[myloginname]

LiveBrianD, on 14 March 2012 - 02:33 PM, said:

myloginname, on 14 March 2012 - 05:42 AM, said:

LiveBrianD, on 13 March 2012 - 05:40 PM, said:

Around here, HP and Samsung are easy to find, and not so much ASUS. My monitor's an Acer S231HL that I got on sale for $130 (normally ~ $160).

Say, do you know if asus monitors show a logo when you turn them on? If so, how long does the logo appear for? Sometime I'll get around to going to an electronics store that has asus monitors so I can take a look.

I'm extremely lucky to live in an area with two huge computer stores, plus Best Buy and Future Shop. I ordered either online with in-store pick up for free shipping, or I checked the stock online and bought it in-store. This computer store called Canada Computers is huge, the size of a supermarket, but they actually sell computer components unlike Best Buy and Future Shop, so it's really nice to live near it. It has like, everything stock, so if I see a good price, I can pretty much get everything in a day or two, no shipping costs, and I usually find it cheaper than newegg.com prices.

I'll ask my friend about it, I think he has an ASUS monitor, but the Acer logo appears for about a second (you probably know that). It is really ugly though, in my opinion.

My Acer takes 7 seconds from when I push the power button to it displaying my desktop, a few of which is due to the unnecessary logo show.

Really? My logo appears for around a half second, maybe one second, and then it will show the desktop. That's odd, why would it take your's so long to start up?

[LiveBrianD]

Start a stopwatch when you push the power button, and stop it when the desktop desktop appears. The Acer logo appears for 3 seconds here.

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 14 March 2012 - 06:26 PM

[myloginname]

Mine appears for about two seconds, and there is a black screen for a second. Then it goes right to the desktop.

EDIT Oh, just watched that video. I think i have a slightly different monitor from yours, mine is one with a funny looking stand. Acer S243HL bmii

This post has been edited by myloginname: 15 March 2012 - 09:22 AM

[Landrover]

Ok I got all the components listed except for the fact that I opted for a seasonic modular power supply instead. For 10$ I figured what the heck. I have most of the computer assembled the motherboard is installed along with all the other essential components. All that needs to be done now is to wire everything in. This is where I hit a bit of a snag, I got the Antec 300 series case and it has two case fans build in. I also purchased three other cooler master case fans to fill the extra fan ports. The problem is they are all three pin while the several connections on my mother board are four. I do have one three pin header on the motherboard but that's it. What do I need to do if I want to connect all five of the case fans to the power supply. The three cooler master fans came with some kind of molex connector that has both male and female ends on it along with a three pin fan plug. not sure what this is for. In the description it says that the fans comes with a three to four pin adapter. I assume that this connector is the adapter but I'm not quite sure how it hooks in. And it doesn't solve the problem with the two case fans that came with the case. If someone could give any suggestions it would be much appreciated.

[coastie65]

Landrover, on 18 March 2012 - 04:45 PM, said:

Ok I got all the components listed except for the fact that I opted for a seasonic modular power supply instead. For 10$ I figured what the heck. I have most of the computer assembled the motherboard is installed along with all the other essential components. All that needs to be done now is to wire everything in. This is where I hit a bit of a snag, I got the Antec 300 series case and it has two case fans build in. I also purchased three other cooler master case fans to fill the extra fan ports. The problem is they are all three pin while the several connections on my mother board are four. I do have one three pin header on the motherboard but that's it. What do I need to do if I want to connect all five of the case fans to the power supply. The three cooler master fans came with some kind of molex connector that has both male and female ends on it along with a three pin fan plug. not sure what this is for. In the description it says that the fans comes with a three to four pin adapter. I assume that this connector is the adapter but I'm not quite sure how it hooks in. And it doesn't solve the problem with the two case fans that came with the case. If someone could give any suggestions it would be much appreciated.

Hi, Use your fan headers on the motherboard first and if you don't have enough, then you can use the Molex adapters. It doesn't matter if the header is 4 pin and the fan three pin, it will work. Just make sure that the CPU fan is plugged into the 4 pin one marked CPU.

