I decided to present myself a challenge: could I build, install, and fully test a new Main Tower build in the three days that I was on the ground at home before flying out again on Sunday. It was no small pill. Last year's main tower design was built on a Gigabyte Motherboard of an ULi chipset. It hosted an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and 4GB of Mushkin Enhanced performance RAM. I had been very happy with the performance of the Athlon, the machine having been my primary video ripping and encoding machine since it had the fastest dual-core processor and the most memory of any machine in the house.

It's weakness was in graphics; since I had just bought a VisionTek Xtacy Radeon X850XT Platinum Edition (AGP 8X) 3 months before the processor upgrade, I felt obliged to get my money's worth out of the video card, which meant going with the Gigabyte board as it was one of the few on the market that could host the newer dual-core processors, but still had an AGP slot. However, for the last 18 months thereafter, that meant never being able to upgrade my video card unless I was willing to also upgrade the motherboard in order to get a PCI-Express slot for the video card.

Finally reaching the point where I was ready for such an endeavor (having felt I got enough use out of not just the video card, but also the processor, motherboard, and memory in the main tower) it meant gutting the case of everything but hard drives, optical drives, floppy drives, and power supply...in three days. No small task.

OK, so I cheated a little; more on that later. While this post will sound mostly like a detailing of the scope of work I laid before myself to call the challenge met, it is also a presentation of some of the prudent things I have learned to do over the years of building machines. While a lot of the articles in Area 51 get into the mechanical and electrical sequence of events, the things here are designed more to aid in preservation of your sanity and ease of startup.

Back to the cheating...I used to insist on keeping a machine up and running right until I actually had the upgrade parts in my hand. As my breakdown procedure has become more involved, I have backed that out so that I have plenty of time to get myself sorted before actually starting the build. Planning a build out will truly determine the success of the event more so than the parts.

So, before taking off on the last trip and well before even ordering the parts, I backed up my pertinent data. Since I use NAS for global files, when I need to backup an individual machine, I usually just need to copy everything from the local My Documents Folder onto a local External USB Drive, or even an internal one that I just use for storage and know that I am not going to reformat. I don't spend the time sorting through it. If I put it in the My Documents folder, I probably meant to keep it; copying it ad hoc to a backup drive is a quick and easy task.

On of the key things I pat myself on the back for is finally learning to prep my software load. A new build for me means loading somewhere between 20 and 30 applications; email, browser, media suite, instant messengers, security apps, and so on. You've heard the stats of how quickly a new PC can become infested with malware following its initial hookup to the internet. I always download the most recent versions of all my desired applications BEFORE I break down the old PC, so that they are available via a local drive, preventing me from ever having to connect to the internet until I already have anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewalls installed on a new build.

OK, once this was done, I finally physically break-down the machine. I took any cords and plugs that ran behind the main tower's computer table to the back of the PC and pulled them to the front of the table, so that I could readily find and identify them when it came time to hook everything back up to the PC. For this particular upgrade, I draped any interior cables that would interfere with dropping in the new mainboard onto the outside of the case and out of the way. Since my main tower case does not have a removable motherboard tray, I tend to assemble the motherboard, processor, heat-sink and fan, and memory outside of the case, and then drop the entire assembly into the machine.

I should also mention that there are always nagging structural issues with any PC mod, whether it is a cord that hangs somewhere I do not want it to, or a component that does not work that needs to be cabled up differently or moved to a different slot. Often, if it is not a critical piece, like a floppy drive or an add-in sound card, I sometimes leave it until opportunities like this when I make a necessary adjustment to correct it. For this build one discrepancy that needed addressing was the huge amount of dust inside the case. I don't think I have ever stayed on a build for 18 months without upgrading, and certainly not with the machine remaining in the same spot, so I do not think I have ever had this much dust inside a case. A quick stop at Target on my home from the airport following the return flight to pick up some compressed air provided the tools for me to rectify this bit of housekeeping.

