A bunch of parts...Now what?

yossarian084

Just bought a Thermaltake Armor case, AMD 2G processor, 600W power supply, an MSI VGA, ASUS MB and 1Gig of matched memory. This is my first build so i'm a little overwhelmed. The PSU is in the case, and the VGA, processor and RAM are on the MB. I plugged in the system power from both the front switch and PSU, the reset button, internal speaker and led's. Two USB 2.0 inputs from the top of the case are plugged in on the MB too. The writing on the connectors is facing the top of the case. there seems to a lot of wires coming out of the PSU that don't have spots on the MB. Just to start: What are the clunky, white 4 pin connectors? How do I do the audio and IEEE 1394?

Also, the SATA connectors from the PSU dont fit the SATA on the MB. OK, I admit I don't know what SATA is.....

Madball

SATA is a type of hard drive. The SATA connectors on the PSU plug into a SATA hard drive to power it. A cable from the SATA hard drive plugs into the connector on the MB.

dragonV8

A picture tells a thousand words.

Sata power cable to HDD.
Sata comm cable from Mobo to HDD.

deicist

The clunky, white 4 pin connectors are called 'molex' connectors. There should be 2 types, one larger than the other. The small ones are for floppy drives and the larger ones are for the older 'IDE' type hard drives (as well as various other things like fans etc..) The importnat thing to remember is that your drives (hard drives, CD drives etc...) all require 2 connections. 1 is a power connection which goes from your drive to your PSU and the other is the data connection which goes from your drive to your motherboard. The first thing to do is work out which kind of hard drive you have. If you have an older IDE drive the power connector will be a molex (the clunky 4 pin one) and the data connector will look like this:



so if you look at the back of the drive it should look like this:



if you have a more modern SATA drive, the power connector is the SATA connector you've already stated you have coming from your PSU and the data connector looks like this:



so the back of the drive should look like this:



if you tell me which kind of drive you have I can tell you what to plug in where.

yossarian084

The audio/mic connection from the case is made up of 7 single connectors, Ear L and R, Mic In, Mic VCC, Return L and Return R and a ground. Unfortunately, these terms don't match with whats in the MB manual: BLINE OUT L, BLINE OUT R, NC, LINE OUT L, LINE OUT R, AGND, +5A, MIC PWR, and MIC2.

Does it matter which Molex connector gets hooked up to a drive?

There is a small wire (twisted black and white) attached to a ground point in the case that is marked MICRO SW. What is this and where does it go on the board?

deicist

yossarian084 wrote:

The audio/mic connection from the case is made up of 7 single connectors, Ear L and R, Mic In, Mic VCC, Return L and Return R and a ground. Unfortunately, these terms don't match with whats in the MB manual: BLINE OUT L, BLINE OUT R, NC, LINE OUT L, LINE OUT R, AGND, +5A, MIC PWR, and MIC2.

Those connectors hardly ever match up between case / motherboard. From what you have I'd guess at these....but it is only a guess:


Ear L -> BLINE OUT L
Ear R -> BLINEOUT R
Mic In -> MIC2
Mic VCC -> MIC PWR
ground -> AGND

that leaves Return L & R to go in NC and +5A (is that +5V?) but I'm not sure if those actually go in there...

in any case, those connectors are just for the front panel connectors on the case yes? You should actually have in / ouputs on the back of the case, those front panel ones are just there for convenience, I never connect those up.

yossarian084 wrote:

Does it matter which Molex connector gets hooked up to a drive?

nope.

yossarian084 wrote:

There is a small wire (twisted black and white) attached to a ground point in the case that is marked MICRO SW. What is this and where does it go on the board?

no idea. Again, if I had to guess I'd say it's a chassis intrusion detection switch. Some motherboards let you plug something into them that tells you if the case has been opened since last time you booted the PC. Check near the 'ground point' the cable comes from. Is it connected to a little switch that's near one of the edges of your case?

yossarian084

They do have those audio connectors in the back. So I wont worry about it for now. That is the only firewire connection though but I cant find the hookup on the MB.

Other than that, everything is hooked up but the CPU fan/heatsink because I dont have any thermal paste. I'll try to get some tomorrow so I can fire it up.

Actually, can I run it without the paste for a short period to set up BIOS without hurting anything?

profdlp

yossarian084 wrote:

...everything is hooked up but the CPU fan/heatsink because I dont have any thermal paste. I'll try to get some tomorrow so I can fire it up.

Actually, can I run it without the paste for a short period to set up BIOS without hurting anything?

I wouldn't. You might get lucky, but there is a very real chance that you'll fry the CPU.

Did the HS/F come with the CPU? If so, there should be a square piece of sticky stuff already attached to the HS. This is not as good as a quality thermal paste, but should work fine in the short term.

You don't want to use them both at the same time, though. If you decide to add the paste later make sure you carefully (don't scratch them!) remove all of the sticky stuff from both the HS and the CPU first.

yossarian084

Yes, there is a square of grey sticky stuff on the HS/F. Will acetone or alcohol be OK to remove it later?

profdlp

yossarian084 wrote:

Yes, there is a square of grey sticky stuff on the HS/F. Will acetone or alcohol be OK to remove it later?

