goofy shutdown/restart (WinXP, of course!) - [now new build]

[dissent]

Thanks Krom. Should I be concerned that I am not getting a single beep when the system powers up? Everything seems to come up and I get to the BIOS screen just fine; well, except for the 2 Seagate drives that I have to move their SATA connectors when I get home after work. Does getting to the BIOS screen imply that the POST was successful?

[AceCombat]

OK, I see where the blue and the black SATA ports on the board run through the Platform Controller Hub. So what is the "discrete controller" that the gray SATA port is supposed to connect to? Just curious.

according to Intel. the Blue and Grey are SATA III 6GBPS, and the Black ones are the SATA I/II 1.5/3 GBPS



and to answer your latest question, yes, if you can get to BIOS Setup, you have a successful POST.


now why your seagate drives are not showing up? what drives are they? SATA I/II/III ? but that "SHOULD" not matter, as when you plug a older SATA device into a Newer SATA port its supposed to be backwards compatible with SATA I and II if the port is a III.

[dissent]

the seagate drives are these -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148725

The Intel docs say that the blue and the black SATA ports run through the PCH, and the gray SATA port "SATA 6.0 Gb/s connector through a Marvel 88SE9172 controller (gray)".

Surprise - I have no idea what that means. What's the difference if it runs through the Platform Controller Hub or the Marvel controller?

EDIT - I gather from the seagate drive manual that since it supports SATA transfer rates of 6.0/3.0/1.5 that I can go ahead and plug them into the black SATA plugs on the mobo, rated at 3 GB/s - I just won't get higher than a 3 GB/s transfer rate. Still leave me wondering how to get access to the other (gray) SATA ports.

[Krom]

The gray ports are through a different controller that will only be accessible once windows is installed because it needs drivers. (And there is no reason to use them unless you have to.)

[dissent]

ahhhh! tyvm! I guess that explains why the Barracudas didn't show up in the BIOS config screen.

[dissent]

OK, with one of the good RAM sticks in slot 1, I went ahead and installed windows 7 on the ssd in the new build. Install went fine. Then I reconnected the SATA cables to the 2 seagate hdd's and they show up just fine now in the config page of the bios. The I flashed the intel board bios from the 0057 version to the latest 0094 version - went off without a hitch.

However, I don't see the two seagate hhd's listed in windows when I click on Start > Computer. Do I need to format those two drives before they'll show up as usable storage?

EDIT - hmm, I guess so - Computer Management > Disk Management, then partition and format.

OK.

[dissent]

well the disk formats will take a while, but it seems everything is mostly working.

woohoo!! Thanks Krom, Ace and Heretic for your help. I'll probably run into a few more items, I expect, but so far so good.

This is terrific! Where do I go to apply for my geek merit badge??

[Krom]

Next time use quick format, it only takes a few seconds (and full formats are usually not necessary, especially with new drives).

[dissent]

Hey Krom, that list of components you gave me is working out fine. I didn't used to think that my old Dell box made all that much noise, but this Rosewill case, PSU and CPU cooler are way, way quieter. Very neat.

[Krom]

Yeah, quiet is one of the things I usually aim for in a build, listening to PC fans at anything higher than a faint and low frequency hum got pretty old a couple decades ago. It still surprises me how noisy a lot of the Dell desktops that are still shipping are, and what makes it even worse is they are that noisy while still only barely managing to have adequate cooling. Granted some of that is because of the smaller form factors than a tower like you picked up, having more room gives a lot more flexibility in getting it to shut up without compromising cooling performance.

[AceCombat]

unless im not listening to my headphones, i couldnt care what level of noise my fans make, because i have closed ear headphones LOL!!!!

Where do I go to apply for my geek merit badge??

http://www.comptia.org

[Krom]

I have closed headphones too, but I don't listen to them so loud that it could drown out even a moderately noisy PC fan. The point of having good headphones is so you don't have to crank the volume up to stupid levels.

