Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Once the system passes the smoke test, power it down and connect your key-
board, mouse, display, and any other external peripherals. Start the system
and run BIOS Setup. Set the correct date and time. If you plan to hot-swap hard
drives, make sure you've enabled AHCI. Once you complete BIOS Setup con-
figuration, save your changes, shut the system down, and restart it with the
operating system distribution disc in the optical drive. Install the OS, updated
drivers, and your applications software, and you're ready to roll. Oh, and don't
forget to replace the side panel.
Final Words
This system went together easily. Actual construction took about 90 minutes,
as usual in our case spread out over several days as we photographed each
step. If this is the first time you've built a system, leave yourself a full weekend
to build it, install software, and so on.
We're quite pleased with the performance of this system. It “feels” at least twice
as fast as Robert's former quad-core extreme system. That impression is borne
out by this system's video-rendering performance. A video clip that required
five minutes to render on Robert's old extreme system now renders in about
two minutes.
The system is too loud to call a Quiet PC, but it's much quieter than some of the
leaf-blower extreme systems we've built in the past. In a relatively quiet room,
the hum of all those fans is clearly audible from across the room. In a typical of-
fice environment, particularly with the system under the desk, the noise level
is acceptable, at least to us.
