Show Us Your Rig [4]

Some fun (mutter, mutter, mumble, mumble).

I finally found the problem. When I plugged in the reset switch connector and turned the machine on, the leprechuns were back. I'm thinking, "Oh no (censored version), replacing that switch is going to be a bugger." Then, on an inexplicable impulse, I tried reversing the connector, then turning the machine back on. That fixed it. Go figure; I though there was no polarity on those switches. The connector certainly isn't marked polarized.

But then I noticed the fans on the GPU weren't spinning and the case speaker was was giving me a long beep followed by three short beeps, then after a long pause, a long beep followed by four short beeps, a short pause, then another short beep. According to the manual, the first beeps indicate no VGA. I'm thinking, "OK, the monitor isn't hooked up." The manual says that a long beep followed by four short beeps indicates a hardware failure (what was with the additional short beep?) so now I'm thinking, "Great! I killed the GPU card!" Before planning the funeral, I took a closer look and discovered the PCIe power cable was still disconnected. I had left it floating in the air by the socket and, from the angle I had been looking, it had looked like it was plugged in. I plugged it in, fired up the machine, and eventually got the single beep I was supposed to get. Whooo hooo! (Doing happy dance )

The next step is to wrestle the boat anchor (from the QE2, no less) back to my desk (actually, a night stand by the daek where my old desktop resided) so I can hook up the monitor and keyboard/mouse (the keyboard is hardwired to the USB and has a port I can plug in the receiver for my wireless mouse). I'm definitely going to wait until tomorrow to do that. It's late, I'm tired, and my arms and back are still less than happy with me. At least I'll sleep a whole sight better knowing the episode of the errent screw and bass-ackwards connector is finally over.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

I'm definitely going to wait until tomorrow to do that. It's late, I'm tired, and my arms and back are still less than happy with me. At least I'll sleep a whole sight better knowing the episode of the errent screw and bass-ackwards connector is finally over.

Glad you solved the one thing that might have kept you up. I've had nights where I'd go to bed with something not working right and not sleep anyway for thinking about the solution. These days I only work when I'm fresh then call it a night otherwise fatigue from life, work, and other stresses sets in and will cause mistakes.

Building can be fun but frustrating as well at times.

I didn't get the machine moved to the nightstand by my desk until this evening because we had some serious winds and thunderstorms, including pea sized hail, that were actually shaking my mobile home. I kept the power plugs on it and my notebook pulled in case of a lightning strike (it was hitting all around us).

It's been running for about three hours now. I've just been exploring the UEFI BIOS a bit and watching the CPU temps. I've done very little in a BIOS in the past and UEFI is totally brand new to me. The CPU has been staying at 42-44°C; ambient has been fluctuating between 23° and 24°C. Keep in mind the case is open on both sides and there is no OS installed yet. I would prefer seeing 5-10°C less but, since the CPU fan is loafing at 655-665 rpm, it may not rise all that much when I start putting the CPU to work. I also set the RAM to run at 1600 and it's running 9-9-9-24. It also sees my SSD, the only drive that's hooked up.

Since you all are hungry for pictures, here is one of the bad boy UPS I have the machine plugged into:



The power wiring in the mobile home court I live in is less than stellar, mostly due to the incompetent electricians our slumlord used to have under contract. Fortunately, the current manager convinced him to replace the idiots (I've got a few horror tales about them) with some that are much better. We had some outages last summer (several hours worth every two days for a couple of weeks) that the new guys eventually tracked down to an improper underground splice done by the idiots sometime in the past (intermittant failures can be a bugger to find). We had another one a couple, three months ago when the overhead feeding the 12KV into the park's underground blew up (literally) and the power company had to cut gaps and string a new conductor. So I decided to get a UPS. It's bigger than I need but I should be future-proofed. It has the capability to safely shut down the computer before the power runs out.

That's one scary looking UPS there Britton30, 8 outputs? I'd love one, we lose power very often where I stay... I've got a tiny UPS, literally gives me enough time to save my work and shut down before it dies.

Anyway, I've been keeping up to date with the thread, but now I finally have something to post.. I can't quite afford to get my dream system just yet, but I did just finalise a deal to get a bit of an upgrade.

So, sometime during the coming week I should be running a Phenom II x4 975BE on a MSI 990FXA-GD65 board with a Patriot G2 2x4GB 1600MHz CL9 ram kit. Should be a nice improvement over my current rig hey, on the CPU power side alone I'll be going from a gross of 7.8GHz (3-core 2.6GHz) to 14.4GHz (4-core 3.6GHz). Hehe... Can't wait.

essenbe said:

@Zalith. Sounds like a very nice upgrade for you. Good job. I know you will be happy with the improved performance. Sounds like it will be a killer rig, but we demand a lot of pictures. You have to remember, a lot of us have the addiction real bad. So, when we aren't building, looking at pictures of others builds helps
reduce the anxiety, just a little bit.. We love pictures. Can't wait to see more of Lady Fitzgreald's build and yours to hold off the beast a little. It sounds like you are going to have a pretty strong build. Well done.

Well, I've wanted a MSI board for ages, partly because I love their layout... But this GD65 scored 83% in a Bit-Tech review, not half bad for what they call a "budget board". I'll post pictures of the build as I put it together, hopefully second half of next week.

I may end up re-thinking my colour scheme at some point. Green LED fans and a black case fits my current XFX board beautifully, but the MSI is blue and black... Might need new fans... And a new CPU cooler (CNPS9900DF looks nice)...

Hmmm...... So many choices.