I've been in denial. A month or so ago I came home and smelled a terrible, burnt electronics smell in my office. I have avoided dealing with it until yesterday, when someone asked me for some files that are on the drives in the dead machine.

So yesterday I opened up the case, and as expected, found some serious scorched circuitry in the power supply. Just so you know, a 250 watt power supply isn't enough for a machine with three hard drives. So I went to Frys and bought a new, 350 watt power supply. Unfortunately, after installation, the computer still wouldn't start up. That means that it's a pretty sure bet that the motherboard and who knows what else are cooked. And I need to buy a new computer.

What you see in the photo is what I bought today. I'll be building the machine myself - for the first time. I bought a nice, no-tools-required case, with lots of ventilation and front USB and FireWire ports. It's an Asus motherboard with 4 memory slots, a 3 GHz Pentium 4 processor, a 512 ram stick, and a sweet, double-fanned, 430 watt power supply. I'm hoping this machine will be a solid platform for the next 2-3 years. I'll be moving over an old video card and two of my old hard drives.

I'll keep you guys posted as I build it. This is going to be an interesting and educational experience. I wouldn't have tried to build my own computer a couple of years ago. But I know a lot more now and everything is plu-and-play. So I don't think it's going to be a big deal. Cross your fingers for me.

"So I don't think it's going to be a big deal"

Oh, now you just went and jinxed yourself....way to go!

I'm sure you'll get it up and running soon enough :)

PJ,

Be careful mounting the processor onto the motherboard and putting the cooling fan/heat sink over the top of it. The processor is easily cracked. Take the motherboard and processor to the store you bought it from and get them to install the processor for you. They shouldn't charge you for anything concerning this. Just say you feel more comfortable with them mounting the processor. That way if something goes a miss, they can replace it without charge as well.

Even with my extensive building experience I get this done by the places I purchase from.

It really isn't that hard to put a machine together, certainly much better than it was a few years ago. Just make sure you get the wires in the right connections and you seat the cards correctly and firmly on the motherboard.

Don't forget to put the plastic feet stands on the motherboard to correspond with the most amount of locking slots on the case.

Ddon't forget that it usually requires 2 screws to hold the motherboard down and don't over tighten them. They usually need a couple of brass lug nuts under the motherboard between the motherboard and where it connects to the case.

Another good idea is to have drive fans that sit under the drives and cools them down as well.

A lot of people these days have up to three exhausting fans in their cases as well, especially when doing heavy processing such as video rendering etc.

It is fun building machines from scratch.

Thanks for the advice, Peter. I thought of you when I was posting this. I wouldn't have thought of having the dealer mount the processor for me. Is the Pentium 4 more complicated than a Pentium 3? I took the Pentium 3 processor apart on the broken machine and it didn't seem like a problem. And, uhhh, that was before the machine died ;)

Yes, they have huge fans, at least the ones I use do. The mounting of the retaining clip can be a bit hard to get it to lock correctly. They should do it for you without any problems, as I said, I get them to do it here, for safety reasons. Also you need to make sure you line up pin 1 of the chip with the correct pin 1 seat of the motherboard as well. The pins are quite fragile.

I don't have any income anymore, so getting anything in future will be non existant for me.

Damaging things aren't covered under warranty, hence why I get it done at the suppliers.

Looks like an interesting machine you will be setting up.

Be careful with the current drives as they might have been the cause of the frying, although I would hassard a guess to say you more than likely coped a power surge that took the machine out, maybe. Do you have contents insurance you might be able to make a claim for getting it replaced ????

A good thing to get is a good UPS as well for the computer, I have an APC Backups RS 800 that I got for the price of a 300, but that is another story, and has worked well, after returning 4 other different models. They kept upgarding mine to get it right, no charge.

John,

Don't trust Fry's with doing anything to your computer. I understand the reason behind Peter's advice, but he's obviously never gone to a Fry's electronics store in the states :) They'd beat the living crapola out of anything they touched and probably zap it with ESD when they set their styrofoam McDonalds cups next to the processor. I'm sure they'd bend half the pins while they tried to align the processer in the slot incorrectly.

