PC power cables!

[qckbeam]

I just finished building my very first computer and I have a few questions before I boot up. First of all, I have a Thermaltake Xaser III V1420AU case with 7 fans. Does anyone have this case, because each fan has it's own power supply connection and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to hook them up to the special fan controls or what? Also, as far as power cables go, is there any special way to hook up hard-drives, DVD drives, etc., or can I just use any power plug? Before I boot up what should I look over, what are the most common trouble spots for newbies like myself? Thanks!

 

[qckbeam]

anyone?

 

[PSX]

Double-check that you have the HSF installed correctly, make sure all the power cables/ides, etc. are tight-fit, go over the manual that came with the mobo at least once as to not do anything you shouldn't have/certain jumper settings, etc.; other than that, the only way to know for certain is to press the power button; I've never had any probs after building a comp, so part of the mystery is luck

what are the specs of the comp? I'm confident that you bought the correct power supply, and not something underpowered like Deer that will blow up in your face

 

[crabcakes66]

Originally posted by qckbeam
I just finished building my very first computer and I have a few questions before I boot up. First of all, I have a Thermaltake Xaser III V1420AU case with 7 fans. Does anyone have this case, because each fan has it's own power supply connection and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to hook them up to the special fan controls or what? Also, as far as power cables go, is there any special way to hook up hard-drives, DVD drives, etc., or can I just use any power plug? Before I boot up what should I look over, what are the most common trouble spots for newbies like myself? Thanks!

7 fans? i would make sure they are all hooked up to your power supply and not your mobo.....you might cook it.

 

[qckbeam]

P4 3.0GHz, 800 MHz FSB
1GB Corsair DDR RAM
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
Thermaltake 420w W0009 power supply
Ati Radeon 9700 Pro
80GB Western Digital HD, 7200 RPM
Sound Blaster Audigy 2
MSI 16x DVD-Rom drive
MSI 52x Cd-Rom drive

Am I forgetting anything? Oh and I'm sorry but what is an HSF?

 

[PSX]

Originally posted by qckbeam
P4 3.0GHz, 800 MHz FSB
1GB Corsair DDR RAM
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
Thermaltake 420w W0009 power supply
Ati Radeon 9700 Pro
80GB Western Digital HD, 7200 RPM
Sound Blaster Audigy 2
MSI 16x DVD-Rom drive
MSI 52x Cd-Rom drive

Am I forgetting anything? Oh and I'm sorry but what is an HSF?

HSF= heatsink and fan (that big aluminum/copper block that goes on top of yer CPU)

what did you use as a thermal compound? ceramique/AS3, etc. ?
as far as power goes, I'd imagine your comp will use around 400 watts at least, but you should be fine really, I am ~15 watts above my limit and it's running great

 

[qckbeam]

Oh ok the heatsink and fan unit, yeah I know what they both are and they are installed correctly. As for thermal compound I used what came with my processor. I'm not sure what it was, it was in a syringe tube and it was a gray thick substance.

 

[PSX]

Originally posted by qckbeam
Oh ok the heatsink and fan unit, yeah I know what they both are and they are installed correctly. As for thermal compound I used what came with my processor. I'm not sure what it was, it was in a syringe tube and it was a gray thick substance.

it sounds as if you got the right stuff; so, did you boot it up yet?

 

[qckbeam]

Before I boot it up I want to make sure I have the power cables hooked up correctly, from what I understand you can hook any power cable socket from the power supply to any drive/fan in your case (this excludes the FDD and the motherboard, I know they have special power plugs). My parents also don't want me to now until I have a PC mechanic look over it (they just told me 5 minuted ago). I might still do it tonight secretly, unless it has a chance of exploding or something crazy like that. Could damage come to the computer if I powered it on with an appliance installed wrong?

 

[PSX]

You'd be surprised how many first-time users get it almost exactly right on their first try; nothing is going to blow up... but... if that technician of yours is free, it's all right; if not, I would never pay for something like that; by appliance, I'm guessing you mean a separate peripheral like a PCI sound card; well, everything is made so that if it fits, then it's meant to go in that way... for example, you can't hook up an fd cable to the hdd/cd-rom ide slot, and you can't put an AGP card into the PCI slot, and no DDR ram into an SDRAM slot, things like that... the worst that could go wrong me thinks is the power supply short-circuiting because it can't handle the voltage required, but that would be covered under warranty anyway, and you've got Thermaltake, a respectable company, so that shouldn't happen

pssssst.......

if you're really hardcore, go ahead and press that power button (hope you got the leds lined up rite, hehe)

 

[qckbeam]

Well (although this is a little extreme) what if I had the wrong kind of RAM installed, or the CD-ROM and DVD-ROM were both set to master with the jumpers or something stupid like that? Would that cause damage to the computer in any way? I don't think I should have any problems like that, the biggest hurdle for me is getting the damn fans connected to the power supply and the temperature control unit. My cables in the case are also a huge mess and there is really no way I can get them organizied.

