Author Topic: Building my first pc...part 2 (Read 807 times)

Ozark · « **on:** March 23, 2001, 01:25:00 AM »

OK folks...the parts are in (just a frog hair over budget too):

A7V KT133a MOBO
AMD Thunderbird 1 GHz
ATI Radeon 64MB DDR
Acer CD-ROM 52x
Micron 256MB SDRAM..PC133..CL=2
IBM 75GXP HD 30G
Sound Blaster Live
Antec SX830 Workstation Tower
Supra external modem
Alpha PAL 6035 (II) heat sink

Thank you for the advice...now time to get to work. Standby for questions.

Ozark

[This message has been edited by Ozark (edited 03-23-2001).]

Animal · « **Reply #1 on:** March 23, 2001, 02:31:00 AM »

very, very nice choices.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #2 on:** March 23, 2001, 08:36:00 AM »

Looks very nice Ozark. Take your time putting it together.

Be sure to get familiar with the PCI interrupt layout of the slots. Make a list of the PCI slots that do not share interrupts and the ones that do.
This will go a long way to having fun and not getting frustrated.

------------------
Roy "Skuzzy" Neese
President, AppLink Corp.
http://www.applink.net
skuzzy@applink.net

Staga · « **Reply #3 on:** March 23, 2001, 09:31:00 AM »

Looks like this site could have some good reading: http://www.epanorama.net/pc/general.html

[This message has been edited by Staga (edited 03-23-2001).]

AcId · « **Reply #4 on:** March 23, 2001, 09:32:00 AM »

Skuzzy made a good point, and to keep you from getting a potential headache, the SBLive will play much nicer in a slot that is NOT shared. Good luck!

Skuzzy · « **Reply #5 on:** March 23, 2001, 11:19:00 AM »

Heck,..make sure nothing is sharing an interrupt. This results in the best performance you can get and will usually give the most stability in your system.

------------------
Roy "Skuzzy" Neese
President, AppLink Corp.
http://www.applink.net
skuzzy@applink.net

Raubvogel · « **Reply #6 on:** March 23, 2001, 11:53:00 AM »

If you install the Via 4 in 1 driver set, it should take care of the IRQs for you. As far as PCI placement, I just recommend leaving a slot between each one if you can. I have almost the same system, with the exception of a geforce in place of your Radeon. My system temp can get kind of high sometimes. I spaced my PCI cards out, and installed 2 slot fans. One in between vid card and soundcard, another between soundcard and ethernet card. They work very well, sucking most of the heat from the cards out the back before it can rise to the CPU.

Ozark · « **Reply #7 on:** March 23, 2001, 02:18:00 PM »

Here is what I got right now. You can't see it however, I have a 80mm fan blowing on the DeskStar HD. I haven't fired it up yet.

I'm still reading about the BIOS setup right now and triple checking all the connections. I was think about getting the system stable and then install the PCI SB Live card.

Kratzer · « **Reply #8 on:** March 23, 2001, 03:14:00 PM »

It looks like there is a big hole in the side of it... I'd say fire the technician...

<g>

Let us know how that video card treats you.

bloom25 · « **Reply #9 on:** March 23, 2001, 04:45:00 PM »

Sound cards should go in PCI slot 3 on the a7v and a7v133 boards. You should also go into the bios and reserve IRQ 5 for a legacy device. (This is for the SB Emulation in DOS and gameport to work properly.) Just go to www.asus.com and find their MB column for the month of September. It will tell you how to do it.

Your choices look VERY good. Make sure you do the things I posted on my optimum performance guide a couple days ago. They apply 100% to that board.

1. Go in bios and set ram to pc133 instead of pc100.

2. Change typical role to network server.

3. Make sure to enable Ultra Dma/Ultra ATA.

Have fun!

------------------
bloom25
(Formerly of the)
THUNDERBIRDS

bloom25 · « **Reply #10 on:** March 23, 2001, 05:40:00 PM »

Here's the text from the ASUS column:

Question:
If I was to install Creative sound cards (e.g. Creative PCI 128, SB Live! Player 1024, SB Live Platinum) on A7V M/Bs, I will receive IRQ conflicts with the sound card after I load the sound card driver. What should I do?

Answer:
The Creative sound card requires two IRQs; one is for SB16 Emulation (ISA IRQ) and the other is for the sound card itself (PCI IRQ). An IRQ for legacy device should be used for DOS emulation. Since A7V M/B does not have ISA slots, the BIOS assigns all IRQs to PCI. Therefore, you need to change the BIOS setting in order to assign an ISA IRQ to the card. Please set "IRQ5 Reserved for legacy device" to "Yes" under Advanced -> PCI configuration -> PCI/PNP IRQ Resource Exclusion in BIOS.

Other than this minor issue, which would effect all MBs without an ISA bus, setup should be very easy. Just be sure you install the VIA 4-in-1 drivers (get the latest official version from www.viahardware.com) right after you get windows installed. After that you can install DX7a, VId card drivers, etc.

I'd also recommend not installing the soundcard until everything else is installed. Those SB Live! cards can be a real pain to get installed.

------------------
bloom25
(Formerly of the)
THUNDERBIRDS

Ozark · « **Reply #11 on:** March 23, 2001, 05:49:00 PM »

Great info...Thank you!

Guess I'll fire it up on Monday.

This weekend I toss newbie firefighters into a fire.