Fry's has fair prices on many items, good local selection, and nothing else.

Trevor, I didn't buy the stuff at Fry's. I only bought the power supply in my original salvage attempt at Fry's. It was returned when I discovered that the board was cooked. Then I visited Central Computer, in San Jose, and bought everything from them. They are very helpful and they've been around for 20 years or something. They do a lot of corporate builds and really know what they're doing. And I did take Peter's advice. I took the board and processor in this morning and had their tech mount it for me. They didn't charge me anything and he let me watch. It looked like actually mounting the processor was easy. It was attaching the fan that was tricky. Anyway, it's done now and I can go home tonight and geek out :D

I'll be interested to see how it goes. I used to be afraid to open the case but when my hard drive crashed a few months ago I was able to replace it and re-install all software without much trouble (thanks again to some help from Lara :D). This might be the route I go next time but hopefully I'm set for a little while...

Seems like a lot of towers (at least Dell's) have fairly small power supplies - and then you start looking at other stuff and it starts to make a lot of sense. Good luck!

John,

Now you know why I suggested taking it there for them to mount it for you. Although it looks easy, if you get it wrong, by that I mean not get pin 1 to seat in pin 1 slot, you can bend something. If you got a chance to see the pin placement, you should have noticed there is a notch alignment for the processor. It was the actual attaching of the fan that is the most difficult to get done without causing a headache, which was my main concern. Point being, these are delicate things and doesn't take much to crack them if not done correctly. I usually use a small socket type screwdriver to sit over the attachment to help lever it into place properly.

Still you have seen it now, and glad you took my advice about it. Would have hated you spending the time to get it all setup and discover it didn't work properly or at all.

Hope it is up and running soon so you can report how it all went.

PS, did you see the posting I made in the moderators forum by any chance ?

John,

Don't trust Fry's with doing anything to your computer. I understand the reason behind Peter's advice, but he's obviously never gone to a Fry's electronics store in the states :) They'd beat the living crapola out of anything they touched and probably zap it with ESD when they set their styrofoam McDonalds cups next to the processor. I'm sure they'd bend half the pins while they tried to align the processer in the slot incorrectly.

Fry's has fair prices on many items, good local selection, and nothing else.
Trevor,

As I don't live in the USA, and have never been there, then it is obvious that I would never have visited there.

I remember when I was a computer tech at a 1000 seat call center, we used to swap out processors all the time, leave 'em laying around, throw them in drawers. Same with hard drives and motherboards. All that stuff is actually surprisingly resilient. Of course, I wouldn't handle my personal equipment like that. But when you've got a pile of machines waiting to be fixed, you don't really have time to handle stuff with kid gloves...I actually think we had more problems with mice crapping out than with components going haywire, even after being tossed in drawers. :D

Are you saying you had mice crapping all over in the drawers where you tossed the processors? That doesn't sound good ;)

Are you saying you had mice crapping all over in the drawers where you tossed the processors? That doesn't sound good ;)
Heh, John. You such a comedian. :D

Trevor,

As I don't live in the USA, and have never been there, then it is obvious that I would never have visited there.

That wasn't supposed to be personal peter.

I followed Peter's advice and had the dealer (Central Computer) mount the processor and fan for me. I'm glad I did. A mistake might have cost me a couple hundred doll hairs. That wouldn't have made me happy.

This morning a put the RAM and the floppy and drive cables on the board and put the board in the case. It was a little tricky getting the board positioned correctly, but no big deal, really. I'm just being extra careful, since I've never done this before. Tonight I'll see about getting the drives and power supply installed.

This is a good experience. It's like learning to work on your own car. It's empowering.

Nice case John, that has a heap of drive bays there.

Next step is getting the connectors on the right pins. If you look at the motherboard book and follow the directions, the grean and white connectors are usually the power connectors.