Not to mention most people who build a machine like this have to live with it for years, so if it has an obnoxious CPU cooler or case fan the annoyance will add up to rather a lot over that kind of life span. And last time I checked, most people spend the majority of their time at the PC not wearing headphones, especially in a machine that has only basic gaming features like that one. He could end up using this PC to watch movies or something, and a wailing CPU fan wouldn't work too well in that case.

So basically "I have closed headphones lolsnort" is a really bad reason to ignore the potential noise level during a build.

[dissent]

I often listen to music when I'm working on the pc, but never with headphones.

OK, so now I want to optimize the ssd and hdd usage (avoiding excessive writes to the ssd, storing all data on the hdd's, etc.) What are your favorite things to do for this or favorite web sites that describe the procedures? When I get around to installing my other apps over the next few days, they usually let you specify a storage location for data files during setup, but what about Windows7 itself, IE, stuff like that?

[AceCombat]

dont get me wrong, my rig is usualy quiet unless im gaming, which is the primary reason for its build. but anyway i needed a good laugh, TY Krom.


Dissent, go read the SSD Megathread that Krom created...... lots of helpful tips in there.

[Krom]

I often listen to music when I'm working on the pc, but never with headphones.

OK, so now I want to optimize the ssd and hdd usage (avoiding excessive writes to the ssd, storing all data on the hdd's, etc.) What are your favorite things to do for this or favorite web sites that describe the procedures? When I get around to installing my other apps over the next few days, they usually let you specify a storage location for data files during setup, but what about Windows7 itself, IE, stuff like that?

The only things you should bother to keep off the SSD are pictures, music, videos, and games. Pretty much everything else can be left alone to default install on the SSD, all programs, browsers, documents, etc. Granted, with pictures, games and the like, anything under a few gigabytes you can leave on the SSD just for convenience sake, but the long term goal is to try and keep the SSD at no more than half full, which will keep the drives performance optimal at all times.

As for endurance. For example, my own SSD is a 160 GB Intel SSD 320, I've been using for around than 1 year now and it has accumulated a total of 1.2 TB of writes. The MINIMUM endurance of the flash memory in my drive is 3000 P/E cycles, which would be the equivalent of 468 TB of writes (the drives often survive a good bit more than 3000 cycles). So at the current rate of endurance exhaustion on my drive it would require a minimum of ~350 years for it to run out. So put all thoughts of the flash endurance out of your mind and never think of it again, it takes serious and deliberate effort to make one of these drives wear out quickly and even then it will still take a couple years.

[dissent]

Yeah Ace, well ya see, I read through the SSD Megathread ( a couple times, actually (although we shouldn't assume I understood everything I read )) . . . but then I kept on reading, via Google. See, now I'm just to the point where I have enough information that I can be a danger to myself (and others)).

http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/sean ... -ssds-hdds

http://www.auslogics.com/en/articles/ss ... rformance/

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/284934-32-tips-users

I started to read through a couple things like these, and then even ran across some folks who were making a big deal about moving their User folders off of the SSD. Sounds like I should just take a few deep breaths and run with what I have. Thanks guys.

[dissent]

Where do I go to apply for my geek merit badge??

http://www.comptia.org

heh. I don't think I should get my hopes up. Maybe I can just get a hat.

[Krom]

Yeah Ace, well ya see, I read through the SSD Megathread ( a couple times, actually (although we shouldn't assume I understood everything I read )) . . . but then I kept on reading, via Google. See, now I'm just to the point where I have enough information that I can be a danger to myself (and others)).

http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/sean ... -ssds-hdds

http://www.auslogics.com/en/articles/ss ... rformance/

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/284934-32-tips-users

I started to read through a couple things like these, and then even ran across some folks who were making a big deal about moving their User folders off of the SSD. Sounds like I should just take a few deep breaths and run with what I have. Thanks guys.

