Build The Ultimate Custom PC (2005)

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There is plenty of software available that is specifically designed to allow you to burn-in and stress a system, but as a rule we generally find that simply leaving the system running is a great way to burn it in. It doesn’t cost you anything, and you don’t have to bother installing software. Okay, you’re not stressing the devices, and you’re not working the hard drives much but at the same time it’s a no-cost, no-fuss way to do it.

If you feel you want to give your system a thorough workout, then take a look at a product such as PassMark BurnInTest (www.passmark.com) or Sandra by SiSoftware (www.sisoftware.co.uk). Both of these will carry out comprehensive tests on your system, but you will need to install software on it, which takes additional time. They will also cost around $50 — for software that you might only use once.

What we do is fire the system up and then enter the BIOS screen (by pressing Del or F2 key generally, there will be an on-screen prompt for this at the beginning). Then we locate the screen that displays the CPU and system temperature and leave it on that. This allows us to do two things:

Leave the system running

Monitor system temperature

Watch the temperature display and see what happens. If the CPU cooling system is working fine, you will find that the temperature will rise and then level out quickly. There are no hard- and-fast rules for CPU temperature as it varies between brands and models, and you are advised to visit www.amd.com or www.intel.com for details about your specific CPU.

You should leave the system running like this for at least two hours — although you should not leave the system unattended. Then shut the system down and allow it to cool down for at least half an hour before switching it on for another two-hour session. The reason for leaving it to cool between the run-in sessions is to check for component loosening as a result of the expansion and contraction due to the temperature changes as the PC is run in and switched off. Other faults, such as circuit board cracks or component manufacturing faults, can also be uncovered during the burn-in process.

This should bring to light any problems that might be lurking unseen in your system. However, problems are quite rare, and there’s a very good chance that after two two-hour burn-in sessions that you PC is functional and ready for you to use.

Congratulations! You have a working PC! A PC that you designed, planned, and built yourself!

Summary

In this chapter, you’ve fired up your PC, hopefully ready to receive the operating system. Chances are that this has gone without a hitch, but you needn’t worry if you hit a snag because chances are that the problem is due to something not being fitted right as opposed to something serious, such as a malfunctioning device.

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Don’t panic, and follow the simple steps. Chances are that this will lead you to something that’s simple to fix, such as a badly fitted cable. However, it is possible that you have a malfunctioning device that you will need to return for replacement. This can be irritating but the troubleshooting process itself can be both educational and rewarding itself.

Even if your PC seems to be working fine, it’s important to give it time to run before installing software on it — this burn-in time will give all the components time to bed in, and it might also bring to light problems with some of the components that will fail soon after their

first use.

Remember, don’t rush this stage — it’s better for component to fail now than fail when you have installed software and are using your PC!

In the next chapter, you will see how to install Windows XP onto your newly built PC.

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Consult your motherboard manual before making any changes. All BIOS options relating to your particular motherboard/BIOS configuration should be detailed in there.

Performance Tweaks

In particular, you should take a look at two performance options. These options have to do with the system defaults that are loaded into the BIOS and used to control key functions of the PC.

There are generally two performance options to choose from:

Fail-safe defaults

Optimized/performance defaults

Names vary among various BIOS setups, but as a rule you will find these two options to choose to load.

So, what’s the difference?

Well, the fail-safe default option loads values into the BIOS that are pretty much guaranteed to work no matter what. These won’t be the best defaults, but it’s the way to get your PC going.

Optimized defaults are just that — the best settings to get the best performance from your motherboard, RAM, and CPU. The problem with this setting is that being performancerelated you might experience problems with instabilities, and you’ll need to tweak certain settings to overcome these problems.

Choosing between the settings is easy. Use the cursor keys to navigate to the setting you need, then press Enter and move to the option to “Save & Exit Setup” before pressing Enter again to confirm that you want to carry out the operation.

We recommend that initially you access the BIOS and choose the safe defaults for the BIOS. This will give you good performance without the chance of problems resulting from pushing components to their limit.

Of course, you might want to try to get the optimum performance from your PC and go with the optimized/performance settings straight away. No problem! Go ahead and select this and see what happens. There’s a good chance that everything will work just fine. However, if you find that your machine becomes unstable, crashes, and hangs a lot then reenter the BIOS and select the fail-safe defaults to see if that solves the problems you’re having.

Operational Tweaks

Finally, you need to carry out a few important operational tweaks to the BIOS.

There are a number of changes that you might want to try out and experiment with. Here are just a few ideas of changes that you can examine. We’ll provide information relating to a particular type of BIOS (a Pheonix Award BIOS) here. Remember that your BIOS may be different and the layout unfamiliar, so consult your manual for precise details.

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The details below refer to the Award BIOS. Your BIOS may vary. Consult the motherboard manual for details.