I like the fan connectors above the CPU, sometimes you just get tie down clips and they are the ones that can be difficult to connect up.

Not seeing what you had, out of box, was a bit complicated to guess.

Are you putting SATA drives in your machine.

Ummm, what's an SATA drive? I bought one new 80 gig drive, so I can start fresh. Then, after I get it up and running, I'm going to put two of my old drives in.

SATA are the newest drives, with smaller cable connections, not the normal ribbon cable connections work a lot faster with data transfers.

I think looking at the cables of the box, there might be a black cable there towards the middle bottom of the box, it is hard to tell.

The Drive should say SATA on it, but I would have thought you would have gotten a much bigger drive than that, 80G is so 3 years ago now, 200G drives are pretty much the big boys toys of today.

But then you have move info to loose don't you with bigger drives.

Last night I decided to buy a new CD-RW drive, since they're cheap. I visited Central Computer this morning and found that they had a DVD-RW/CD-RW drive on sale for $79.95. So now my new machine will be able to burn DVDs and CDs. Sweet!

Good decision John.

Hi PJ:
That looks like a Prescott P4 you've got there. (P4 3.0e right?). Those puppies run really hot, and the fan that Intel ships with the retail chips is barely adequate, and noisy to boot. I'd invest in an aftermarket cpu heatsink and cooler. Gigabyte, Thermaltake, etc., all make fan/heatsink combos that work markedly better than the stock Intel fan/heatsink, and are noticeably quieter as well. Just for fun here's my rig. I just recently overhauled my entire system.
P4 3.2e on an ASUS mobo (OC'd to 3.6 GHz, but still runs a cool 41 degrees Celsius idling, 48-50 Celsius under heavy load)(for comparison, 48 Celsius at 3.2 GHz, 53 Celsius OverClocked when idling with stock fan/heatsink, 65-70 Celsius under heavy load)
video card-Nvidia GeForce 6800 GT w/256 MB DDR ram
4 gigabytes memory in dual channel mode (Corsair XMS pc3200 matched pairs-the ones with the LED's-these are the main limiting factors for my OC'd rig, I'd get faster RAM but I wanted the twinxpro series with the LED's and pc3200 is the fastest corsair has in matched 2x1GB pairs)
2x 250 GB hard drives
2x NEC 16xDVD-R/+R,4x DVD-RW/+RW,4x DVD-DL, 48x CD-R optical drives ($62 at newegg.com)
500 watt PS with 2 LED fans
Aspire case with 5 LED fans, Gigabyte LED cpu fan/heatsink
here's a pic
most parts except RAM and video card purchased at Newegg.com

Finally you have decided to upgrade from your Atari 2600.

I want to suggest that you not put in your old hard drives. Use the 80 gig drive you purchased as your main system drive and invest in a couple of identical big boy hard drives. Your new mother board has built in RAID and you can mirror the two big boys. Your data will be much more secure this way and you will be able to sleep better knowing that your data is mirrored.

Congrats on the new system. Its going to SCREAM...

One question...why a floppy drive? ;-P

Also, the only problem I had with my build using this mother board was with sound. There was a jumber that needed to be set that took some time to find but other then that it was very simple.
- Burns

You got the same board? I've alwasy bought Asus, when I was choosing my own parts. I have a lot of confidence in them. What's the deal with the sound jumper? The case has built-in sound on the front and I plugged those cables in, last night. I'm not aware of any sound-related jumpers. Can you tell me more?

Part of the reason I went with this board and not a sweet kit I found on Tiger Direct, was I thought I could use the old AGP card you gave me. Not so, I discovered this morning. That card is a different AGP than the board. Doesn't make sense to me. But I bought a new, ATI 128 MB 8x AGP card this morning, for $61. This machine is getting scary for me. This is wayyyyyy more power than I'm used to.

Your suggestion about the drive is a good one. I know the system supports RAID and I was thinking about it. It's easy enough to copy the data from the old drives. And the 80 Gig was cheap.