OK, so all of these were things I did before ever receiving the parts to do the upgrade. The job itself went surprisingly quick on the front end. Three hours from start to plug-in and initial boot-up. A few notes on things to watch in new builds with some of the current industry trends:

1. Over the last three builds, my insistence on getting an after-market heat-sink and fan assembly has gotten me into trouble. Last main tower build, the blooming onion was so big and the AGP slot so high, that the copper fins of the fan actually contacted the fan retention bracket of the video card. I stuck a piece of cardboard between the two, but I always suspected this condition as the culprit of the last 18 month's worth of random restarts. This time, my chosen HSF could only be oriented one-way to keep from being obstructed by the northbridge heatsink. The one option left has the CPU cooling fan directly below the Power Supply exhaust fan, which I am sure is why I am only able to get normal operating temps down to the low-40's (degrees Celsius), with peak temps up in the mid-50's.
2. I had to move the C: Drive, which is still a PATA drive, from its slot (the top-most internal 3.5" bay) to the bottom external 3.5" bay (which is still covered and not visible from the case exterior by its bay cover). This was because the hard drive wound up lining up directly against the back end of the new video card, which requires a 6-pin power connector; the bottom of the hard drive Molex connector was pushing down on the top of the video card power connector. I almost convinced myself it was not worth the trouble of moving the drive (I could not move it down because the IDE cable was routed into the space between the main hard drive and the backup SATA drive two spots below; this due to the horizontal alignment of the IDE ports prevalent in most mainboards being sold today, vice the previously traditional vertical alignment). The pain in moving it was that from the 3.5 inch bays, you can not simply slide a drive up or down once you have unscrewed it; brackets require you to actually slide it fully out of the rear of the non-removable drive cage (where the new honking video card was already installed and screwed down into its backplane bracket). Fortunately, I was able to tip the rear-end of the hard drive up and slide it backwards by only pulling out the ATX power connector to the mainboard, which was easy enough to re-insert.

Once I had the physical parts of the install done, I did one of the most recommended-against things in DIY building; I buttoned up the case as if I knew I had everything installed correctly. I have only done this one time before; both times I have been lucky and have not had any issues. I will normally leave the side-panel off so that I can get into the case after initial start-up to correct any discrepancies discovered, but I guess I am getting bold.

Notes on startup: I just plugged in the power, flipped the circuit breaker on the power supply and did three test starts of the system to begin with. In each of these test starts, I confirmed startup of all cooling fans, starting with the CPU fan on the first start. I used a flashlight and visually checked rotation on each of the fans. The final test start I used to verify that I had front-panel indicator lights correct and knew that I do not need to go into the case to monkey with the often begrudged front panel connector wiring harness. In each of these starts, I hit the power button, observed, and then killed power with the circuit breaker. I am not willing to let the machine run for anything more than a few seconds at a time until I am satisfied that everything inside the case is copasetic. I should admit that I did have to pull off the side-panel once, because there was an errant power-cable in front of one of the side-panel cooling fans that had to be moved out of the way. A very minor adjustment and nothing in comparison to some of the other adjustments I have had to make when building systems in the past.

The first real start, being start number four, was a BIOS check. I hit the power button and then intercepted the startup to get into BIOS and validate that the defaults settings were ok to get started or had settings that needed to be changed. Typically I have to change the boot sequence to my liking; this board, though, curiously did not have Plug-and-Play OS enabled; proof that it always pays to double-check and not assume that your BIOS' factory default settings will not cause unexplained issues during initial configuration.

The WindowsXP install went pretty good, and activation went off without a hitch. I as sure I was going to be harrased electronically about having had that XP license tagged to another machine and then asking to activate it on another, but I did not even get a prompt to confirm that I was no longer using the other machine.

