Help with 1st time Build

[forlorn_ronin]

I am currently wondering about a few issues before I power up for the 1st time.

1.) I noticed pins on the back left hand side of my optical drives stating Digital Audio. Do I need those cables? If so where do I find them? One is for a DVDROM and the other a CDRW.

2.) I have bought a sweet ATI AIW X800XT AGP. Do I install that before I boot up for the first time? Or do I boot up get settings straight and then Power down to install and reboot? Also if I do not install upon 1st power up what things should I consider as far as settings in my mobo for my AGP vid card?

3.) At what point do I install windows?

4.) I have a diskette with SATA drivers. HOw or when do I install this? Is it necessary? My hard drive is an 80gig sata seagate barracuda.

I really appreciate the help up to this point. Everyone rocks on this board. Hope all is going well for everybody. Can't wait to check back. Answer any or all of the questions that you are sure about!

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

1: You need to worry about the jumper pins, but with modern drives you DO NOT need to worry about the audio cables.

2: Put your video card in first thing, dont power on until it is on.

3: You install windows after everything is togehter which is basicly first thing

4: Windows has a thing on the top of the screen that says "PRESS f6 TO INSTALL SATA OR SCSI DRIVERS NOW". Press f6 than

 

[forlorn_ronin]

Hi CHris! Well ok so I don't need to worry about the pins on the back of the optical drives for digital audio then. But, what do I have to look for with the jumper pins? I noticed on my mobo that there is a spot for cd audio and aux audio. Don't these get matched up with the spots on the optical drives? If not then how do i get the digital audio? Through the ide port where they are hooked up?

4.) I am in the process of hooking up this card and it has a cable with three hook ups. One goes in the card, one in the power supply, and the other in the hard drive. Well do I need to hook it through the hard drive. The connector they have now goes to an IDE hard drive. I have Sata. Is it necessary to connect it to my sata hard drive or is it all ok because they both are hooked into the board?

Thanks Chris.

 

[dale5605]

First of all forget completely about the audio cables. You won't have any use for them.
Your CD drives/burners/DVD/whatever will connect to the motherboard with an IDE cable. So the only thing that should be plugged into each drive is a 4 pin power connector and an IDE lead.
Your hard drive will use a 4 pin power connector or a 5 pin SATA power connector (preferred) and an SATA connector that goes to the motherboard.

Since you have only one drive you do not need to use that floppy to install the RAID drivers during setup, so forget about that.

And have the video card all connected when you boot up. After you install windows download the latest catalyst drivers from ati.com (I believe this is version 5.4) and install them.

 

[forlorn_ronin]

Ok dale great news on the optical drives, but I don't quite understand this cable I got with my X800XT card. This is the setup. There are 3 connectors on one cable that came with the X800XT. One goes to the card. Got that ok. One goes to the power supply. Cool got that. But, bad news, the last connector will not fit into my SATA drive. It is a large 4 pin female connector. It shows it going to the hard drive. Bad news is there isn't anywhere on my sata hard drive for it to fit. Is it necessary to hook this up? My thinking is that they are both tied into the motherboard aren;t they connected through the board? If this won't work then will I need an adapter? If so where do I find this? Thanks Dale you are awesome! Your the only one whose helped me the whole way through this! Thanks man.

 

[idiotec]

One goes to the card. Got that ok. One goes to the power supply. Cool got that. But, bad news, the last connector will not fit into my SATA drive. It is a large 4 pin female connector. It shows it going to the hard drive.

It gives you a connector like that so you can share the line from the PSU. You do not need to use it. The reason it does not fit your hdd is because the power connector for an SATA drive is different.

 

[dale5605]

idiotec might be right, I'm having trouble understanding what you mean. The video card plugs into the AGP slot, then a regular old 4 pin power connector connects into the back of the video card. That is all you need to do with the video card. There are extra cables that come with it but only to convert to different types of plugs. I don't think you need any of those converters. The one that breaks off into 3 things is probably your S-video cable, that is used for hooking your card to a TV, nothing to do with the motherboard.

To summarize, stick video card in AGP slot, tighten in place, connect 4 pin power connector from the power supply to the video card.
That should be it. You don't need to worry about any other connectors because odds are you will have no use whatsoever for them.

Hope that clears things up. I know you are a beginner at this stuff so just remember that not every single cable and connector you get do you have to find a place for, only that ones you need.