Looking For Building Advice!

[Eric513]

Hey all, ordered my parts for my first home built computer earlier this week and it should be arriving tomorrow, so any tips for building or stuff I need to buy/have? Grounding wire, etc?
Heres the setup if it helps:

Case - Antec 900
Processor - AMD Phenom II X4 940 3.0GHz
CPU Cooler - XIGMATEK Dark Knight
Motherboard - BIOSTAR TFORCE TA790GX 128M AM2+/AM2
RAM - OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 4GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800MHz
Video Cards - 2x Radeon HD4770's
PSU - Corsair 650TX 650W
Hard drive - WD Caviar 250gb
CD/DVD - LG 22X DVD drive

Also bought an extra Tri-Cool 120mm Antec case fan (probably putting it on the side) as well as Arctic Silver 5.

Looking forward to some comments!

 

[boonality]

Well Basically here's a couple things to start with and get people to chime in.

First thing is first, CHECK everything! Make sure it all arrived, and not broken

Ok from there... Always make sure you are grounded, but you won't need an antistatic strap or anything. Just touch your case every single time you remove your hand from the computer or parts.

1. Take your motherboard out of the bag and then put the bag on top of the motherboards box, then put the motherboard on the bag, on top of the box.

2. Take a razor blade a scrape the stock thermal compound off your processor. Then use a cotton ball with some isopropyl alcohol (about a buck at walmart) and just do a good cleaning as if you were buffing wax off a car.

3. Now get your aftermarket thermal compound out and get it ready to go, get your heat sink and everything set within reach and make sure you know where on the motherboard the fan plug goes, and which way the processor goes, it can only go one way.

4. Set your processor on ( i haven't done AMD in a while) but it should have a clip or something that bends down and clips in place, do that.

5. take your aftermarket thermal compound and put a strip in the center of your processor about the size of a grain of rice, maybe a tad thicker but no longer.

6. Set your heatsink on and before you seat it, kind of twist it back and forth a little to spread the thermal compound, a couple times in each direction is plenty. Then go ahead and set your heatsink.... Now use the motherboard box to do this, the corner you are trying to snap in place, hang it just barely off the edge of the motherboard box, this will allow you to see the bottom of the motherboard as well as give you no resistance instead of trying to push the heatsink on and having the box "in the way"

7. GO ahead and plug your heatsink fan into your motherboard.

8. Now get your risers screwed into the case, to figure out what holes to use, just hold your motherboard over the case sort like "hovering" it and make note of what holes line up.

9. Set your motherboard on the risers and screw it in.

10. Go ahead and get your power supply installed in the case but don't connect the wires.

11. Install all your junk, hard drive, video card, whatever else... BTW memory can be installed before you put your motherboard in your case or after, makes no difference.

12. Hook up all your wires.

13. Cross your fingers and power on.

 

[Eric513]

Thanks! Anything else I should make sure to do?

 

[Shnur]

Don't forget to install Windows

 

[Eric513]

Heh, I've already got the windows 7 ultimate beta burned to a disc I've heard good things about it, so hopefully it works out.

 

[Shnur]

Beta? Go get RC... it's out and it's a lot better than the Beta, check MS website.

 

[Eric513]

oh yeah, its the RC...my bad ><