It's time for the Questions - getting ready to build my PC.

[Tarmenion]

Hi all,

Ok, I am going to start my first build today when I get home from work, all the parts finnaly showed up.

So far I came up with a few questions that I know I will ask later about, so I thought I would ask them now.

1. What is RAID and will I be using it? I think I understand what it is but I want to confirm with you guys. From what I understand, lets say for example that I have 2 x 40g HDD's, if I use RAID I would have 1 40g HDD because the other would be a back up correct? If this is correct then I wouldnt be using it if I wanted to have 2 seperate 40g HDD's right? I basically want to know if RAID comes in to play here if i want to use 1 HDD for games and the other for everything else. Also What is IDE mean?

2. Configuring the MOBO. I was told this can be the difficult part and I was just wondering exactly what do I do when it comes to configuring. After reading the guide PC Mech provides I get alittle confused on this whole jumper thing. My MOBO is the MSI K7T266 PRO-RAID and I have the 1.33 amd tbird, I want to Overclock to 1.4 so I am wondering what exactly do I do. Is this Jumper thing necessary? is it difficult for a first time builder? Should I just leave my PC as is at 1.33 to avoid complications? I didnt even see the MOBO yet as I am still working but I hope the manual will explain this alittle better as well.

3. My SX1030 Case. I previously ask a question in another post on what how much of my case should I remove and someone answer saying basically that make sure you can work in the case comfortably. Well, the sx1030 Case only allows you to remove the side panels not to mention that the tray for the MOBO is not removable so that leaves me with one side to work in basically because the MOBO tray is blocking the other side. My question is should I remove ALL the screws to get that unremovable tray out? or should I just try to work in it as they want me too? maybe someone with an SX1030 Case could answer this one for me.

Well, thats it for now but I am sure there will be plenty of more questions coming and hopefully not as stupid as the ones I asked.

Cant wait for the fun tonight

P.S. Pardegt, I took your advise on that monitor, very nice it seems to be what I am looking for and perfect for the money, thanks

[HAL9000]

Originally posted by Tarmenion Hi all, 1. What is RAID and will I be using it? I think I understand what it is but I want to confirm with you guys. From what I understand, lets say for example that I have 2 x 40g HDD's, if I use RAID I would have 1 40g HDD because the other would be a back up correct? If this is correct then I wouldnt be using it if I wanted to have 2 seperate 40g HDD's right? I basically want to know if RAID comes in to play here if i want to use 1 HDD for games and the other for everything else. Also What is IDE mean?

IDE is the interface of your drives, there are IDE and SCSI drives, SCSI is better, but not practical for the home machine as they are far more expensive. The RAID you referred to is mirroring, it will only provide redundancy should one drive fail. If you were to use striping, it would allow you to see the 2 40Gb drives as a single 80Gb. Since the data gets distributed between 2 drives, your drive setup is theoretically twice as fast.

Originally posted by Tarmenion 2. Configuring the MOBO. I was told this can be the difficult part and I was just wondering exactly what do I do when it comes to configuring. After reading the guide PC Mech provides I get alittle confused on this whole jumper thing. My MOBO is the MSI K7T266 PRO-RAID and I have the 1.33 amd tbird, I want to Overclock to 1.4 so I am wondering what exactly do I do. Is this Jumper thing necessary? is it difficult for a first time builder? Should I just leave my PC as is at 1.33 to avoid complications? I didnt even see the MOBO yet as I am still working but I hope the manual will explain this alittle better as well.

Since this is your first build, lets worry about the overclocking later. The motherboard should give you information in the manual for how to set up your CPU to factory specs.

Originally posted by Tarmenion 3. My SX1030 Case. I previously ask a question in another post on what how much of my case should I remove and someone answer saying basically that make sure you can work in the case comfortably. Well, the sx1030 Case only allows you to remove the side panels not to mention that the tray for the MOBO is not removable so that leaves me with one side to work in basically because the MOBO tray is blocking the other side. My question is should I remove ALL the screws to get that unremovable tray out? or should I just try to work in it as they want me too? maybe someone with an SX1030 Case could answer this one for me.

I'm not totally familiar with that particular case, but you should be able to mount the motherboard without taking the tray out. Just take your time to make sure that it's properly mounted and everything will go OK. You should be able to bolt in your CD, Hard drive, Floppy, etc with just the side panels removed.

[Tarmenion]

Thanks Hal

I will probaly have some more questions for you in about 2-3 hours when I start building

If not kudos to me

[HAL9000]

Go for it... post here again if you need help, someone should be able to answer your questions. Good luck!

BTW... building computers is addictive