 

[PSX]

Originally posted by qckbeam
Well (although this is a little extreme) what if I had the wrong kind of RAM installed, or the CD-ROM and DVD-ROM were both set to master with the jumpers or something stupid like that? Would that cause damage to the computer in any way? I don't think I should have any problems like that, the biggest hurdle for me is getting the damn fans connected to the power supply and the temperature control unit. My cables in the case are also a huge mess and there is really no way I can get them organizied.

listen... you can't have the wrong ram installed; for example, if your mobo was designed for DDR400, putting in DDR333, etc., or even DDR433 isn't going to hurt... putting in a lower speed spec would just make the proc run in sync with that... putting in a higher speed spec will just let you oc higher/or give you a longer lifetime of the ram at stock speeds

the jumper thing you mentioned cannot ever end up giving physical damage; the worst that will happen is that you will have compatibility probs, in which case you'll just switch jumpers accordingly

about the fans... this may be important... unhook all the extra fans (such as intake/exhaust) but keep, of course, the HSF, northbridge, vid card GPU fan, etc... then if that works, you can hook up the others so you know you have plenty of juice coming from the PSU; one good way to check stability are the power railings... get SiSoft Sandra, do a search at google.com.. I'll explain the rest a bit later

 

[qckbeam]

Ok, I understand what your saying and everything about the wrong type of RAM, what I actually meant by that post was if I installed the RAM in the wrong DIMM slots or in the wrong configuration. It's DDR 400 RAM which I hear is Dual Channel. According to the MB manuel if the RAM turns out to be single channel ram I have to buy two more sticks of it to fill out the DIMM slots. Sorry to be posting asking really noobish questions, but I'm really nervous about turning it on for the first time (and terribly excited :bounce

 

[PSX]

Originally posted by qckbeam
Ok, I understand what your saying and everything about the wrong type of RAM, what I actually meant by that post was if I installed the RAM in the wrong DIMM slots or in the wrong configuration. It's DDR 400 RAM which I hear is Dual Channel. According to the MB manuel if the RAM turns out to be single channel ram I have to buy two more sticks of it to fill out the DIMM slots. Sorry to be posting asking really noobish questions, but I'm really nervous about turning it on for the first time (and terribly excited :bounce

like I said, you can't install it wrong; sdram/ddr ram have different standards for very good reasons; about dual channel, you can only have this if the mobo supports it, like an nForce 2 board, and you can also only take advantage of it with two memory modules/fill up the slots like you said

 

[qckbeam]

Well, I went to start up the computer after reading your last post and praying only to discover my dad had taken the tower into his room and put it in his closet. I would steal it back out but he is sleeping in there . He really wants me to have a PC "pro" look it over. I'm sure now that I had everything hooked up right, and I would have had no trouble with the BIOS settings and such. Ah well... at least if the PC tech starts up the computer tommorow and it gets fried I can't be blamed.

 

[PSX]

lol, sorry to hear that, but at least you wouldn't get blamed if you made a small mistake, say, connect the led wires improperly... what comp are ya on now? I say it's time for some midnight club 2 after all, it's almost 12am here in FL, sounds good...

 

[qckbeam]

I'm on my family computer. This means that I get to stay on for just long enough to get into a game before I hear

"Get off the computer so I can check my e-mail"

I actually could have used this to play HL2 because it's not to bad

1.8GHz P4
512 SDRAM (this actually sucks)
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (soon to be replaced with a TNT2 M64!)
On board audio (again this sucks)
80Gb 5200 RPM hard drive

On second thought maybe it is pretty bad. The computer is 2 years old and there is no room for expansion. I get piss-poor performance on UT2003 anyways (20-30 fps) and that's at 1024x768 no AA, no AF. The thought of playing half-life 2 on this computer gives me the chills now.

Midnight club two huh, how is that? It looks pretty good.

 

[PSX]

MC2 is a fun racing game (has battle mode, CTF, cruise, career); might I say, the AI can be very tough as they can easily drive you off the road unless you keep your distance, not to mention the traffic that tend to swerve into you almost on purpose (well, this also happens quite a lot in the 4 1/2 year old game, midtown madness) seeing as that was also made by Rockstar, except they were Angel Studios back then, but now they seem to become much more popular, with Max Payne 2, GTA3, VC, MC2, etc.

