Building a new Gaming PC!

[wonko the sane?]

Parts are complete, and the card has been paid. Damages come to 2800.08 after taxes and shipping. And yes, that's the actual number, I was just as shocked as you are. I even added it up twice to make sure.

I can get the second set of ram later, and wound up going in on a gold 1000w power supply instead of the titanium I wanted, but... It's all been purchased. Everything should arrive by the end of the month.

 

[The Predaking]

Woot! Make sure to document the build process!

 

[wonko the sane?]

The case, the CPU cooler, the GPU and windows have ARRIVED!

Still to arrive is the mobo, the power supply, the processor, the ram, and the two hard drives. But... to quote Kronk: it's all coming together.

 

[The Predaking]

NIce!

 

[wonko the sane?]

The rest arrived! Literally 2 minutes before I left for work.

Now all I need is the jar of elbow grease and the bottle of "magic blue smoke" concentrate to fill the reservoir. Work begins tomorrow!

 

[The Predaking]

Nice! Almost adult lego time!

 

[wonko the sane?]

*dial up noises*

... does... does the case have any fans in it?

*checks*

Whew, okay. It has two 120's in it, and room for four more. I might just take a trip to CCE and grab them tomorrow if the car is free. I don't mind dropping a little more if the need is there, and I don't trust just two case fans even in my ultra airy case.

edit:

*Dial up noises continue.*

Shit... do I have any thermal paste? I bought some high grade stuff years ago when I built the last computer, but it's probably long useless. Does the CPU cooler come with any... Shit.

Edit, again:

Yup, the cooler came with paste. Jesus christ, I'm driving myself nuts wondering if I missed anything.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Alright! WORK DAY!

I started by running out to CCE and grabbing three more case fans. We had other messages to perform, so it was a useful trip, then the REAL work began.

This is the case, opened wide and with the PSU and case fans installed. It was also here I realized that I now need to get a fan controller. This case does not have one. But that's fine, I can get it running THEN get that done.

This is the mobo, functionally complete. 1 hard drive, 1 dimm of ram, cpu and cooler. Ready to be installed into the case. Which, by the by, ALREADY had the stand offs in all the right places, which had me concerned because when I opened the accessory kit that came with it: there was like 3 in a baggie, but I had tons left from the NZXT so I was annoyed more than anything. But it was so much more convenient and easy, corsair as a case manufacturer is earning my loyalty with stuff like this.

Oh, oops. This is lunch. Since I also had to assemble this, I took a picture of it. Guess I was in the fog for a bit.

So, now I just need to wire the board, then I can test it. About 10 minutes of work till POST.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Okay, so here we go!

Here is the board all bolted in and all wired up. I had to look up the ATX connector in the top left (you can't really see it here.) because there was an 8 pin pcie connector... and a four pin pcie connector. Turns out the 4 pin is in case you want to overclock like a mother fucker and need extra power for the CPU. I don't need it, so it's fine. It's all fine.

And here she is booted into the bios. Let me tell you, it was a ******* TRIP getting here. Hitting the power button the first time did absolutely nothing. So once I hit the switch on the PSU, it did work.

But it didn't post or boot. Didn't output an image. Nothing. Big bright red LED on the board though. So, off to the internet to look it up. Oh, that's the DRAM light. It's trying to tell me something. Restart, watch the light... okay, so... it doesn't flash or anything, just... bright and on. Internet again. Turns out the board is finicky when it comes to ram placement. Oh, okay, well, at least it's SOMETHING I can try before deciding the board needs to be RMA'ed. So I go through the process of putting the single dimm into each and every slot one at a time... until it finally boots on the last slot. I was getting a mild headache before, but this just... did not help. BUT! It booted, it recognized the M.2, it found 32 gigs of ram. Awesome. So I slap the win11 usb in there, and start the install. Sure enough, it hit the "must have internet but no wifi" wall. So I search my kit, start checking behind printers and such and, of course, there aren't any cat5s in the house. At all.

Hey... mom uses a wireless dongle... would that work?

Long story short: IT DO! Found the house wireless and connected perfectly. Install ran without any problems.

So installed and rebooted. Perfect. I take it back over to the work space, install the other dimm of ram, the second hard drive, and the GPU. Button the case up and it looks like this:

I finished cleaning up the dining room, and now I'm working on getting the old computer ready to move on. I need to transfer everything on the deep storage drive to the SSD which will be installed in the new computer. Then I can actually plug in the new computer at the desk and start installing software and getting settled in. I hope to be there by tonight. No gaming today, but kinda worth it.

 

[wonko the sane?]

The computers are switched (I'm on the win11 machine right now!) and just finished updating the bios to the most recent revision. I also have a mild headache, so more pills for me soon.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Why is my 12 gig video card only showing 512 mb of vram in the AMD control panel...


Oh, cause it's an nvidia card. Shit.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Alright, done for the day. It's mostly configured, has the most important programs installed, and I even found time to bring down some games. I got my email setup, my agenda re-written and placed, and the desktop clock back. I haven't tried anything outside of youtube and the installers, but there's absolutely no reason it won't work now.

