Building a computer for a friend

[theburan]

So, I was working on building a computer for a friend last night, and it's mostly going pretty good so far.

Intel c2d e8400
evga 680i
4x1 Mushkin ram (hp2 series, I think, don't remember off the top of my head, has the blue heatsinks though, not the silver)
Samsung 500gb hd
xfx 8800gts 512mb
Razer Barricuda sound card
Tuniq Tower Heatsink
Xclio Windtunnel (the nicer one, with the 200mm fan on top)
Corsair 750tx

Went together pretty well, I had to pull my e6300 out and put it in to flash his bios (which went really well except for me stepping on the surge protector halfway through the flash... killing it. Wound up having to yank my floppy drive out of my computer so that we could flash it the right way.... )

Got that flashed, and then started throwing everything together. Put the e8400 in, put some ic7 on, put the tuniq tower on, and then I realized that the way I put it on would have the fan blowing backwards. So, I spun the fan around, put it all together, threw in the ram, and put the mobo in the case. At this point I didnt realize that the wire that runs from the tuniq tower to it's rheostat had gotten stuck under the mobo... that would be fun to deal with later.... wound up having to unscrew the mobo part way later to get it out.

But after that, we got to put the dvd drive and the hard drive in... and well, the tooless doohicky for the dvd drive took quite a while to put in. We just couldn't get it to go in all the way... until after 5 tries and 30 minutes I realized I could move the clip thing up a bit, and then it went in fine. Hard drive went in much, much easier.

Power supply went in nicely, spent some time wireing it up, pulling the wire out from behind the mobo, and then finding out the tooless expansion slot thing wasn't going to work with his soundcard (you couldn't close it all the way, it was hitting the pcb on the card).

So finally, we got it all together, only to have really loud clicks coming from the 2 250mm fans. Wound up swapping the sata cable we were using with a right angled cable, so it wouldn't hit the fan anymore, and spending 10 minutes figuring out what was hitting the other one (turned out to be an led that got bent inwards).

So, now, it's all put together, the correct ram timings have been put in the bios, everything is going nice, go to install windows, and we get blue screens. Tried using a sata driver for the chipset when we install, same thing. Only about 20 minutes ago did I realize that I shouldn't be installing vista with 4 gigs of ram installed... if I had been awake enough last night I probably would have remember that there are problems with that, lol. So I'm having my friend pull half the ram and reinstall, should be all set after that. (memtest ran all night with 0 errors, which is comforting.)

I'll try and get some pics, but I wouldn't get too much hope up....

EDIT: Yeah, it was the 4 gigs of ram bsoding the install. Installed nice and easy after pulling 2 sticks out. Lol. (that's what he gets for not keeping mountain dew handy... seriously, you have someone come over to build a computer at night, but don't have any caffine handy? Yeah.)

[Carl Martin]

This is a good reminder of why computer work should never be done in proximity to any sort of a hammer, pipe wrench, baseball bat, wrecking bar, eighteen to thirty six inch lengths of 2x4, billy club, shovel... :viking:

Carl

[theburan]

You have that right... his computer is working good now though, he just has to find a new wireless adapter that will work with vista (his old linksys usb adapter doesnt have working drivers, and the pci card he picked up yesterday doesnt get good enough reception, lol...).

[OcciferFriendly]

It's always the little things - sure, the mobo's got 4 RAM slots, why shouldn't you be able to use them all?

I had 4 RAM slots filled on my old board, and the OC ceiling seemed very low. Pulled out one stick and the FSB was stable a lot higher!

I have heard that many boards don't react well to having all 4 RAM slots filled. I'm not totally sure why, but I do know that if you fill all 4 and something wierd happens, removing a stick to see how it behaves is a great step no. 1.

+1 on the caffeine thing!

[Smashing]

I learned a long time ago to not build machines and put it in the hands of someone who couldn't have done it themselves.

[Hitman]

Originally Posted by Smashing

I learned a long time ago to not build machines and put it in the hands of someone who couldn't have done it themselves.

Why would you build a computer for someone who could have done it themselves? That makes no sense.

[Smashing]

Originally Posted by Hitman

Why would you build a computer for someone who could have done it themselves? That makes no sense.

What I meant is that if someone can't do it on their own, they shouldn't have a friend do it for them. It just isn't worth the hassle. Maybe I am just too busy?

[Parker]

Originally Posted by Smashing

What I meant is that if someone can't do it on their own, they shouldn't have a friend do it for them. It just isn't worth the hassle. Maybe I am just too busy?

Thats why your supposed to charge them for I.T. assistance after you've built there computer.

[theburan]

Originally Posted by OcciferFriendly

It's always the little things - sure, the mobo's got 4 RAM slots, why shouldn't you be able to use them all?

I had 4 RAM slots filled on my old board, and the OC ceiling seemed very low. Pulled out one stick and the FSB was stable a lot higher!

I have heard that many boards don't react well to having all 4 RAM slots filled. I'm not totally sure why, but I do know that if you fill all 4 and something wierd happens, removing a stick to see how it behaves is a great step no. 1.

+1 on the caffeine thing!

The annoying thing was that I knew about this issue before going into this build, and I've seen it before, but I just didnt remember when it came down to it.

And I think he probably could put it together, but dangit, I have too much fun doing it (right up until I get horrible frustrated, lol).

I did get some free pizza out of the deal though.