05-28-2008, 03:42 AM
Quote:be it jumpers, or what connector the DVD audio is plugged into, etc.
I just want to point out that you don't have to do any of this stuff with today's hardware. SATA drives - both fixed and optical - have eliminated the need to mess around with jumpers. You plug the SATA cable to the motherboard and plug in the SATA power cable from the PSU and it's done. There's no more "master" or "slave" anymore, and you don't have to mess around with unruly and overly-wide IDE ribbon cables.
3.5" inch floppy drives are also unnecessary these days. I had one on my last computer, and the only thing I ever used it for was to install SATA drivers for my hard drive when I was installing Windows. You don't need to worry about that anymore. If you do need a floppy drive (and I can't imagine why), there are USB drives.
The build took about 3 hours for me, and an hour of that time was spent reworking cables. Another hour was spent worrying about if I had the CPU+heatsink seated correctly and whether I had all the brass standoffs in the correct place. If I had to do it again I bet it would take half that time. The only thing that takes more time setting up now is front panel connections. I had to run HDD and power LEDs, USB, eSATA, and audio lines. I had to study the motherboard and case documentation pretty closely to be sure I got it all right.
I also had a minor scare when I ran SpeedFan to check my CPU temps. It showed I was running at 58 degress Celsius at idle, which is way too hot. I thought I didn't seat the heatsink properly. I did a Google check for "E8400 temperature" and apparently it's just an issue with the temp sensors reporting an incorrect reading. The BIOS shows it in the low 30s, and I just did about 4 hours of hefty gaming with no issues so I guess I'm okay.