Building a computer, need suggestions

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 3:12 pm

I'm going to go with RAID 3, I don't need RAID 5.

I'm going to get a single 1 GB stick of RAM so I can upgrade to 2 GB in the future if I ever need to.

Problem with CompUSA is... there is no CompUSA near me. The nearest CompUSA is almost an hour away, which is not worth the extra gigabytes.

So yeah I'm pretty much finalized on the setup! Going to try to order tonight, hopefully.

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 7:01 pm

Ok I ordered it, anyone have any suggestions on building it?

Ness · Post by **Ness** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 7:39 pm

Make sure you keep yourself grounded while working on it.

DO NOT INSTALL ANYTHING INTO THE CASE, until you tested it all outside first. Place the Motherboard on a thick book and connect one item at a time making sure it works and the bios detects it.

When placing the board into the case, make sure the spacers are in place first! A lot of people forget to do that which is why I had to post that up. Not saying you are stupid at all.

Take your time, and don't rush anything!

Do NOT use magnetized tools while screwing in screws.

Just some simple A+ guides to follow! Certified for a while and it is funny what some people forget when doing this stuff....guilty on my end too.

One quick question...make sure you do NOT need another power supply for your video card. PCIex is pretty powerful stuff and sometimes you might need another supply for it (unless you have enough power already and VERY little resources connected to the board such as drives, PCI devices, and USB items).

Oh, one more thing...take your time!!!

EDIT:::
I would stick away from compUSA whenever possible. There prices are ridiculous on a LOT of there items. Only thing sometimes looking into are the HDD's and SOMETIMES the Motherboards.

Overall, newegg and tigerdirect are your best bets or even computer shows too.

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 10:58 pm

weakly magnetized tools do not threaten hard drives, and i doubt you have any floppy disks around. i have found that i very often drop screws into tight places, my magnetic screwdriver saves me the hassle of flipping the whole rig over.

raid 3? you need at least 3 disks for that (you need a dedicated parity disk). i think you want raid 0

wikipedia wrote:A RAID 0 (also known as a stripe set or striped volume) splits data evenly across two or more disks with no parity information for redundancy. It is important to note that RAID 0 was not one of the original RAID levels, and is not redundant. RAID 0 is normally used to increase performance, although it can also be used as a way to create a small number of large virtual disks out of a large number of small physical ones.

wikipedia wrote:A RAID 3 uses byte-level striping with a dedicated parity disk. RAID 3 is very rare in practice. One of the side-effects of RAID 3 is that it generally cannot service multiple requests simultaneously. This comes about because any single block of data will, by definition, be spread across all members of the set and will reside in the same location. So, any I/O operation requires activity on every disk.

raid 0 uses block-level striping so the disks can seek independantly

raid 5 is like 0 with at least some parity (no dedicated disk) the cost is a preformance hit when writing. my array is set up in 0, but im starting to think i should have gone with 5. benchmarks say my write preformance is no better than a single disk anyways.

Ness · Post by **Ness** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 9:57 am

You wanna use magnetized items...go for it. Don't ever apply for a tech position and tell them that you use them though. Try answering that on the A+ as well that you use magnetized items...you won't get it right.

Magnetized tools can affect your components on the motherboard. There is a simple tool that is about a dollar and its about the length of a pen and when you push on the top, three small wires come out and they can grab screws easily and they can put screws in place too.

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 4:15 pm

I have used magnetized screwdrivers for working on things. In fact, my old computer teacher used magnetized screwdrivers. It NEVER messed anything up.

Post by **gannon** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 4:29 pm

You're magnatized screwdriver would have to be pretty powerful to end up effecting any components.

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 4:21 pm

Got my parts, I will start building tomorrow probably.

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Thu Nov 02, 2006 8:47 pm

Done. Works. Installing XP Pro tommorow.

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Fri Nov 03, 2006 6:37 pm

After nearly 2 hours of confusion, I finally got XP Pro install started. What happened? I got a Stop 0x0000007B error. This basically means it can't read the drives. Luckily a blog outlined how to get XP setup started on SATA. I had to put my drivers on a floppy and have them load.

I'm fomatting now. Hopefully everything goes well.