HowToFixComputers.com

Bart · Guest

I'll try not to bore you with the whole sordid story, but I'm an
all-Mac, all-the-time ex-graphic repairman who now owns a retail biz
(hobby shop), and am forced, for technical reasons, to go to the Dark
Side (sorry -- Windows gives me the creeps, but ya gotta do what ya
gotta do). Having for many years worked as an electronics assembler
(and NASA-certified solderer) in the aircraft industry, I thought
putting a mere computer together would be the proverbial piece o' cake.
Well, I was wrong -- I made the mistake of buying one of TigerDirect's
offcast Soyo K7VME barebones kits, the one with the case air
circulation problem. After several attempts, one dead motherboard, one
trashed power supply, and one dead Athlon XP2800+, I decided to go with
a better box and board to go with the Athlon XP3000+ I got after I
RMA'd the 2800.

So, I got a nice big aluminum Skyhawk server case, a ThermalTake
PurePower 420W PS,the Chaintech 7NJL6 and the following stuff:

Athlon XP3000+ Barton (NOT mobile)
ThermalTake TR2-M2 CPU cooler
Ultra PC3200 DDR 400MHz 1GB x 2
Chaintech GeForce FX 5700 / 256MB DDR / AGP 8X
Western Digital Caviar 200GB HD
Megastor (NEC) Dual Layer DVD Burner combo drive
Mitsumi FDD/multi-media reader
Oh yeah, and Windows (shudder) XP Home...

The use this box will be put to is POS, accessing a couple of my nitwit
distributors who use Windows-only online ordering systems, and -- the
one area I will readily admit PCs have it all over Macs -- games;
especially Grand Prix Legends.

I've been using mechBgon's guide to building your first PC from parts:

http://www.omnicast.net/~tmcfadden/guides/build/

which is a great help, but I REALLY don't want to go through the hell I
experienced with the Sorry Soyo, so any upfront advice you could give
me to make this box actually work would be greatly appreciated. I don't
want to overclock the thing, I just want it to work and be stable.

You can reply here or by email:
wingswheels@sbcglobal.net

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Bart

John P. Dearing · Guest

Bart wrote:

Bart · Guest

Well, THAT's heartening news! My experience with the K7VME was the
opposite: I could get all the fans whirling and the pretty lights
blinking, but no POST whatsoever, and this was with the mainboard lying
prostrate off the side of the case (on a non-conductive surface, of
course), far away from the impinging PSU, and with a clean, even, and
light application of Arctic Silver 5 to the beautifully-lapped copper
core of the Thermaltake TR2-M2 cooler.

I'm spoiled, I guess -- all these years (16 now) of using Macs, where
you open up the box, plug it in, and off you go -- I even have an old
SuperMac S900 that I upgraded (against Apple's advice, of course) with
a ZIF G3 daughtercard, a full Gig of RAM, and an Initio Miles RAID
controller running two Seagate Barracudas in RAID 0. Plugged everything
in, fired it up, and it ran immediately with no hiccups whatsoever.
Seven years and many OS versions later, it's STILL running hiccup-free.

Has ANYONE gotten a Chaintech 7NJL6 to actually work as advertised?
Frankly, I bought it because A) NewEgg had a good deal, and B) I
already had a Chaintech GeForce video card and thought -- probably
naively -- that having the video card and mainboard from the same
manufacturer might smooth things out a little.

Is my best bet to RMA the 7NJL6 and look for a board that might
possibly work? I was looking forward to 400MhZ FSB, Hyper-Threaded
Hooey, and twice-pipes DDR PC3200 RAM, now that I ended up with a
Socket A XP3000+ chip (the K7VME didn't support any of that stuff,
AFAICT) -- should I just send the whole mess back and buy a nice old
286?

I have to say that with all the hanky-jiggled over-clocked
nitrogen-cooled systems I read about ripping through Quake and Doom in
quadruple-time, I thought it wouldn't be beyond the capabilities of a
moderately skilled person (I'm also a journeyman experimental
machinist) to put a simple WinBlows PC together. I go to all the
hardware sites -- Anand, Tom's, Sharky Extreme -- and all I see are
Athlon 64 rigs (I don't like Intel). Yes, Socket A/462 is NOT the
current state-of-the-art, but it's at an excellent price point and all
I need for my meager tasks -- MORE than I need, really, but I DO like
racing sims, and I'd like a decent framerate.

I'm open to any advice. I probably should've bought one of those
$129.00 ISellSurplus Dell PIII pancakes and just said to hell with it.

Discouraged

Bart

Tony Clark · Guest

"Bart" <wingswheels@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:1123205911.496574.163390@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
SNIP

Bart · Guest

TC ejaculated:

"Is it even possible to build your own Mac PC?"

Not without using most of the same Apple-branded components you'd get
if you bought a Mac. It IS possible to reconfigure a Mac, update an
older Mac, and generally do many of the things PC builders -- rank
amateur and otherwise -- do when they build a WinBloze box. The
difference is that Apple's stricter (by several orders of magnitude)
compliance standards generally result in something that works without
hours or weeks of user fiddling about.

" Overclocking is NOT for the amateur which, with all due respect, you
sound like."

And which I admitted upfront that I *am*. I also said I had no interest
in overclocking.

"So did you read the specs on the K7VME board or did you just ignore
them?"