This post has been edited by coastie65: 18 March 2012 - 05:16 PM

[LiveBrianD]

Landrover, on 18 March 2012 - 04:45 PM, said:

Ok I got all the components listed except for the fact that I opted for a seasonic modular power supply instead. For 10$ I figured what the heck. I have most of the computer assembled the motherboard is installed along with all the other essential components. All that needs to be done now is to wire everything in. This is where I hit a bit of a snag, I got the Antec 300 series case and it has two case fans build in. I also purchased three other cooler master case fans to fill the extra fan ports. The problem is they are all three pin while the several connections on my mother board are four. I do have one three pin header on the motherboard but that's it. What do I need to do if I want to connect all five of the case fans to the power supply. The three cooler master fans came with some kind of molex connector that has both male and female ends on it along with a three pin fan plug. not sure what this is for. In the description it says that the fans comes with a three to four pin adapter. I assume that this connector is the adapter but I'm not quite sure how it hooks in. And it doesn't solve the problem with the two case fans that came with the case. If someone could give any suggestions it would be much appreciated.

I'm assuming you followed the list I came up with in post #4? Cool. I don't have a modular power supply in here, and haven't found the extra wires to be too much of an issue (this seasonic has quite a few though - for instance, it has 2 CPU 4/8-pin connectors, and the only reason you'd need that is for a server board - and who has one of those?). I put the rest in the area to the right of the hard drive bays (there are a few cable ties in there btw for that reason). I looked into modular ones at the time, but they were a bit too expensive in my opinion. (probably overpriced for what they are) I'm assuming you got the M12II. What I find is that, unless you have a side window, you don't really need to worry about a mess of wires as long as they don't obstruct airflow. Either way, good choice.

In my Antec 300, I set the top 140mm and rear 120mm fans to low, and there's the CPU fan (connected to the motherboard CPU_fan header), and I didn't add any others. That seems to work pretty well, temps and noise are fine. I think intake fans don't make a huge difference, and you'll probably hear them more than rear fans. Note that my CPU cooler, a cooler master TX3, is also pointing toward the back (probably a bit redundant, with the rear fan pointing that way too). You can plug a 3-pin fan into a 4-pin connector and vise versa. 4-pin fans can be controlled via PWM (signal) while 3-pin ones must be controlled via voltage. (you can control a 4-pin fan via voltage if you want though) If either the plug, fan, or both are 3-pin, you'll get voltage speed control. Note: beware - you can get a 3-pin to molex adapter for fans so that you can connect them to the power supply, but unless the fan has a temp sensor or speed selector, it'll run full blast all the time , making a ton more noise than necessary.

Your components probably create a similar amount of heat compared to mine (my gpu has a 116W TDP, yours is 108W, both of our CPUs are 95W...), so you're fine just setting the 2 included case fans to low and not using any others besides the cpu fan. If I were you, I'd return the extra case fans and maybe spend the money on an aftermarket cpu cooler instead (as I said, something like a cooler master tx3 or 212 allows you to do a bit of overclocking, and even if you don't, you'll still drastically cut fan noise when the cpu is under load), since in general it'll make more difference. Those extra fans will just give you a bunch more noise with little gain. Right now, my case is 25C (idle).

Fyi, don't bother with hard drive cooling - the outtake fans will force air in through the front grill, pulling the air over the hard drives. I have two drives in here (I left a bay or two inbetween them though), and typically one's at 30C (the wd black) and the other is at 25C (the samsung). See my sig for my PC's specs. Those temps are well within the safe range for hard drives. (typically you don't want them over 40-45C) I haven't yet seen what temps in the summer are like with this case (I got it a month or two ago), but in my old case, they were about 5C higher than in winter, still pretty good.

This post has been edited by LiveBrianD: 18 March 2012 - 07:16 PM

[Landrover]

Yes I did use the list you came up with and it helped a lot! Everything looks great and during my outside of case test boot everything worked! Again I can't thank you enough for putting that list together, it took a lot of the hard work out it for me. I did get the cooler master hyper 212 evo CPU cooler and got it hooked up. I feel much better with the bigger cooler. With the two case fans how do you have them powered up? Did you plug them into the motherboard? Or power supply?

Also on my motherboard there's a button that says MemOK! I looked it up in my motherboard manual and it says that it is used for reformatting ram. I looked on the compatible RAM list in the manual and the ram I got wasn't on there. Does that matter? Or will I need to use that button? But as I mentioned earlier I already did a test boot and everything seemed to work. So I really don't know on that matter if you have any suggestions, it would help.

BTW how goes the search for a monitor? like I said previously I went for an Asus and got a 24" because of your suggestion. I haven't gotten to the point where I put any kind of color screen on it yet but from what I've seen I like it. Also I feel reassured from the post that "myloginname" posted about Asus being good with colors. Can't wait to test that out!!