Boot Order

Your PC can boot up using information from a number of locations. The three most common are:

Hard drive

Optical drive

Floppy drive

A good tip is to set the optical and floppy drive to be the first and second boot devices for your PC, especially in the early stages, because it will allow you to work faster when installing your operating system from the optical drive.

To make these changes, select Advanced BIOS Features and press Enter to go into the advanced BIOS features screen. From here, you can change the first, second, and third boot device.

While setting up the PC we recommend the following settings:

First boot device: CDROM

Second boot device: Floppy

Third boot device: Hard Disk

For normal operation we recommend:

First boot device: Hard Disk

Second boot device: CDROM

Third boot device: Floppy

To save the settings, select Save & Exit Setup, press Enter again, and confirm that you want to carry out this operation.

Setting the System Time

If you enter the Standard CMOS Features, you can set the time and date for the PC. This isn’t a vital step, but it does help you keep track of files created on your system before you install the operating system.

If you are going to run Windows on your system, these settings will be changed automatically when you make changes in the Windows Date and Time utility.

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You don’t usually need to Save & Exit Setup to make the time and date setting permanent in the BIOS.

Other Settings and Tweaks

The BIOS contains a whole host of settings and tweaks that you can alter. We’re not going to cover them all here because there are so many and they vary between BIOS makers. We suggest that after you have spent some time with your PC you sit down and read through the motherboard manual. You can then spend some time experimenting with your BIOS settings. Some examples of changes that you might like to change include:

Enabling the hard drive S.M.A.R.T. fault detection routine.

Don’t forget to set a system password. (Don’t forget this! Most motherboards have a jumper that you can change the setting on to erase the password in the event that you do forget it, so the security offered by this is limited.)

Disable support for the floppy drive controller (if you don’t have one installed).

You can make these changes at any time to your system, either before or after installing your operating system.

Here are just a few tips to help keep you out of trouble when making BIOS changes:

Make a note of what the original values are before you change them!

Make only one change at a time — that way if you have a problem you’ll know it’s because of the last thing you did and you can easily fix it.

Keep notes of all the changes you make in case you want to roll back to earlier settings (or you can reload the defaults).

Loading the Operating System

Now we come to the step of installing the operating system on the PC. After this step, your PC will be ready for you to take over control and install applications and make changes to it as you see fit.

In this section, we are going to take you through the process of installing Microsoft Windows XP Professional onto a bare machine. This is a version of Windows XP that contains all the updates and changes up to and including Service Pack 2 (known as SP2).

The steps outlined here will also apply to other versions of Windows XP, including Windows XP Home and versions that don’t have SP2 integrated.

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Make sure that you have the operating system CD along with the product key that you need to enter during the installation process. You will find the product key on the back of the cardboard CD holder in which the CD is supplied.

Installing Windows XP

Having made the necessary alterations to the boot device order in the system BIOS, you begin the installation of Windows XP by putting the CD in the drive and rebooting the PC Just either press the On/Off button or the reset button. At this stage, you’re not going to harm anything by pressing the off switch on the PC while it’s in use.

Beginning the Setup Process

With no boot information on the hard drive, the system will detect the boot information on the CD and begin the boot up and installation process automatically, as shown in Figure 17-1. (This assumes you’re starting with a blank hard disk. If your hard disk already contains boot information, possibly from a previous installation, you will be offered the option to boot up from the CD by pressing any key.)

FIGURE 17-1: Setup process begins automatically.

The initial stage of copying files and drivers off of the CD onto the PC will take a few minutes. Along the bottom of the screen, a status line will display as to what Windows is doing (although if this comes across as gibberish to you, don’t worry, you don’t need to know this stuff and there isn’t going to be a test!). See Figures 17-2 through 17-4.

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FIGURE 17-2: File copy begins.

FIGURE 17-3: Setup process keeps you informed.

1.After this file copy process has finished, you will be faced with the Welcome to Setup screen and given three options (see Figure 17-5):

■Set up Windows

■Repair Windows

■Quit setup

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FIGURE 17-4: Setup hands off to the Windows Setup Wizard.

FIGURE 17-5: Setup options.

You need to choose to set up Windows on your new PC, so press Enter to continue with this.

2.Next, you will need to agree to the licensing agreement displayed (see Figure 17-6). Read this and press F8 if you agree and want to continue or press Esc if you don’t agree and want to abort the setup.

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FIGURE 17-6: Agreeing to the license agreement.

3.After this the Windows XP Setup Wizard will detect your empty hard drive. Because the hard drive will be unformatted, the next step is to choose the hard drive and partition it to give Windows XP the space needed to install the Windows operating system (see Figure 17-7). Choose the unpartitioned space displayed for Disk 0 (the first hard drive — if you only have one hard drive then this will be the only option).

FIGURE 17-7: Choosing where to install Windows.