Think I'm gonna have to pass on LED fans, though :p

John, the Video Card, might have been a 4x AGP card hence why it won't work on the new motherboard.

Have a look in the manual about the sound, it should have a diagram in there showing the jumper settings.

You got the same board?. This machine is getting scary for me. This is wayyyyyy more power than I'm used to.

:p

Speed/power you'll get used to real quick. A week from now you'll be thinking your PC seems too slow. :D

Speed/power you'll get used to real quick. A week from now you'll be thinking your PC seems too slow. :D

I'm sure. Then I'll hate my office machine. If this goes well I'm planning to build another machine for the office and do a step-by-step stor on building a computer.

Thanks for the CPU fan suggestion. I'm going to look into that. I'm no expert in this area and I'm open to all kinds of advice.

One thing I forgot to buy is a built-in card reader. I'm going to order one and put it in, though. That's a basic component for any imaging machine.

Congrats John! I just ordered some goodies myself - 2 200GB SATA drives, a RAID card and an NEC Dual Layer DVD burner.

Have fun!

Danielle

It's all built! But it doesn't work. Is anyone surprised? I'm not. I knew I'd run into problems.

So here's the deal. It starts up, all the fans work, the led on the motherboard comes on, but I have no video. I've reseated the video card a few times but it doesn't change anything. I checked the video card manual and it only has instructions for installing it in a finished, Windows machine. I think there's a hole in my process. I've looked at a bunch of how-tos and followed all my manuals. But I don't know what's up with the video card and I don't know how to install Windows.

Anyone got some advice?

One question...why a floppy drive? ;-P

I have heard this questions so many times!

Floppies are still the very best way to transfer small files between computers. Do I really want to waste a CD (plus the time to create it) on a 30K file? Do I have the money to spend on short-lifetime USB keys? Do the computers I use even accept the keys? I was forced to buy an external USB FD for my new laptop just so I could get my work done.

A few people live in a "100% current high-tech world." Most of us live with a large mix of old and new machines while working with limited budgets. A floppy works great for them all.

Whew... that felt good!

It's all built! But it doesn't work. Is anyone surprised? I'm not. I knew I'd run into problems.

So here's the deal. It starts up, all the fans work, the led on the motherboard comes on, but I have no video. I've reseated the video card a few times but it doesn't change anything. I checked the video card manual and it only has instructions for installing it in a finished, Windows machine. I think there's a hole in my process. I've looked at a bunch of how-tos and followed all my manuals. But I don't know what's up with the video card and I don't know how to install Windows.

Anyone got some advice?

John,

Is the computer monitor in the "ON" or "OFF" mode? I think it needs to be set to "ON".

Seriously, get your Specrum Analyzer out and measure the RF CW signal at pin 34 on the U454 timing modulator. You should see a 400MHz waveform with a bandwidth of about 1MHz and amplitude of about 10dB. The noise floor should be lower than -50dB so check that and any harmonics that aren't at least 10dB less than the carrier. Once verified, grab your CDMA demodulator and verify that the ....

:)

Seriously (this time I mean it), without having looked at anything specific to your equipment I'd probably do the following. And it should go without saying that you need to make sure the obvious has already been done (that the monitor is plugged in and known to work in its current state).

1. Is there a fan on the video card? If so, does it spin when the computer is turned on?
2. Do you hear any beeps or sounds coming from the motherboard or speakers (assuming speakers are plugged in).
3. Does the motherboard come with any built in video cards? If so, are the jumpers (or bios settings) properly setup?

Read the instruction manual that came with your BIOS and look for clues concerning video cards. Usually the manual gives screenshots of what you see in the BIOS and menu items. Look for things that have to do with AGP like disabling it, etc.

When the folks installed the CPU for you did they ever have it connected up in such a way as to go into the BIOS and adjust any settings? In other words, did that have the video working there? If they just installed the CPU and never actually turned the thing on then one thing I'd try real quick is resetting the BIOS.....this usually means removing the battery and temporarily setting a jumper somewhere although the manual will instruct you how to reset the BIOS.