Always have the machine connected to the internet for Windows activation. I did a restore of a laptop once before selling it on eBay. I had always connected wirelessly before, but of course either the wireless drivers had not been installed, or I had not established connectivity to my wireless router before Windows refused to let me into the OS until I activated it. Despite the warnings that you have 30 days to use Windows until activation, it will also block you out if you do an extensive number of restarts without activating it, which I was what happened to me during the laptop re-load. I actually had to call in to do a phone activation just to continue my setup that time, and I will tell you that there are few experiences more painful in the world than activating Windows by phone. Connect the cable, and activate the first chance you get so you don't get pestered throughout your setup.

All software installs went fine until I tried installing the drivers for my Turtle Beach Montego DDL sound card. I downloaded the drivers from the Turtle Beach site, since I could not find the CD; they installed but whenever I started the control panel, it claimed it could not detect a Montego DDL (like I mentioned before, this is one of those things I deal with during case-openings for other reasons; next opportunity, I'll move the card to a different slot and see if the drivers work). I tried to force the hardware recognition by doing a manual install and pointing the Add Hardware Wizard at the drivers from the download. I got a BSOD and restart; nothing heart-stopping at that point; until I realized that my optical drives had uninstalled themselves and Windows refused to load the drivers, claiming that they had been erased or were corrupted.

Fortunately (hint!!!hint!!!) I had several systems restore points during the install so I just rolled back to a state before having tried to install the Montego drivers. The optical drives came back, and I decided to re-enable and use the onboard sound instead.

A few other things I do in the course of bringing a new system online:

In addition to loading all of my desired applications and hardware drivers, I also load some monitoring and diagnostic software, namely Speedfan and CPU Burn-In. I use Speedfan to dis-spell my biggest fear when I put a system together myself; namely that I incorrectly applied the thermal paste between the CPU and Heat-Sink and Fan and that CPU is down there burning itself to a crisp. I also run CPU Burn-In for 3-4 hours to validate system integrity and endurance. I then load all of my games. I figure if a system can stay up during the Windows install, Drivers install, software load, burn-in, and gameload, it should be considered checked out and approved for normal use.

The burn-in is what finally seals the layer between the heat-sink and the CPU; any air between the two in that layer is a place where no cooling is occurring for the CPU, potentially leading to a thermal failure of the processor. After a three or four hour burn in, you should see the Speedfan temps you were originally seeing drop another 5 degrees or so as everything settles in. (Next Day Update: My idle temps were around the mid-40's and have since dropped to the high-30s after burn-in.)

After the overnight burn-in and the following day's game loadout, my final requirement is that the machine go through three sessions of normal use and initial benchmarks. Tonight is the first of those sessions. I've done two hours of gaming, typed this article, made an iTunes library backup, downloaded the GRAW 2 demo, and played two hours of iTunes with the visualizer on, as well as run the system through 3dMark06. A couple more days of this and I'll be prepared to give this machine its operating license.

I reckon everyone wants to know what I upgraded to so here's the list of new components added:

Asus P5NE-SLI Motherboard, Intel E6700 Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz CPU, 2 x 1GB DDR2 800MHz Mushkin Enhanced Performance RAM, ZEROtherm BTF90 92mm CPU Cooler, eVGA GeForce 8800GTS 320MB Video Card.

While it was not intended to be part of this upgrade, I could not consciously hook all of those good components into the mediocre monitor and other topside components I was running at the time. So those also got replaced with:

LG 19" Widescreen LCD Monitor, Bose Companion II 2.0 Speaker System, Logitech G5 3200dPI Laser Mouse.

Last thing on temps is my typical idle to normal operating temps following burn-in and the first night of typical use are in the really low-40's. I'm talking 40 or 41 under the multi-tasking scenario I described up above. Under gaming, temps are only getting into the mid-to high 40's. Looks like we have a good seal. (Next Day Update: Core 0 and Core 1 are now idling (and idle for me is typing this article and running iTunes in the background) at 34 and 35 degrees respectively...guess I can't complain anymore. Gaming temps are in the mid-40's, so I guess all's good.