Yep.

yossarian084

Two of the fans on the case have molex connectors on them. One has a small 3 pin too that I put on the MB but one has the molex only. Do these get plugged directly into the PSU?

profdlp

The one with the Molex-only gets hooked straight to the PSU.

The small three-pin connector should fit on the MB in any spare fan header you find. If there is only one wire leading to the connection you will need to do the old Molex job on it, too. (The fact that there is but a single wire means that the MB connection is for RPM monitoring only.)

The big advantage to this is that the third wire allows you to monitor the fans RPM.

yossarian084

So lets make sure I have this right. If a fan has a molex, hook it to the PSU. The single wire to the MB is for RPMmonitoring only. Right?

yossarian084

OK. I fired it up and all fans were working great. However, windows failed to start correctly and my keyboard (USB powered) didn't work. Any ideas?

yossarian084

Keyboard works now. Do I need to reinstall windows?

deicist

OKay, exactly where does windows fail? Is this installation of windows a new one (ie: have you installed it on this machine) or was it already on the hard drive (ie: did you take the hard drive from another machine with windows already installed?) if it's the latter then yes, you probably will need to do a re-install because of hardware differences between that machine and yours. If it's a new installation we need to look at exactly where it's failing. Is it installing correctly then failing to start or is it failing during the installation procedure? Does it fail at the same point every time or is it more random? post back with exactly what happens, step by step and we'll see where that gets us.

yossarian084

I took the C drive from an old machine and I get a nice message apologizing for the inconvenience but windows has failed to start properly." It then gives me the option of starting in safe mode etc. I have a backup system disk, should I try to boot from that? I hate to sacrifice all the stuff on C but if thats what I have to do then ok. Will my other HDD be ok after windows starts?

deicist

you should be able to do a 'repair install' rather than re-installing, this should let you get a working copy of windows without losing any of your data but to be honest I've never done a repair install myself so I can't promise anything.

There's a guide to repair installations here: Linky

profdlp

Boot from the WinXP CD - not the hard drive. Continue as if you were doing a fresh install right up to the point that Setup discovers a previous Windows installation. When you get there, choose the Repair install option.

EDIT: Deicist was way too quick for me.

dragonV8

If both Hard drives are the same size and you have data on only one of them, why not put the OS on the empty one and that way you will definitely not lose your data.

yossarian084

I cant even get into windows to follow any of those instrutions. How do I just re-install windows from a disk?

Dragon, the second HDD has most of my stuff on it. I try to keep the C as just the OS.

The only thing I can get into is the BIOS setup utility.

deicist

somewhere in your BIOS there will be something like 'Boot order' which lists the drives in your system in the order you wish to boot from them. You need to set that so that your computer tries to boot from your CD drive first, before your hard drive. Then put the windows CD in and reboot. The system should now boot from your CD drive and take you through the steps for installing windows. As Prof said, at some point it will detect that you already have windows installed and allow you to select the 'repair install' option.

yossarian084

I changed the boot order but its still not working. The XP setup disk works fine in my laptop so I know thats not the problem. Any other suggestions?

I have not bothered to istall th 3.5" floppy drive, do i need that to update the BIOS? Could that be the problem?

yossarian084

Happy New Year Short Media Friends! Thanks so much for all your help!

deicist

yossarian084 wrote:

I changed the boot order but its still not working. The XP setup disk works fine in my laptop so I know thats not the problem. Any other suggestions?

Are you sure your CD drive works? does the light come on the front of the drive to show it's seeking? is it showing as detected in the BIOS?

yossarian084

yes. Both drives work (light comes on) but not sure about the BIOS. Since I changed the boot order, it tries to read the CD drive first but isn't booting the disk.
The BIOS shows the 2 HDDs but thats it. I can get to the screen with "Phoenix-Award BIOS v6.00" etc. Lists the MB, CPU, the master and slave drives. Below that, it says "Floppy disk fail (40)".

If I press F1 after this, I get a "Disk Boot Failure, Insert system disk and press enter"

profdlp

yossarian084 wrote:

...The BIOS shows the 2 HDDs but thats it. I can get to the screen with "Phoenix-Award BIOS v6.00" etc. Lists the MB, CPU, the master and slave drives. Below that, it says "Floppy disk fail (40)"...

Set all of your IDE Channels to "AUTO". Unless you have already installed the floppy drive you should set that to "NONE" or "Not Installed".

yossarian084

Done. Still getting the Disk Boot Failure with both drives. The Sec. Master Disk is showing the DVD, ATA 33...
Now I get a screen with the PCI Device listing.....

yossarian084

I just built a machine and booted windows from the CD. I switched all the devices in "Boot Order" to CDROM to get windows to work and want to switch it back to C for the priority drive now that its loaded. The problem is, when I start the machine, and it say to hit DEL to get into BIOS, my keyboard doesn't work. Once windows boots again I can use the keyboard fine.

Is there a way I can enter BIOS once windows is running? Through DOS maybe? right now the only way i can boot up the machine is with thw windows disk in the CDROM drive.

What would make my KB do that? It was working fine before.

GrayFox

Enable legacy support in the bios.

yossarian084

I cant get into the bios. Thats my problem.

Once I do get in how do i enable that?

Please pardon the ignorance....