You can also try removing all of the devices from your system that aren't needed for it to boot into the bios including CD-ROM's, hard drives, floppy's, raid cards, etc. All you need is video, motherboard, power supply, monitor. You can even try removing any keyboards and mice. Remember, your goal is to see something in the video so you know whether the viedo card is working at all.

If all of this fails, it's possible something is wrong with the video card (probably not but possible) so I'd look for another card to throw in there and see if that makes a diffrence or not.

I suspect there may be some conflicts with hard drives settings, mb jumpers, etc. But these days most motherboards start beeping and hollering at you telling you there are problems.

Speaking ohf which, my current motherbaord goes as far as to send a human voice through the speakers that sounds a lot like in car's "Right door is open"....lol :)

I haven't tried taking out the drives. That's next. I did check all connections and just tried another video card and another monitor. I used my old Matrox Millenium II video card, ca. 1996. It popped. So that wasn't a very useful exercise. I bought the new card, a Kaser AT!-9200 SE, at Frys. You never can tell if something you bought at Frys has already been opened. There's no manual in the box, only a CD. And the CD has no read me file or other documentation. The Kaser site has no real support or information, either.

I guess a useful question is - should I be able to get video when I first start up the computer, with any video card? All video card documentation I can find says a CD is needed to install a card. If so, how do you get video, in order to install Windows, in order to install a card? Get it? Looks like a catch 22. If it should just work, fine. But I can't tell if that's the case.

Thanks for your help. I'm starting to get a little frustrated. The next step is to remove all the drives and try again.

I haven't tried taking out the drives. That's next. I did check all connections and just tried another video card and another monitor. I used my old Matrox Millenium II video card, ca. 1996. It popped. So that wasn't a very useful exercise. I bought the new card, a Kaser AT!-9200 SE, at Frys. You never can tell if something you bought at Frys has already been opened. There's no manual in the box, only a CD. And the CD has no read me file or other documentation. The Kaser site has no real support or information, either.

I guess a useful question is - should I be able to get video when I first start up the computer, with any video card? All video card documentation I can find says a CD is needed to install a card. If so, how do you get video, in order to install Windows, in order to install a card? Get it? Looks like a catch 22. If it should just work, fine. But I can't tell if that's the case.

Thanks for your help. I'm starting to get a little frustrated. The next step is to remove all the drives and try again.

You're correct about your assumptions and the catch 22. If the hardware in the system is functioning properly, and the bios is configured properly, then you should always see video with any video card shortly after turning on the computer.

I'm beginning to suspect your new video card. I didn't understand what you meant when you said the matrox card "popped". Do you mean it blew up on you? (with a little smoke and what not?). That surely isn't a good thing.

I'm concerned that your video card was returned. I don't know anything about the brand you mentioned, but it's custom behavior to have at least some printed material instructing a person how to physically install the card.

I've got a few minutes to kill while I wait for my laundry to dry....I'll search the internet for a bit and if I find something I'll update this thread.....if you don't see anything from me today then it means I haven't found anything valuable.

Try not to stress yourself out too much. Chances are, you did everything right and something out of your control is at fault. It happens.

Oh, also remove the ram you installed when you're troubleshooting this problem. Once you get video working you can reinsert them. Just be aware of any beeps you hear and refer to the manual if you do.

It's "possible" that the bios will warn you if you have no ram installed but it completely depends on how they wrote the bios software so I really don't know.

Thanks for taking the time to help with this, Trevor. I'm keeping my expectations low and being patient, since I've never done this before.

About the Matrox card - yes, it blew up. It's really old, so I'm not really worried about it. This is the third or fourth machine I put it in. I figure it was ready to go. I smelled it and found the burnt spot so I'm about 99% sure everything else is ok. I put the other card back i and tried another monitor and there was no more smoke smell. The other monitor didn't work, either.