Most of the info in these articles is a bit outdated and doesn't apply to your system. Basically if you let Windows 7 configure and install itself on the SSD normally, everything described in these articles is unnecessary.

The only thing I usually confirm before installing Windows is that the drive is on a proper native SATA port which is in AHCI mode, but I do the same for mechanical hard drives as well (since they also benefit significantly from being in AHCI mode).

*****************************************************

dont get me wrong, my rig is usualy quiet unless im gaming, which is the primary reason for its build. but anyway i needed a good laugh, TY Krom.


Dissent, go read the SSD Megathread that Krom created...... lots of helpful tips in there.

My machine is quiet, especially when I'm gaming. No leaf blower GPUs allowed.

[AceCombat]

hehehehe. i only turn mine on to 85% when im playing BF3

[dissent]

Buggers. After flashing the Intel board bios from 0057 to 0094 (the most recent), I still can't get that second stick of Crucial memory to run in the board - same memory error and 32 post code. Chat with Crucial rep suggested doing the flash BIOS update first. Could it just be a bad memory slot? (Both stick booted fine in the DIMM1 slot). Someone on the Intel community boards suggested I try putting the second stick in the DIMM3 slot - what do you guys think of that suggestion? Why are there two different kinds of memory slots on these boards?

[Krom]

What color slots did you put the memory in?

[AceCombat]

there not two different kinds, just colors=channels

[dissent]

DIMM1 and DIMM2 are the blue slots - these are the ones I used. The other two slots are black.

DIMM 3 (Channel A DIMM 0)
DIMM 1 (Channel A DIMM 1)
DIMM 4 (Channel B DIMM 0)
DIMM 2 (Channel B DIMM 1)

So it's one stick in Channel A and 1 stick in Channel B then? Or have I misread this?

[Krom]

Yeah, that is the way it is supposed to be. However you could try the second stick in slot 3 or 4 just to see if the system works with both sticks. IIRC according to some Intel documentation the system won't post if there isn't a dimm in slot 1 though. But if you have verified that both memory sticks work when they are in slot 1, I'd start to think it could be a problem with slot 2 (or possibly the controller on the CPU, gotta check all the bases).

The memory frequency, voltage and timings should be on automatic in BIOS, but it wouldn't hurt to check and make sure they are set correctly. Although I doubt incorrect values would cause this kind of symptom (bad settings would usually still fail even with only a single module installed).

[dissent]

Yeah, that is the way it is supposed to be. However you could try the second stick in slot 3 or 4 just to see if the system works with both sticks.

yeah, someone on the thread I have on the Intel community boards suggested this as well. I'll try it.

IIRC according to some Intel documentation the system won't post if there isn't a dimm in slot 1 though. But if you have verified that both memory sticks work when they are in slot 1, I'd start to think it could be a problem with slot 2 (or possibly the controller on the CPU, gotta check all the bases).

The memory frequency, voltage and timings should be on automatic in BIOS, but it wouldn't hurt to check and make sure they are set correctly. Although I doubt incorrect values would cause this kind of symptom (bad settings would usually still fail even with only a single module installed).

Last time I was in BIOS it looked like the voltages were reading about where they were supposed to be, but I'll check again. How would I check the controller on the CPU? What parameters are involved? Then again, if I can just have the thing running like it has over the last few days, I'm not going to get all bent out of shape if I can't use slot 2 if I can get the memory to work without it.

also found this -

http://www.intel.com/support/motherboar ... 011965.htm

however, single channel with 2 dimms is not one of their examples.

[Krom]

Unfortunately the only way to tell if it is the memory controller on the CPU is to try a different CPU. However there are plenty more things that can go wrong with the motherboard than the CPU, so I'd usually look there first.

[dissent]

There ya go. I plugged the other 4GB DIMM into the DIMM3 slot and the machine booted up fine, recognizing the 8GB memory total.

I think I'll run with this for a while and see where it gets me.