Building a New PC for Music - Part 2: Assembly

At home the big unpacking started. The case makes a nice impression, although it is quite budget-priced: £ 30. Had to get a power supply separately, as no one is included. I was told that a steel case is quieter than aluminum, but that aluminum conducts heat better. Since my emphasis was not on overclocking-gaming but on music, I was fine to go with a steel case. The case has two thick screws in the back for removing the side wall, so this can be done by hand without the need of a screw driver.

1. Affix the power supply into the case. 4 screws were provided with the power supply, no problem attaching it in the upper rear corner. I am surprised to see so many power leads coming from the power supply. 6 years ago there basically was just the connector for the main board and the usual 12/5V connectors for the disk drives, but now there are a lot of connectors which are yet unknown to me. I guess I will find out what they are for.
   
   
2. Unpack motherboard and processor.
   
   
   Mount processor in slot. Affix gigantic cooling fan on top of it. Is simply done by clicking the 4 corner connectors in the 4 holes around the processor. The cable from the fan to the connector on the mainboard is quite short, but just fits exactly. The thick fan provides a convenient handle to lift the whole board.
   
   
   
3. Identify the 8 locations where the motherboard needs to be screwed into the case. Put those 8 brass socket screws in place into the case.
   
   
   Affix cover plate for external connectors in the back. It just clicks into the cut-out, no further affixment necessary.
   
   
   Then I mount the motherboard onto these 8 base socket screws into the case.
   
   
   
4. Connect power supply to mainboard: 24-pin, and 8-pin EATX12V (no idea what the latter one is for; the old boards 6 years ago did not need that).
5. Connect the rear fan to mainboard CHA_FAN1; this meant I had to remove the standard power cable that was plugged into the fan cable, and connect the fan cable directly to the motherboard.
6. Plug the graphics card into the first PCIe slot. I then realised that the huge cooling metal of that graphics card blocks the adjacent small PCIe slot, which I had reserved for the audio card... so I move the video card into the PCIe2 slot. The manual states that for performance reason one should put the video card into the first slot... maybe I should get a card with a smaller cooling metal.
   
   
   
7. Install the memory. I ensure that each of the two triplets in which the memory was sold is installed in the same colored slot, although I think it does not really matter.
8. Now I want to see if the system works in principle. Connecting the power and the display: the fans begin to rotate. First nothing, then I realise that I need to press the illuminated "start" button on the board. Text on the monitor appears. No keyboard connected, no boot device, so is waiting for input. Pressing "reset" on the board results in the screen getting black, but no continuation; also pressing "start" again does not help, I need to switch off and on at the power supply switch. Screen comes on after about 10 seconds. Text stays there very short only, I can read that the setup can be reached by pressing the "DEL" key. This is what I will do when I start up the system next time.
9. Connect front USB of case with USB78. Connect front panel audio (audio HD) with AAFP on board. Put the cable connectors from the case (power, LED, reset, etc.) into the one loose white labeled connector, which then can be plugged onto the board. Only the connector labeled "AC’97" is not plugged in anywhere.
10. Install 2 SATA HDs. For being able to connect both sides mechanically, the 2nd wall of the case needs to be removed, giving access to the screw-less attachment mechanism. Connect power from case and SATA cables from mainboard (use SATA1 and SATA2).
11. Remove front panel of case. Is just clicked into the case. Remove upper front grill of uppermost 5.25 slot from front panel. Install DVD drive in uppermost slot. Connect power from case and IDE cable from mainboard. Instead of using the screwless attachment mechanism, I use the screws, to be able to adjust how much the drive protrudes, in order to show a matched front face.
    
    
    
12. Now the first "real" Power up: in BIOS only SATA2 appears to be installed. Is a problem with cable connector; I swap the connectors, seems to work now, both SATA drives are recognised. I am not sure when to set the HDs to RAID: now or after the OS install. I try to set it now, because I figure that this should be done before Windows is installed; otherwise, all installed files would need to have to be moved or rearranged, and I want to avoid that. A message on the screen appears after reboot, that disks are not RAID drives. Neither disk is yet formatted. After bootup, press Ctrl-I to setup RAID volume, and the Intel Matrix Storage Manager shows up. I choose RAID-0 (stripe), because I want the fast disk access. Create a RAID volume with these two disks. Seems to work ok.
13. The final piece of hardware to be installed is the LCD display. Would have been better to install it earlier, when the back panel for the connections was not yet installed; now the whole interior is quite cramped, and it is very difficult to put the connector into the plug on the motherboard, between the wall and the 8pin power connector. But it eventually works, and now the LCD shows text messages during boot-up, and afterwards it shows the time. The complete hardware installation is done after 3 1/2 hours.