I've found that the cars are pretty low-poly, and the reflections don't correspond well with the environment, so they may just be static like they were in the old city racing games, but I'm not too sure.. however, the engine handles things well, lotsa traffic, large cities, etc. without a prob; only time it slows down is with 4-6 cars ~15-20ft. in front, but as they pass by, their lod decreases so that makes up for it, just drive as fast as you can I would have liked that they made the cities a bit more stunt friendly, so a bit less realistic from real life (although I hate arcade racing), but still, they did a nice job; online play seems to be most fun in cruise mode, and it is laggy, but that will differ from person to person

 

[qckbeam]

I think I'll give it a shot, I remember the original Midnight club, the cars tried to run you off the road there too. It looked pretty good for a 1st generation PS2 game and it played well too. I'll download the demo as soon as I get the new PC up. Also thanks for all of your help PSX, I was just really nervous and excited about starting up my own custom built PC for the first time. Thank you though, you calmed my nerves and really did help me out.

 

[ShinRa]

I've got:

P4 3.0ghz 800 FSB Processor
P4P800 ASUS Motherboard
ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128mb
1024mb Corsair DDR400 Ram
Santa Cruz Sound Card
Samsung DVD/CD Rom Drive
Lite On CD-RW Drive
80gig Maxtor Harddrive
400 watt power supply
2 fans (one being on cpu, one of the back)

Is two fans enough? Could that be the reason my games don't work? Every time I try to play cs or something with my new comp, just when it's about to load my monitor goes blank, and the comp freezes. What's wrong?

 

[qckbeam]

It really could be overheating issues, starting up the graphics card does create alot more heat. But it would take some time for you to crash during a game if it was overheating. How is the actual airflow in your case, the cable layout and such? Sometimes (I'm speaking from experience with friends PC's) the airflow is terrible. I also think that the ATI card has a fan on it and requires it's own power plug. Did you hook up the fan on the card?

 

[PSX]

Originally posted by qckbeam
I think I'll give it a shot, I remember the original Midnight club, the cars tried to run you off the road there too. It looked pretty good for a 1st generation PS2 game and it played well too. I'll download the demo as soon as I get the new PC up. Also thanks for all of your help PSX, I was just really nervous and excited about starting up my own custom built PC for the first time. Thank you though, you calmed my nerves and really did help me out.

when you're ready to get the demo, I can hook you up with a FilePlanet link if you need, if the lines are too long... unless this is against the forum rules, I'm not sure

always glad to help

guinny, what other games have you tried?

 

[ShinRa]

Originally posted by qckbeam
It really could be overheating issues, starting up the graphics card does create alot more heat. But it would take some time for you to crash during a game if it was overheating. How is the actual airflow in your case, the cable layout and such? Sometimes (I'm speaking from experience with friends PC's) the airflow is terrible. I also think that the ATI card has a fan on it and requires it's own power plug. Did you hook up the fan on the card?

My case is designed that it has a tube, a cylinder, that hovers over the heatsink and fan of the cpu, so all hot air goes straight into the cylinder and out the vent on the side of my case. So heat isn't exactly the trouble. The fan, idk I think it's installed. And how do I switch from 8x to 4x agp? And what's the difference?

 

[qckbeam]

I think you have to go into the Advanced Tab in the propeties section. To get there right click on the desktop and goto propeties, select display, click advanced, there should be an option somewhere to change from 4x to 8x although the difference isn't anything big. If that does not work try your BIOS settings. Make sure the fan is hooked up on the Graphics card or it will shut down automatically on warmup.

 

[ShinRa]

For some reason all those tabs won't come up. I remember seeing them before in that section, now they don't show up. Maybe because I uninstalled my ATI Control Panel? Oops.
But guys seriously will 8x be better than 4x? Will I notice any kind of difference in HL2? And yea I gotta check if my fan on the gfx card is hooked up. I thought just the power source had to be and that was it...I'll check again.:cheers:

 

[qckbeam]

As far as I know the 8x AGP slot allows for more data to be transferred to the graphics card, alot more. But the games of today don't really take advantage of it. Half-Life 2 very well could because it is graphically very intense and advanced, the textures are also much higher res and could be swapped through to the card quicker with 8x. As of right now 8x is one of those buzzwords people use to get you to buy something you don't need. Kinda like the 256MB version of the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro.

 

[ShinRa]

I fixed it to 4x agp though, and my games work now. However, I'm surprised my ASUS P4P800 doesn't support 8xagp. Or does it and am I missing something? I really would like to use 8x agp. My card supports it, and I'm surprised if my mobo doesn't. I must be missing something here...