobo etc?

sometimes in motherboard monitor it would show an extremely high temp for my cpu because i was using the wrong sensor. try another temp monitoring program to see if its correct. if it is, well done!