As I said, I started out with an Athlon XP2800+. By the time I found
that the CPU was DOA, I'd already found out that not only was the Soyo
K7VME also DOA, but that the reason TigerDirect (aka "NeverAgain") was
dumping these Soyo barebones kits for 20 bucks or whatever was because
the idiot mid-tower design put Soyo's No-Namo PSU right on top of the
CPU, concentrating heat in the worst possible area. Many people shared
their Soyo barebones horror stories with me, and even Soyo tech as much
as admitted that the case design was an embarrassment to everyone
involved. After all THAT enlightenment, I decided to abandon the K7VME
for something which would give me a little better performance -- a
hopeful aspiration that has so far proven to be illusory at best. So
can you read?

"As for getting better graphics performance you would do well to go
back to Tom's Hardware and AnandTech and read up on the video card
reviews."

Fortunately, I don't have to read things much more than once to
understand what they say -- I actually went with the Chaintech graphics
card as a result of reviews on several sites, including AnandTech and
Tom's. I'm sorry to find out at this juncture that they don't know what
they're talking about. Live and learn.

"or you'll have a lot of graphics horsepower going unused."

Call me crazy, but that particular possibility didn't rank high on my
list of priorities. As I said, I'm well aware that Socket A boards
aren't the high-end of the spectrum this week, but I was fairly
confident -- apparently due to my own rank amateur stupidity -- that
the Barton-core Athlon XP3000+ was a couple notches above a Sinclair
ZX80, and that the nVidia GeForce FX 5700 was still considered a
modestly capable graphics processor. Silly me.

I'm delighted you felt free to impress me (or somebody) with your
command of acronyms and such, but since you didn't seem to really get
the gist of my original message -- my poor communication skills are the
culprit, I'm sure -- your advice missed the mark by a couple
parasangs, I'm afraid.

My first mistake was in assuming that Chaintech actually made a product
that worked as advertised and as reviewed by many folks a lot smarter
than I am. What I failed to take into account was that neither
Chaintech nor any of Anand's, Tom's, or Sharky's reviewers were as
smart as you. I'm still curious though, that so many ostensibly
knowledgable people could be wrong about the same thing. More curious
still, I can't shake the feeling that somehow, both Chaintech's 7NJL6
motherboard and GeForce FX 5700 graphics have actually worked, possibly
even TOGETHER, in somebody's box.

My second mistake was exposing my ignorance on this DL. That won't
happen again.

Guy · GURU Joined: 08 Feb 2005 Posts: 171

Let's take this one step at a time. Take precautions against static discharge.

1. We will take case prep as read. Make sure you match the standoffs to the holes in the motherboard. Many cases have multiple, closely-spaced holes, and you should use a template. Verify jumper settings for, and install, your hard drive and optical drive.

2. Critical step: Motherboard, CPU and Heatsink. Mating these three components is not for the faint of heart. Do it wrong and you can kill your CPU or your board. Once you do it a couple of times it is easy. Luckily you chose a budget system to start (but it still has still plenty of power).

2.a. Place the CPU in the Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) Socket. Literally, no force. The chip only fits one way, and there are visual cues on the socket and the chip. Once you lower the lever into place, you are ready to proceed to the next step.

2.b. Intall the heatsink. This can be scary for a novice, but it only fits one way. You have to use a reasonable amount of very controlled force to get the heatsink clamped to the chip and the socket. You will need a flat-tip screwdriver or a small nutdriver to get the clamp on right.

Before you seat the heatsink on the chip, make sure there is a thin layer of thermal grease on the CPU core (the little metal rectangle in the center of the chip). If there is a piece of tape present, remove it!!

Line up the slots on the heatsink with the plastic mount extrusions on the ZIF socket -- this allows you to emplace the heatsink clamp.

You will need the screwdriver/nutdriver for this step. Make sure the heatsink is actually in contact with the chip and not resting on one of the plastic extrusions on the ZIF socket (getting this wrong will prevent the system from booting up). Gently bend the clamp over the extrusions to hold the heatsink firmly in place.

2.c. Install the fan on the heatsink with supplied screws and plug the fan in on the motherboard or directly to one of your power supply cables as appropriate (see the diagram in your manual).

3. Install the RAM and video card.

4. Install the board in the case, and connect the ATX power connector from the power supply to the board. Connect a monitor and keyboard. Connect the case power connector to the motherboard. refer to the manual and make sure you connect the pins exactly as shown. Attach the USB and other wires at this time. Caution: Get the USB pinouts right the first time or it may damage the USB circuit.

5. Connect the IDE (large flat) cables to the mother board and your hard drive and optical drive. Plug in the power cables too.

6. You are now ready to see if your system will boot up. Look up POST codes for your BIOS using Google, and be ready to count beeps if you have a failure.

7. Turn on your monitor, then push the power button. Have your Windows XP CD ready to begin the install. Watch the boot sequence on your screen and be ready to count beeps.

Let us know how it goes. Any questions, please ask before you try. Look for reliable guidance from folks like uddarts and other veteran posters.

By the way, I built a system from scratch in February using this 7NJL6 mobo, and I am about to buy two more 7NJL6 bundles to upgrade older systems. This board is more than capable enough for most users.

HTH!
_________________
Guy

Zilla · Guest

"Bart" <wingswheels@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:1123205911.496574.163390@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...