Building a new computer, Part 2

So, the rest of the parts came today. Err, yesterday... as I write this it is indeed Saturday. As I started photographing all of the parts for this blog, I realized that somehow the video card I had picked out disappeared! It wasn't in the shipment of parts, it wasn't on the order confirmation, it even disappeared from the wish list I put together. So, I've got all the working parts I need, sans video card. A quick trip to Best Buy remedied that, and I picked up some CPU thermal paste while I was there. I spent a couple hours delicately placing the parts into the insides of the case. I must say, this is the nicest case I have had to work with. Thumb screws. rack slides for the optical drives, removable hard drive rack, 3 fans built into the case (Two 120mm and one 80mm on the side), glossy black finish on a air-light aluminum case. Yep, it's purty. Plus its got nice blue glowy lights all over it. The PSU I ordered matches the case, it has a blue LED inside it and the housing is glossy as well, more of a dark grey. The optical drives and floppy drive as well (gotta update the BIOS and load the SATA driver somehow...).



As I write this, the 500GB SATA2 RAID Ø array is formatting, at 50%. It took some doing to get windows to see the array for what it was. I blame Microsoft for shoddy programming. Did you know that windowsXP, pre SP1 or SP2 couldn't see large hard drives for what they were? Anything larger than 130 GB got truncated. Bad, bad microsoft. So I had to slipstream an install CD, load it up with SP2, SATA drivers, unattended install, and WM player 10, and it is formatting right now. I idly pass the time by writing this blog. Whoopie.

I used to be a night person. 3 AM bedtime was a norm for me. I guess when you gotta wake up at 5:30AM for your job, your sleeping habits change.

Another slight hitch was updating the BIOS. I origionally loaded the updated BIOS along with the SATA RAID drivers on the same floppy. For whatever reason, the BIOS update utility was not seeing the BIOS file, maybe too many other files for it to parse. I copied the BIOS onto another disk along with a backup to the BIOS and it decided to see it and update finally, so I am up to F4 on this board, and the dual core processor is recognized. The hardware is connected, the HDDs are formatting, and soon the OS will be loaded and we have a functional computer. My job will nowhere be complete however, arguably the longest stage is ahead of me: software updates and installs. Gotta bring windows up to date, drivers up to date, apps and games to install.


This picture was taken with the flash off to show how nice the blue LEDs play off the inside of this case. Looks actually took a back seat to horsepower in this bad boy, and yet they turned out rather nice. I think my brother's friend should actually consider naming this computer Tsunami... as the case is called that, and it has the name printed on the front of the case. That would actually make for a pretty cool naming scheme... Tsunami, Earthquake, Volcano... naming your network PCs after natural disasters that is. Check Exit Mundi for more natural disasters and end of the world scenarios.

My brain is beginning to shut down, I am rambling. 70% on the format and no end in site. I've never formatted something as big as 500GB before... glad I went with 500 instead of 600. I am a little worried that the drives are not SATA2... there was no mention of the specification on the drives themselves, and they are OEM so no boxes. Well, NewEgg has them listed as SATA2, and if they are not I will have to take that up with them. Lets post this blog and see how it looks, shall we?