Building or Upgrading Systems - Upgrading and Repairing PCs - page 987

complete the BIOS update.
Note
Many motherboards do not support bootable CD BIOS upgrades via SATA optical drives. In
that situation, you need to temporarily install a PATA optical drive to complete the upgrade, or
perform the upgrade via one of the other available procedures, such as via a Windows-based
executable or a bootable USB flash drive.
6. Check the various BIOS Setup screens to ensure your processor and memory are being
properly recognized and supported. Check CPU type, speed, cache, total RAM, dual channel
mode, and so on.
7. Disable any ports or devices that will not be used, such as serial ports, parallel ports,
consumer infrared ports, and so on.
8. Check to see that all the installed drives are being detected.
9. Check the Drive Configuration. Ensure that the system is set to AHCI at a minimum, or even
better, ensure that it is set to RAID mode. I recommend RAID mode even if you don't plan to
use RAID because it includes all AHCI functionality and allows for a future RAID migration
without having to reinstall the OS or drivers. This is called “RAID Ready.” Set the IDE
(backward compatible) mode if you are installing an older OS that does not have AHCI or
RAID drivers. This will unfortunately reduce driver performance because advanced SATA
features such as NCQ (Native Command Queuing) will be disabled. Note: you cannot use IDE
mode with an SSD.
10. Check Fan Control and Hardware Monitoring (called PC Health on some systems) to see that
all fans are being recognized and that the fans are reporting proper rotational speeds. Also
observe component temperatures. Note that some components such as the chipset ICH (I/O
Controller Hub) are “designed” to run from 90°C to 115°C (up to 239°F), so high temperatures
are normal and even expected for that chip.
11. Check Memory Configuration. I recommend leaving the default Auto settings, which will
automatically set the memory timing according to the modules you have installed.
12. Check the Chipset Configuration. If you're running Windows Vista or newer, I recommend
enabling the HPET (High Precision Event Timer) because it is supported in these versions of
Windows, but not in Windows XP.
13. In the Security menu, enable VT (Virtualization Technology) if available. This allows
virtualization software such as Virtual PC or VMware to use the hardware virtualization
circuitry in the chip, which improves the performance of virtualized OSs and applications.
14. In the Power menu, check the ACPI Suspend State. Ensure that it is set to S3 (Suspend to
RAM) instead of S1 (Sleep). The reason is that S3 uses virtually the same amount of power as
being completely off, thus saving you up to $100 per year or more in energy costs per system!
15. In the Boot menu, check the boot order. Ensure that the optical or USB flash drive precedes the
hard disk or solid-state drives, which will enable a successful OS installation from CD/DVD or
bootable USB flash drive.
16. After you check all the settings in the BIOS Setup, follow the instructions onscreen or in the