PC build project – nite 01 at i live in science land

i think all the parts for the new Ener Hax box have arrived – i guess i won’t know for sure until i turn the box on! =D

my saving grace is that i am not in a huge hurry to build it but, of course, i’d like to be typing on it atm!

patience . . . lots of patience . . .

i have learned that taking an extra minute, extra hour, or even an extra day can benefit me greatly. what i lack in technical prowess i make up for in patience and instruction reading. i read everything, over and over again. i don’t want to fry something because i thought i knew what i was doing – i know better; i know that i don’t know! =p

i’m still feeling pretty confident and that is in no small part due to the encouragement from many of you =) *thanks*

i am building this on subQuark’s big dinner table so there is stuff all over the place. my first goal was simply unpacking and unwrapping everything (lol, you saw my post earlier about my OCD organisation of rebate paperwork – well forget that, it looks like a yard sale now!) =D

i found a few Youtube videos on the exact motherboard i have and watched those this afternoon and that helped me do the first few steps – placing the CPU on the board and the RAM. both were easy and the videos let me know exactly what to expect (like push hard until it clicks – true for PCs and dating!). i kept touching my bare foot to the water radiator as my anti-static dealio as well as just being overly paranoid in general. then i placed the power supply in the case and since it is a Corsair power supply, it easily fit into the Corsair Case (Corsair is the brand of USB stick that is the aluminum cylinder that Ener was posed on as a nose art girl)

i then slid in the CD/DVD drive and the two hard drives – none of them are connected to anything though). i screwed in two case fans on the top blowing out and one on the bottom blowing in. the case has a slide out air filter on the bottom that is similar to the air filter in many blow dryers (thank goodness because my cat sheds like mad!) =p

lastly, for tonight, i mounted the motherboard into the case. i had to do it twice because it’s a micro-ATX board and i needed to move two mounting risers – derr! it went in pretty easily but it did take an extra dose of patience to get the little back plate with the USB, audio, keyboard, and mouse plugs all lined up. i plugged in the main power supply to the motherboard and then realised a secondary power cable also gets plugged in (i sat down and read the manual for the fourth time!). i need to double check that one online because the secondary power was split into two 4-pin plugs and one of those had a cover on the mobo but no mention of a cover in the manual? i’ll figure that out before it gets plugged into the wall!

almost forgot, i snapped in the video card too! that may have been the easiest thing so far – w00t! =D

for me, this was plenty for one night and i have a little homework such as figuring out that secondary plug and also how to set up an operating system disc and a data disc (not RAID – just a C and D drive)

i spent a leisurely two hours doing this and could do it faster now, but slow and steady wins the race and i need to stack everything i can in my favour!