I am afraid :(

[Abraxus#]

I have spent a huge amount of time over the last few weeks researching my new build and I ordered everything this week hopefully to arrive in time for my birthday next tuesday.

I have also read up about how to put everything together and I was feeling pretty confident until today when I was reading this thread (http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=95501&highlight=commando) about the motherboard I have sitting here ready to be fitted. Suffice to say there are a huge number of problems, with ram, power supplies, heat issues, poor quality control etc.

The reason that i'm feeling so negative is that having never built a pc before I will have no idea what to do if something goes wrong, which seems highly likely. I was under the impression that you could pretty much buy all the compatable bits and slap 'em together and they would work.
I have spent over £600 (>$1000) on this stuff and I really can't afford to buy/ replace anything more if it all goes tits up.

For example, I got some Geil PC6400ultra C4 ram but I have heard of problems booting as it requires higher voltage than default for the mobo, but I cant afford any cheap ram to boot from.
Also my psu is a 420 watt tagan with 22A on the 12 volt rail, the mobo manual says this should be fine (for an E6600, 8800gts320, 2x1gb, 1 sata hdd) but most people seem to have way over this wattage, how will I know if it is a psu issue if something doesn't work?

The worst thing is that a dont have access to another pc to try and solve any issues that arise. If I have to send something to be replaced I would be without a pc for weeks and I have important work to do.

At the moment I am thinking about just cancelling all my orders and giving up on this upgrading malarky, it is way too expensive and way too stressful.

What percentage of big upgrades go without a hitch? What should I do? HELP!



God-damn, and now I've gone and put this in completely the wrong forum....grrrrr

[methimpikehoses]

I have spent a huge amount of time over the last few weeks researching my new build and I ordered everything this week hopefully to arrive in time for my birthday next tuesday.

I have also read up about how to put everything together and I was feeling pretty confident until today when I was reading this thread (http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=95501&highlight=commando) about the motherboard I have sitting here ready to be fitted. Suffice to say there are a huge number of problems, with ram, power supplies, heat issues, poor quality control etc.

The reason that i'm feeling so negative is that having never built a pc before I will have no idea what to do if something goes wrong, which seems highly likely. I was under the impression that you could pretty much buy all the compatable bits and slap 'em together and they would work.
I have spent over £600 (>$1000) on this stuff and I really can't afford to buy/ replace anything more if it all goes tits up.

For example, I got some Geil PC6400ultra C4 ram but I have heard of problems booting as it requires higher voltage than default for the mobo, but I cant afford any cheap ram to boot from.
Also my psu is a 420 watt tagan with 22A on the 12 volt rail, the mobo manual says this should be fine (for an E6600, 8800gts320, 2x1gb, 1 sata hdd) but most people seem to have way over this wattage, how will I know if it is a psu issue if something doesn't work?

Don't let 1 thread kill your upgrade. The commando is a good board, but like all other boards, it isn't perfect. Your PSU should be fine for that setup, at least at stock settings. If you are overclocking your cpu and gpu a ton, you might have a few errors, but I doubt it.

When you boot the mobo for the first time, it will be running RAM and CPU on "auto" timings, which should be fine. My ASUS P5B-E detected the wrong timings for all 3 sets of RAM of tried on it, but it still boots to BIOS and you can tweak it to spec later.


The worst thing is that a dont have access to another pc to try and solve any issues that arise. If I have to send something to be replaced I would be without a pc for weeks and I have important work to do.

Finish your project first, then try your build?



At the moment I am thinking about just cancelling all my orders and giving up on this upgrading malarky, it is way too expensive and way too stressful.

What percentage of big upgrades go without a hitch? What should I do? HELP!


Just take your time and put it together as you have researched it. Don't be in a hurry and don't get stressed... you should enjoy putting together a kicka$$ system.

I would recommend putting a few things on a thumb drive to have just in case you need it:

-the newest BIOS from the ASUS website
-the LAN drivers for your mobo from ASUS

And you might want to have some printed specs of your RAM and CPU just in case you need to tweak them in the BIOS to get things started off stable.

I did my first build a few weeks ago and it went very smoothly, despite my anxiety about it. I actually forgot to plug in my 8800GTS when I first booted, and it screamed at me for power for a second until I figured out what was wrong!

Best advice is to take your time and relax! (nana2)

[PSYCHODAD]

Best advice is to take your time and relax! (nana2)
:thumbsup:

[Abraxus#]

Cheers for that, the thought of how much money I could waste if I mess something up is the worst thing. I guess i'll just try and take it easy.

The problem with reading forums is that you get all the people with bad experiences in one place, its really easy to get paranoid even if you know that is the case. In was freaking out a bit with the mobo becasue it was really badly packaged and the plastic container had a bit of damage to the corner when I got it out. As I'm waiting till tuesday to build I wont be able to send it back with the 'distance selling' act if something is wrong. I'll just keep my fingers crossed.:headexplode: