MSRP $1400

I recently built a new computer, a process which took around 2 months. In the end, though, it’s still not done, so expect updates frequently. I’ll start off by the components I got. The reason I won’t state the prices for each of these, is simple – they change. The time I got them is certainly different than what they are now. The easiest way to check prices is to check out either www.ibuyer.net, or www.pricewatch.com, which are two of my favorites.

[image missing]
Here is my case, before we start.

• Athlon 700Mhz
• Abit KA7-100 Motherboard
• (2) 128MB PC133 Crucial (Micron) CAS3 SDRAM
• SB Live! Value
• Sony Multiscan e400 Monitor
• MS Intellitype Pro Keyboard
• MS Intellimouse Explorer Mouse
• Antec SX1030 SOHO File Server (The case)
• Freespeed Pro (GFD)
• Athlon Freezer Pro (Heat sink & Fan)
• Card Cooler
• (2) Sunon Quiet 80MM fans
• (4) 80MM Fan filters
• Kenwood 62X TrueX CD-ROM
• 3D Blaster TNT2 Ultra
• Western Digital 20.5GB 7200RPM Caviar Hard Drive

[image missing]
Badabing-Badaboom, motherboard and RAM are in!

The rest of the hardware (like the floppy disk drive for example) is not even worth mentioning. After all the products arrived at my house, it was time to assemble! Assembling a computer is pretty simple. If you have never done it before, just follow this guide closely, and you should be on the right track. Remember if you have a problem, feel free to post it in the Forum, and I will answer it personally.

[image missing]
Whabam! Processor, all the cards, and the pimped out card cooler are in now.

The first thing you do is screw the motherboard into the case. This is pretty simple, just put the little riser screws in the right holes on the motherboard, line up the motherboard and the risers and screw them together with the screws that came with your motherboard. After that is done, you are ready to start putting in the components.

Some people say its best to put the fewest components in (video card, hard drive) and install windows, then add the components one by one and let windows install each one separately. Frankly, I don’t have the kind of time for this, and this should really only be done if you are having serious compatibility problems in your system. In this case, we will just put all the cards, hard drives, CD-ROMs and everything in at once. Make sure to plug in your RAM securely, and it’s a good idea to put your ram in the first slots on your motherboard. The highest signal strength starts from ram slot 0 and degrades from there on out. Of course if you have 4 DIMM modules, then it wouldn’t make a difference, but we had two DIMMs, so we put them in slot 0 and 1 on this motherboard.

[image missing]
Now, we put the cover back on, and everything should be fine and dandy, right?

After you get all the cards installed, make sure to secure them in, and then put screw the card cooler on top of the graphics card. If your case uses drive rails like mine did, then make sure to put them on correctly (duh) and the drive should just slide in. If you are having problems sliding your drive in, you most likely have the drive rails installed the wrong way.

[image missing]
Turn it on, and this is what I see – nada!

Now we have to hook up all the inside components. Just plug in what you need to a power chord. It’s a good idea to think about how you’re going to hook everything up before you do it, otherwise it gets to be a big mess of wires inside your case. Once you have everything hooked up for power, its time to run the IDE cable. On this motherboard, we hooked up two IDE cables, one going to the hard drive, and one going to the CD-ROM. Then we set the jumpers on both the hard drive and CD-ROM as master devices.

[image missing]
I recheck everything, get her to boot up, and Win2K wont load. So I run a Win98 startup disk. If you look closely, you will see that the disk identifies my CD-ROM as a banana. Oh boy. This is no joke, either.

Now that we have the inside components installed, it’s time to hook everything up. Hook the monitor up to the graphics card, plug in the monitor, and plug in the computer. Last but not least, plug in the rest of your peripherals, mouse, keyboard, printer, speakers, external modems, whatever you might have. It is smart to use a surge protector for your computer, in case you haven’t heard. It is also a good idea to get a battery backup, not just to save your computer if power goes out, but to help during brown outs, or time when power is there, but just not enough. Surprisingly this happens fairly often, and can ruin computer hardware. But if you are cheap like me, then you probably don’t care =).

Boot up, set your BIOS options. Expect an article soon about how to tweak the Abit KA7-100/KA7 for best speed performance and stability. We will save the over clocking until later. Stick a Windows 98 startup disk in, and boot up. Run FDISK and make your partition, remember to make it Primary, and full size. Then it should make the partition. Reboot, and format C:. Now you are ready to install the operating system. Run the setup file from your CD-ROM drive, of course this part varies depending on which OS you choose. After Windows is installed you are ready to rock.

Driver time, baby. Install all drivers. The newest VIA 4-in-1 drivers are located at http://www.via.com.tw, make sure you grab the AGP driver, too. After all your stuff is installed, its time to begin over clocking!

Depending on which GFD you own, the directions may differ. For this computer, we are using the Freespeed Pro. If you read my review of the KA7-100, you will see how displeased I am by the way the BIOS handles the voltages. To start off, auto detect voltage doesn’t really mean auto. You have to set the GFD to a real voltage of a real CPU. In the case of Athlon CPU’s the highest voltage is 1.8 volts by default on a 1GHz chip. So I set Freespeed pro to 1.8 volts, and set it to 700MHz, the same speed as my processor. Then boot into the BIOS, set the cache ID to 2/5, and set voltage to 1.95 volts. If you read my review of the KA7-100 you will see why we need to do it this way, instead of just telling the Freespeed to do it. Once that is set, power down, change the jumpers to 850Mhz, and power on up. Now it should be running at 2.0 volts and 850Mhz, pretty jazzy, eh?

To not bore you to death, that is about it as far as my computer goes. Pretty soon I’m going to get another hard drive and test out the raid functions on the High-Point controller. Check back soon!