[LiveBrianD]

You plug the case fans (Antec Tri-Cools) into the power supply. As I said, set the little speed control thing that hangs from it to 'low', as that'll be good enough. Sometime I should write down all these builds I come up with, so that things are a bit easier the next time someone asks for suggestions. (I typically choose the same kinds of parts though - usually an asus or gigabyte motherboard, gskill ram, wd hard drive, antec case, intel sandy bridge CPU or AMD APU for budget, an ati 6770 or nvidia 550ti for midrange budget, something a bit higher otherwise, etc.)

Motherboard manufacturers can't test all the various models of ram out there, and the vast majority of the time, you won't have a problem. The RAM I recommended is pretty typical, just 1600MHz 9-9-9-24 stuff. It shouldn't pose a problem. I think MemOK is actually asus's trademark for the self destruct button gives you failsafe settings just in case your ram doesn't work by default. Since things are working, you don't need to use that button.

I recently got a chance to look at some asus monitors in store, and weren't too happy with the color settings on them (for gaming, it doesn't matter very much though). The normal preset had a slight blue tint, and the warm one had a slight red tint, and there was a bit of color shifting (the same color doesn't look consistent throughout the entire screen). Honestly, I'm more sensitive to those kinds of little things than most people are. Personally, I've decided that I'll probably get an hp 2511x (the color presets on that look pretty good, and it has nice contrast) and sell my acer. The HP is glossy though, so that might not be for everyone. Others seem to like ASUS though, so perhaps you will too.

[coastie65]

Wonder why you went with the H67 Chipset rather than Z68, which is much better over all, and some ASrock boards with that are reasonably priced. The Z68 combines both the P67 & H67 chipsets.

This post has been edited by coastie65: 20 March 2012 - 03:32 PM

[Landrover]

Okay I got the fans hooked up and everything wired in. But now when I go to boot it up, I don't get any video signal. Everything powers up, all the fans run, the green motherboard power light comes on and the red diagnostic light turns off after start up. But no matter how much I try I can't get the any video signal. The weird thing is that when I did the test boot outside the case everything worked and I got video input. But now I'm not so lucky. Also the case buttons aren't working either. I wired them up to the right points (Made sure I checked the motherboard manual) but still nothing. I reconnected them several times but still no luck. Please if anyone has any suggestions it would be much appreciated. I am at a loss as too what too do.

[coastie65]

Landrover, on 20 March 2012 - 11:49 AM, said:

Okay I got the fans hooked up and everything wired in. But now when I go to boot it up, I don't get any video signal. Everything powers up, all the fans run, the green motherboard power light comes on and the red diagnostic light turns off after start up. But no matter how much I try I can't get the any video signal. The weird thing is that when I did the test boot outside the case everything worked and I got video input. But now I'm not so lucky. Also the case buttons aren't working either. I wired them up to the right points (Made sure I checked the motherboard manual) but still nothing. I reconnected them several times but still no luck. Please if anyone has any suggestions it would be much appreciated. I am at a loss as too what too do.

Have you got all of the standoffs in ? I am assuming you are using integrated graphics. Make sure the cables are tight at the ports.

This post has been edited by coastie65: 20 March 2012 - 03:38 PM

[LiveBrianD]

Yep, I would also check the standoffs.

[Deploythelight]

Is the $800 including the monitor, keyboard and mouse too?

[LiveBrianD]

No, just the PC and OS. I think a basic keyboard and mouse costs about $15 on amazon (I saw a deal on basic wired logitech ones there before for that price), and a 1080p monitor will probably cost around $160 and up.

[Covadavi]

If you don't have any specific requirement, just get a "ready made" one for colleague and you should be fine. but you will need to take a good look of the spec before buying one.

[Landrover]

Alright now I got the entire computer together and everything works, even got the operating system installed . Now comes the internet connection. I got a modem/router combo for the new machine seeing as though its down the stairs and across the house from the other desktop. Luckily I have an old phone jack in my room and I tested it to see if it worked and it does. But when I went to set up the new modem, I couldn't get it to recognize the connection to the computer. I did get the motherboard chipset drivers and LAN drivers installed. I was waiting on the other drivers until I got the internet. Also when I hooked up the DSL cable and turned the modem on, the computer upstairs lost its DSL connection, I couldn't get it back until I turned off the new modem. So I'm at a bid of a loss as to what to do next. Did I need to install other drivers to get the new PC to recognize it? Or perhaps its something else? I really don't know. Any suggestions on this matter would be much appreciated.

[LiveBrianD]

First off, you should only have one modem connected at once, it sounds like you have two. Set up one modem, with a router plugged into it. Then, connect your new upstairs computer to it via ethernet (that's best, but may not be convenient), wifi (if you have a card or USB adapter for this), or powerplug (I haven't tested these, but others around here have and find them to work well).