Tomorrow... at some point, there's real work to catch up on after all, Void Train!

 

[wonko the sane?]

Welp, I've been on the new machine all day so far. It's been fast, so ridiculously quiet I question if it's even working when I walk back in to sleeping monitors, and despite windows 11, I've been settling into the new use patterns fairly well.

And this GPU, holy shit. Granted: I've yet to really run it through the paces, I have already noticed a difference. I've been playing Volcanoids on and off all day. On my old rig the FPS would float between 50 and 60 (where either the game caps the FPS, or caps the display, I haven't looked yet.) dropping to the low end when the volcano would blow and immediately after during the ash showers. The 3060 just... never wavers. 60 and does NOT blink. Settings high and the game is smooth as silk.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Had a garage sale over the weekend, outcome was pitiful, but it was enough to let me throw on a fan controller. Which was purchased saturday, collected and installed today. All the fans in the case are now working, and there's even room for one more should I want it. Might keep that spot open for later down the line and slap a second fan on the CPU radiator.

 

[wentwood]

I have over 500 games on blue flash drives for PS Mini.

I'm getting the games that got missed to fill in the gaps with PS 1 mini and will at some point play what was missed by the blue flash drives.

I have the PS Mini at my place.

 

[wentwood]

My plan is to find a PC and mainly get the following emulators

PS 1
PS 2
PS 3
SNES
Genisis
NDS
3 D S
Game Boy Advance

I hope to run as many game systems in as I can an the PC or lap top and full screen for Advance and DS games.

 

[wonko the sane?]

Alrighty! STORY TIME!

Three days ago, the brand spanking new PC I just spent thousands of dollars building: shut off on me. Completely randomly, no errors or nothing. Just... off. I restarted, did some brief checks, and went about my day.

Yesterday, it did it again. No errors, no BSD, no outward signs of a problem: just OFF. It restarted fine though. Ran a system scan, did some research but came up with nothing actionable.

This morning: it did it TWICE! Within an hour. So now I absolutely need to do something about it and drop into troubleshooting mode: What's happened since build, what's changed?

-I bought and installed the deepcool fan hub. But that was like two weeks ago? Maybe it doesn't like being in the sys1 slot? I can disconnect it, maybe rewire it or just test without.
-I bought the wheeled cpu stand from ikea... but why would that change anything? Maybe it's a grounding problem? But that was also like a week or so ago, why would problems only start very recently and not then?
-We've had a LOT of power problems of late. Lots of general outtages, but I also blew the breaker my PC is on when we installed the air conditioners. Maybe the power supply is suffering?

Compounding the problem is that there is absolutely NO signs of a problem. No glitches, no lagging, no errors, nothing, nothing, nothing.

So I work from where I can. The computer is still off from the error. I pull the cord from the PSU, hit the PSU switch, and crack open the case. The only thing I can do at this point is experiment with the deepcool and see where that gets me. So I move the plug from Sys1 to Sys4, plug the PSU back in, flip the switch and hit the power button.

Nothing happens. I... I did turn the PSU back on, right? Double check that, and I did. I guess the PSU was the problem? But that's weird cause there was no indications of an error (other than the shut downs.) and corsair stuff is highly rated and durable. Maybe the power CORD is defective? I start running my hand up the cord to check for hot spots... Hey, why is the ******* cord half out of the surge protector socket?

I bet that stupid ginger brick has been bonking it during his nightly treat routine. The plug was far enough out that when I pushed it back in (despite the PC being off.) there was the spark of connection. Hit the power button and the computer boots right up.

I made sure the fans were all working (they were.) and ran another system scan. Now we just wait to see if it shuts off again, but it won't cause the plug is seated proper, and tonight when I shut down for bed, I'm going to move the plug to another spot on the surge protector so whiskey can't bonk his way to killing my computer.

 

[Pocket]

And now you know why the second thing tech support always asks you to do is check the plug.

 

[wonko the sane?]

I'm just grateful it was something easy and free to fix. It's not even been a month, so if the power supply WAS shot, I could probably RMA it, but I don't want to wait through the return period just to have a working computer.

 

[wonko the sane?]

FUTHER ADVENTURES IN AIRFLOW!

So one of the (new) fans I installed seemed to be going bad. Still worked fine, but there was a noticeable rattle on acceleration. Considering how much this new board seems to micro manage the fans, it was rattling on basically every time I woke it up or played a game.

Maybe the fan was slightly defective out of box, maybe it was the cat jumping on the computer to get to the desk. I guess we'll see.

Anywho; newegg was running a deal on an ARGB three pack for more than half off. Alright, this works: three replacement fans with glowy bits and I get to throw two backups into the bin for later purposes. It arrived today and I just finished installing it. First the lights didn't work (but the fans did.) then the fans didn't work (but the lights did.) then I actually read the instructions and figured out that I need both wires AND the iCue controller that came in the box.

So now everything works, glows AND is whisper quiet again.

This is starting to get ridiculous.