LarryBeemer wrote:
I think I have it all assembled now but I can't fire it up just yet.
Larry, I enjoy your progress reports. I always felt the need to muck with machine innards since my first job in 1978. As EB-1 said, a vanilla PC build should take a leisurely one hour. My last build was a gaming rig for my teen daughter—and I had her do all the work (under my guidance). Even more remarkable, I ordered all the parts including the nVidia card from Amazon on Saturday, and everything arrived for assembly on Sunday. This was an impossible scenario in 1990! I downloaded retail Win10 from the MS web site in minutes. Admittedly, that OS install took hours, so some things never change.
rico wrote:
Larry, I enjoy your progress reports. I always felt the need to muck with machine innards since my first job in 1978. As EB-1 said, a vanilla PC build should take a leisurely one hour. My last build was a gaming rig for my teen daughter—and I had her do all the work (under my guidance). Even more remarkable, I ordered all the parts including the nVidia card from Amazon on Saturday, and everything arrived for assembly on Sunday. This was an impossible scenario in 1990! I downloaded retail Win10 from the MS web site in minutes. Admittedly, that OS install took hours, so some things never change. ...Show more →
Thanks for following along Rico.
I am guilty of overthinking things sometimes. My history with this type of thing would suggest I am wise to do so. And yet...I keep trying.
I am cautiously hopeful when it comes time to mash the power button for the first time. As long as the only problems are that I didn't plug something in properly (or at all) and not frying these exceptionally overpriced components...I'll call it a win.
Well, congrats on the build! Installing the OS and the software is truly the infuriating part. I've done three builds and none of them were painless during the software install part.
Good on you Larry, sounds like you are just about there.
I really enjoy building machines for fun. I've found is easier for me to get everything together before I start. I've also gotten to the point where getting the wiring really neat is quite important. That becomes a challenge when a lot of case fans are involved.
There is a whole lot of satisfaction when you turn on the power and the computer actually POST'S.
Good luck with the build - enjoy the hell out of it.
Oscarsmadness wrote:
Well, congrats on the build! Installing the OS and the software is truly the infuriating part. I've done three builds and none of them were painless during the software install part.
Some time ago, during a build I started making baseline images of my system drive, one after the OS is installed/configured and another, final image after all the software is loaded (this always entails a few intermediate images just in case things go sideways). When it's time for a new machine, I load the pristine image onto the new drive and fire away. It's almost magic the way Windows can configure itself to accommodate new hardware. The last build was from Intel (3770k) to AMD (5600X) with no glitches or hiccups and virtually no tedious loading and tweaking.
@Ho1972 That's a nice trick, although I'm surprised Windows didn't blow a gasket. MS is so anal about their IP, and don't you forget to pay, and we're counting every copy you install. I do use the machine image method to build or restore Linux boot file systems: so fast and easy in the SSD era.
I remember installing Windows 7 on a NVME drive back when Windows 7 didn't support NVME as a bootable disk. That was a lot of work. Windows definitely blew a gasket and I almost did too. But it was totally worth it.
I need to try that trick. I'm fed up with the endless install-reboot-install loop.
Windows 10 is quite resilient to moving between machines. You can run it a few days without activation and then use a new license.
Windows 7 was before the NVMe protocol. In the early 2010s there were some PCIe SSDs in NGFF (later called M.2) that were not NVMe and still AHCI. The NVMe SSDs required a driver in Windows 7. Most of the M.2 SSDs of the time had Windows drivers from the manufacturer. Later ones did not so upgrades were not always feasible. If you had a Win 7 system running from SATA (AHCI) and wanted to boot from M.2, you'd install the M.2 SSD, and then the driver. Then you'd make an image of the SATA drive and restore it to the M.2 drive.
But back to the OP. Larry, did you get the system running OK?
ha ha!
Larry, I'm guessing you're just not used to that sort of thing happening to you. I get it way too often. The Force has been out to get me for decades.
Cheers.
A bit late for me to mention, but I always build a new machine by laying the motherboard flat on on a table and attaching components in stages. That allows plenty of elbow room and I can test the components individually. Stage 1 is MB plus P/S: if the lights don't come on, or the P/S fan doesn't move, then big fail. Stage 2 is adding the CPU (naked, no cooling solution) to see if the system will POST. I learned that when building Amiga boxes at Commodore in the 1980s.
That's not recommended since you want everything grounded properly.
Sometimes I use a simple open frame ATX case for preliminary testing. Similar to, but not exactly this one. https://www.amazon.com/Yeiwenl-Computer-Chassis-Motherboards-305x245mm/dp/B0DRCP9FBC
Make sure that the FW is compatible with the CPU. Modern mainboards you can update the FW without a CPU.
PSU, mainboard, CPU, RAM, only a boot NVMe, and GPU if necessary. Don't have other storage devices or PCIe devices to start.
EB-1 wrote:
That's not recommended since you want everything grounded properly.
Like I said, I worked at Commodore. The H/W engineers had mobos all over the benchs with no enclosures in sight. You want to ground yourself before touching electrical components due to ESD, but any circuit connected to a live P/S is fully grounded. There is no chassis ground in an ATX P/S, only signal ground. The ground plane of a mobo is electrically connected to an enclosure (if present) throught the metal standoffs and the plated-through holes used as mount points on the mobo. In summary, there is no chassis ground in the DC section of a PC.
This PC build has been the most aggravating thing I have attempted in quite some time. One step forward, one or two steps back. An issue...sometimes several...at every turn.
I am hoping someone can help me with this step. I think once I get past this it will be relatively smooth sailing to get Windows loaded....ish.
I spent 8 hours today trying to figure out why my NVMe dirve is being listed in the bios as a recognized storage devise...but...it WILL NOT recognize it as a boot drive. I have watched video after video today with NO luck for a solution.
For what it's worth, the motherboard bios has been updated to the latest version. Are there any other drivers that need updating that would solve this issue? Or anything else that would need to be updated?
I don't know what else to do. I'm hoping someone here can offer a solution or at least guide me in the direction of a solution.
The NVMe drive has no OS to boot from yet. You need to boot from the Windows install device, typically a USB thumb drive in one of the rear Blue ports or perhaps an optical disc. I don't know the <F#> for Asus to select the boot during startup or you can select it in the BIOS. After booting from the install device Windows will install itself into the SSD and after a while reboot from the SSD. It will tell you what to do. Don't have any other SSDs or HDDs connected during the initial installation.
EB-1 wrote:
The NVMe drive has no OS to boot from yet. You need to boot from the Windows install device, typically a USB thumb drive in one of the rear Blue ports or perhaps an optical disc. I don't know the <F#> for Asus to select the boot during startup or you can select it in the BIOS. After booting from the install device Windows will install itself into the SSD and after a while reboot from the SSD. It will tell you what to do. Don't have any other SSDs or HDDs connected during the initial installation.
EBH
I was under the impression that I had to assign the boot order in the BIOS before I could procede. Apparently not.
For whatever reason, I just this minute started the WIN11 install process and the NVMe drive was listed. I wasn't before. Perhaps walking away for a couple hours did the trick.
Anyway, Windows is installing. I'm sure there will be issues, but we're moving forward for now.
EB-1 wrote:
But actually I read about it somewhere and never happened to me.
I had read the warning as well and always followed the advice, except for last year when I did a repair install of Windows 10 (on a dual 10/11 machine). I figured since 10 was already present, disconnecting the other drives wouldn't be necessary. Wrong. The installer happily wrote the EFI partition to the Win 11 disk. Everything works OK, it just bugs me that 10 is spread out over 2 drives. I may fix it one of these days.