I'm not getting any sound at all from the computer. dollop said he had some trouble with the sound with the same board. I've checked all the jumper settings and couldn't find anything related to sound or video.

I don't want to have to go back to Frys. That's my last resort. I think they're pretty good about repackaging things, when they do it.

I'm going to go for a bike ride. It's been a few weeks since I've had a chance. Managing my fitness, health, and stress is my top priority today.

Thanks again :)

John,

Have you got the RAM sitting in the correct 0 slot, they are usually, Slots 0,1,2,3 in that order and you need to place them in that order.

Remember the little wire connections I mentioned about that were in the picture on the bottom, the coloured ones, White, Red, Green and White, Black and Red etc. You need to ensure they are correctly place on the pins at the bottom of the motherboard, behind what looks like the floppy disk control cable, not sure as it is covering the motherboard towards the bottom.

Check the jumpers on the Motherboard are all sitting in the correct spot.

If you have an old ISA monitor card, put that in one of the ISA slots and see if you can get it to boot to CMOS. Often one of the reasons a motherboard won't boot properly, they have incorrect settings on the BIOS and that can stop the motherboard from booting up. Just in case this is the problem, if you use the jumper that you can short out the CMOS with, remove the battery, leave it out for 10 mins and then put it back in, change the jumper and try again.

Also, if you have the cable incorrectly connected on the Floppy drive, in other words, not pin 1 to pin 1, and the same with hard drives, that can cause the motherboard not to boot up as well.

Remember on the cables one of the pin lines has another colour on it, like if it was red, it would have one that is black. With Black, I think it would likely have one that is blue or white, looking at the cables I can see on the motherboard, it looks likely to be correct, so check that they are correctly connected to the floppy and hard drive.

Bottom line, also the cpu could be an issue as well, so don't count that out as well.

I will try and see if I can find info on the motherboard in the mean time as well.

If in doubt, take the connections off, just connect the power, with the power switch cables connected, usually the white and green ones, and the little speaker connection, which is usually 5 pin connections with black and red on either end, and turn the computer on, it should boot, as you saw with the LED, and give you some sounds which if you count actually tell you some info in the troublshooting of the book if you got one.

I am suspicious about the card blowing, that to me isn't a good sign as well, usually happens from incorrectly connecting to the motherboard.

Keep at it.

After not being able to vet any video, I had to come up with a new plan. Thanks to Trevor and Peter for their suggestions.

The next thing I did was remove all the drives, SCSI card, and memory, and try again. I still didn't get any video, but I did get a BIOS beep signal. It told me that the bios was having trouble with the video card :p

Like I didn't know that.

But that told me that the motherboard and processor were probably working correctly. And that's valuable information.

At that point I decided I should probably return the video card.

I did a little more online research and looked through the manuals some more and decided I should probably check the whole thing more carefully before returning the card. So I started from scratch and rebuilt the whole machine. And guess what? This time it worked. On startup, I got video and the BIOS loaded. I'm not sure exactly what I did differently this time. The only obvious thing is I added one more standoff screw, right in the middle of the motherboard, that I missed before. In any case, it worked. And that's what's important.

Next step, loading Windows.

Although that might have been the problem (I don't think likely), what I think is, you had something around the wrong way, not seated correctly, cable on backwards.

I am glad that you have been able to get it up and running, it can be frustrating can't in John.

I am glad that you have been able to get it up and running, it can be frustrating can't in John.

Since I've never done this before and don't know what I'm doing, I tried to have minimal expectations, no timeline, and remain patient. I did pretty good. I never got angry or really frustrated. And more importantly, I don't think I broke anything :D

All-in-all, I think it's been a successful operation - so far...

Although that might have been the problem (I don't think likely), what I think is, you had something around the wrong way, not seated correctly, cable on backwards.

I am glad that you have been able to get it up and running, it can be frustrating can't in John.

I'm in agreement with Peter here. And I'm very glad that you were able to get things moving forward!