So the rest of my parts are currently on their way from wherever they come from and I will soon be building my first pc. Are there any tips you guys have, anecdotes from your first build, things you remember were particularly challenging or odd? thanks in advance
Not sure if the mounting mechanisms for ivy bridge/vishera are any different but when i was installing my cpu it took a fair amount of force to lock the mounting plate.
Buy zip ties, cable management will seem overwhelming/needless effort, but it makes a huge difference to when it comes to servicing/displaying your rig.
When you first get all your parts, run it on a "test" bench (your mobobox will do) so that all the parts are easily accesable and if anything goes wrong it's just a matter of repackaging and RMAing the part.
When everything is green light go-go, don't throw all your shit in the board. Take time to plan the cabling, especially important if you have a non-modular PSU, decide where you're going to bank spare cables, how you're going to route things down the motherboard tray, and how you're going to deal with slack sata cables.
Mount your cooler before you put the motherboard in the case. If you have a zalman semi circle type block you will save yourself gallons of blood tribute.
Make sure you bought a 3.5" hard drive, i bought a 2.5" hard drive on accident thinking "wow what a steal" but then had to replace it at microcenter. Also if you got a huge "deal" on your hard drive, be aware that the drive is probably coming bare, meaning you'll need to buy sata cables, also all sata cables are the same, you use the same sata cable for sata 1/2/3.
Those are all the things i learned the hard way that no one told me on my first go.
Before i forget, if you're using a stock cooler don't use the stock thermal paste it's garbage and will dry out, and if you bought an MSI gpu be sure to replace the stock paste 9/10 it will be caking/leaking off of the base plates.
Phillips head screwdriver, and a good source of light.
Also, everything that Oxy said.
Also, isn't the motherboard the thing that's supposed to come with Sata cables? Both of my motherboards did.
Cable management. Get some tie backs or velco and stuff the PSU cables your not using.
Get a pair of tweezers or a magnetic wand too theres nothing worse than losing a screw at the bottom of the case.
Take a picture of the case empty then full for your records.
Label Sata cables if your case hides alot of the cables. If your sata connections are clip on be carefull not to yank them off. Thats get expensive if you do that to your brand new SSD(true story).
Protect your investment and get a UPS.
Have your OS bootable on a flash drive to speed up install
Forgot to mention get some actual arctic silver thermal compound.
Have your OS bootable on a flash drive to speed up install
Started doing this recently, since i have like 800 linux disks littering my workshop. Best idea ever.
Also Markus, i think motherboards come with like 1-2 sata cables, it really depends on the manufacturer, i think my sabertooth x58 came bare and i had to use some spare sata cables.
Get a good screwdriver with exchangable tips, and then get screwriver bits of different sizes and in terms of phillips head screwdriver bits, try to find some of different steepness of angle. I know I've had a great many times where the screw/bolt wouldn't turn because the crewdriver I was trying to use had too steep of an angle and it didn't get enough contact with the turning faces of the screw/bolt. You might also consider stuff to help with cable management such as zip ties or twist ties. Some industrial velcro is really great for attaching things like SSD's or case accessories or whatever. Double-sided foam tape works pretty well also. But honestly, the absolute best thing that you can do to help yourself is to clear off a long table and set out everything that you bought for your computer and a couple of bowls and stuff. The bowls are for screws, because you don't want them rolling off the table and getting lost in the carpet, they are such a pain to find. And some pliars. Pliars are great to have. And a laptop or other internet connection to search for install videos and to check the proper methods to apply thermal paste (http://www.arcticsilver.com/methods.html).
by running a test bench do you mean like an external build? like in the newegg video?
This will help you install your OS on the USB or sd card. http://www.pendrivelinux.com/
Another good one is unetbootin it will convert the iso to your flash drive most of the time.
Doesn't need to be anything that elaborate. Like me I have a sheet of acrilic plastic. At the very minimal though place the board on the static bag it came with on your desk to bench test it.
Good house keeping is good to get into the habit of doing you will always have 'extra parts' in any build. Put all that stuff and all the manuals of your varies things and put it in the motherboard box. Especially if you have a board you can SLI or crossfire that cable will come with your motherboard.
Pretty much what everyone else has said :)
Personally tho i like to plan the build first. Open the box's and look at each part and read any manuals etc before you start (if your experienced you can usually skip this part). Look at the case,PSU and Motherboard, plan the cable routing and think about the best way to put them together, this way you should avoid having to fiddle with random cables after its all screwed in.
Also i find that sometimes you can get frustrated with simple things like screws that wont bite or working at an akward angle and your back hurts or kness ache etc etc, rather than trying to push through it just walk away and take 10 mins to relax and think about how to work around these issues or just recover, the last thing you want to do is break something purely because of frustration or trying to rush things.
Remember its better to take a couple of hours to build a PC and have everything work first time than to take 20 mins and it not boot atall. Its always hard to do cause you just got all your gear and you just want to get it going and try it out but dont let it dictate how you build the system you will only get a world of hurt if you let speed compromise the quality.
If you plan on dual booting. Actually you should always have an option at boot in case something goes wrong you got the other to save your system. Windows is always first then linux. Linux works well with everything but windows doesn't like to play if you install it after Linux. Most of the time windows will overwrite the MBR and you will only see windows installed.
sweet thanks for all the info and stuff guys
So since some motherboards don't come with SATA cables, is it best to buy a few extra just in case?
Never heard of buying SATA cables before....