Hoping for advice from RidkyTick

[red66charger]

Hi,
I am grateful for MySuperPC.com. I have never built a complete system from scratch...my experience is limited to replacing dead PSUs, adding an optical drive or a graphics card and the real biggie, adding memory!

That said my college aged son (also green about PC assembly) is wanting a gaming quality PC to take back to school with him. I thought about buying a turnkey system, but when I asked him about the idea of trying to build one he was open to it. For me, it could be a great way to get to spend some time with him in a way we haven't been able to in in quite a while.

This is where MySuperPC has been a great help to me. I don't have the time...or the knowledge...to read and understand all the intricate details and specs of every piece of a PC. I've used the expression "I know enough to be dangerous". I'm very impressed with Rob's detailed list of components and especially the build tutorial. However, I'm under the impression we were needing something with a little more "horespower". I went ahead and purchased all of the components in RickyTick's High End "killer" machine. The think I am concerned about is that Rob's tutorial on assembly is written for the components he suggested. Mainly, I'm nervous about bios and start up settings. I don't think we need to get into an overclocking situation as I'm hoping the components will perform at a satisfactory level out of the box. I expect the parts to arrive right before Christmas day and am hoping to put it all together that weekend.

Any information on bios settings, and or other suggestions for the components you have listed for your high end machine would be greatly appreciated, RickyTick.

Thanks,
red66charger

[RickyTick]

Hey red66charger. Welcome to the forums.

Building a pc can be a very rewarding experience, and can also be very frustrating when things go wrong. But don't stress over it. Everything can be fixed or replaced. If you've already made several upgrades in the past, then this will not be particularly difficult.

As I've said many times, over-clocking is over-rated. It's fun and challenging, but at the end of the day, you're stressing your components to the edge of their ability which is not altogether healthy, plus the gains in performance are often negligible. If you purchased the components from my recommended High-End Build, then it's going to be blistering fast right out of the gate. A few years from now if it seems a little sluggish or slow, then you could consider overclocking.

Rob's tutorial will be very useful with your build, but you'll run across a few things that are just a little different. Overall, the process and fundamentals are the same. Keep handy the manual for the motherboard, case, and power supply. It's really just a matter of plugging everything in at the right place and turning it on. Just remember that there is always someone online that's eager to help.

Hope you have a great time with the build.

[red66charger]

Thanks. I hope to start working on it Christmas Day. I'm nervous, but also looking forward to it.

[red66charger]

Well I think we have lift off! We started putting the system together around 11:00am Christmas day and finished around 9:00pm. We worked in some food along the way. It was a great father/son project and we've got photos to remember it by! Our biggest failure was neglecting to connect the 8 pin ATX power connector along with the 32 pin. That caused us about an hour of panic. Reading the manual more thoroughly would have helped, but honestly, those manuals intimidate as much as help. I don't understand half of what is written.

I do have some questions...one is about fan speed. I think I read in one of the manuals...mobo or case...that the speed of fans can be adjusted. If so, what should I do? Can it be assumed that the highest fan speed should be used? We're not overclocking, but my son will be doing a lot of gaming (Shattered Horizon, Dark Messiah, Crisis). Is this set in BIOS and how? (Rampage III Forumula mobo). Anything else in BIOS I should change from what was set from the factory? Again, not overclocking.

Also, we downloaded the latest drivers for the EVGA GTX570 Graphics Card, but when we try to install them we get a message that saying the supported hardware was not found. This happens with the drivers from EVGA and NVIDIA.

And, we are getting a warning in device manager that there is a problem with a USB port. Could this be related to the two USB 3.0 ports? Any idea how I can tell?

And finally, what is the best resource to monitor temperatures and what devices need to be monitored? (CPU, Graphics?)

Thanks in advance!

[RickyTick]

Congratulations.

The fan speed is set in the BIOS. What you may be experiencing is that your cooler is keeping the cpu so cool, that it simply doesn't require the fan to spin any faster than it already is. Since you're not overclocking, the temps are probably very moderate, which is good. Manually turning your fan speeds to max is just going to generate a lot of fan noise. You need to verify your temps before doing anything. I like Real Temp (http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/). For a stress test of the system, I like OCCT (http://www.ocbase.com/perestroika_en/index.php?Download), and Prime95 (http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=205).

Go in Device Manager and click the triangle next to Display adapter and verify that is says NVIDIA GeForce GTX570. Right click on this and then click Properties. Check your driver version. It should be something like 8.17.12.6309. If you see something different, then go to Nvidia (http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us) and download the latest driver.

If your error in Device Manager is about the USB controller, that's fairly common.

Also, download a program from EVGA called Precision. It's an excellent tool for monitoring your video card.

Come back if you have any questions.