Building a pc for the first time.

[Citizen K]

Hi.

Tomorow I will start to build a pc for the first time. I'm pretty confident in what to do but do have a few queries at the moment. If anyone could help that'd be great. If I have any questions later I'll probably just bump this thread!

1. My motherboard is a asus a8n-sli se. Normally when using an IDE hard drive the primary ide slot on the mobo is used for the hard drive and the secondary for the cd/dvd drive right? But I will be using a sata hard drive so do I install the cd drive in the primary or the secondary ide slot on the motherboard? Or does it not matter?

2. I plan to add a cd/dvd burner at a later date. When doing so, do I use the same ide ribbon cable from my first question (so it'd connect to both the cd and the new dvd burner) or do I use a new one and plug it into the available ide slot on the motherboard (the slot I didn't use from question 1)?

3. My thermaltake case has already arrived. It has 3 fans (front, side, rear). They all need a 4 pin power connection. The thing is that each fan has 2 leads coming from it. One is a socket that a 4 pin power lead from the psu plugs into. But it also has its own 4 pin power lead exactly like the ones that come from the psu. What are these for? The only reason I can think is that you are supposed to daisy chain the fans. So only 1 fan (probably the rear one) would be actually connected to the psu and the rest chained together. Is this right?

Phew! Hope thats not to bad for you guys!

Thanks for any help!

[johnny02004976]

mate,
with the IDE just plug the CD/DVD into the master IDE slot, when you come to add your CD/DVD burner, just plug the slave connecter into that (make sure u change the jumpers on the optical drives accordingly)

yeh with the fans u can just daisy chain them, the reason they have a connector and also another plug is for exactly that reason - otherwise u'd run out of connections from your PSU pretty quickly - just make sure somewhere they are getting power

mate any q's just post the guys here wont bite

[BUFF]

when the time comes you are better to have an optical each on it's own IDE channel as Master if you can do that (i.e. no other IDE devices)

[Citizen K]

Hmmm, so if I use seperate ide slots and seperate cables I set both drives as masters? Won't this cause any problems?

Thanks for the quick responses!

[johnny02004976]

no mate, if there both on a different IDE channel then they can be set to master thats fine

you said u was usin SATA - make sure you have the drivers to hand for the install its a little trickier than just simple IDE

[Citizen K]

When are the sata drivers installed? After xp is installed?

[johnny02004976]

no mate, you know when windows is installing i.e. the blue screen just after the mem test etc, u'll need the drivers then, otherwise windows wont be able to detect a HD

[Citizen K]

I assume you mean when installing xp and it says 'press F6 now to install..........'?

Now I'm a little worried. I bought a western digital sataII hard drive. This one:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=137

It was an oem and the package contains only the drive itself. No manual and definately no driver cd. I'm trying to look for a sata driver from western digitals site but cant find anything. Can someone please help? Or maybe the sata drivers come with the motherboard?

[Agent]

I assume you mean when installing xp and it says 'press F6 now to install..........'?

Now I'm a little worried. I bought a western digital sataII hard drive. This one:
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=137

It was an oem and the package contains only the drive itself. No manual and definately no driver cd. I'm trying to look for a sata driver from western digitals site but cant find anything. Can someone please help? Or maybe the sata drivers come with the motherboard?

They come with your motherboard
But if your using Windows XP with SP2 - im pretty sure it will find it without them

[Citizen K]

Ok thanks for all the help.

Looks like i'm all set to start this tomorow!

[XA04]

Be careful with the static too!

Good luck

[MantisCSS]

Touch a radiator or soemthing metal b4 u touch anything

[Golden Dragoon]

Touch a radiator or soemthing metal b4 u touch anything

Make sure it is bare metal, paint dosn't conduct electricity so toutch the pipes running to the radiator (make sure they are not hot), rather than the radiator itself

[pak000]

I've found that some SATA boards don't need drivers for windows install, not sure why that is though O_o

[Agent]

You guys are all scare mongers
Just touch the case, running to a radiator every few mins is a bit excessive