Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
The CPU fan cable was obnoxious. It was too short to route and dress the way
we wanted to, and too long to leave flopping loose. We finally looped it over
one of the CPU cooler posts and declared the job done. (Until we powered up
the system for the smoke test and quickly realized that the CPU fan cable had
fouled the CPU fan.)
Only the Good Die Young
When you turn on the rear power
switch, the system will come to life
momentarily and then die. That's
perfectly normal behavior. When
the power supply receives power, it
begins to start up. It quickly notices
that the motherboard hasn't told it to
start, though, so it shuts down again.
All you need to do is press the front-
panel power switch and the system
will start normally.
Once you have the cables dressed, take a few minutes to double-check every-
thing one last time before you apply power to the system. Use the following
checklist:
No loose tools or screws (shake the case gently)
CPU cooler properly mounted; CPU fan connected
Memory modules fully seated and latched
Front-panel switch and indicator cables connected properly
Front-panel I/O cables connected properly
Hard drive data cables connected to drive and motherboard
Hard drive power cables connected
Optical drive data cable connected to drive and motherboard
Optical drive power cable connected
All drives secured to drive bay or chassis, as applicable
Expansion cards fully seated and secured to chassis
Main ATX power cable and ATX12V power cable connected
All cables dressed and tucked
Once you're certain that all is as it should be, it's time for the smoke test. Leave
the cover off for now. Connect the power cable to the wall receptacle and then
to the system unit. Flip the rear power switch from 0 to 1. Press the main power
button on the front of the case, and the system should start up. Check to make
sure that the power supply fan and CPU fan are spinning. You should also hear
the hard drives spin up. At that point, everything should be working properly.
Ron Morse Comments
Robert makes a good case for prefer-
ring the eSATA interface over the
slower USB connection for remov-
able, “hot-pluggable” storage de-
vices, but there's a potential gotcha:
it only works if both the SATA disk
controller on the motherboard and
the operating system support it.
You won't have a problem if you
follow Robert's recommendations
for the hardware and use Linux,
Windows Vista, or Windows 7 as your
operating system, but Windows XP
doesn't support AHCI—at least, not
without a complicated and error-
prone modification to the system
software. If for some reason you find
yourself using Windows XP as the
operating system on your media cen-
ter PC, leave the BIOS setting for the
SATA controller in default IDE mode
and make do with the USB interface
for external storage
After the system passes the smoke test, turn it off and connect the keyboard,
mouse, display, and any other external peripherals. When the BIOS Setup
screen appears, run BIOS Setup and verify that all hardware is recognized and
that the date and time are set correctly. Verify that the optical drive is first in
the boot sequence screen. If you've installed a removable or eSATA hard drive,
make sure to configure the IDE/ATA options to enable AHCI. Once BIOS Setup
is the way you want it, save your changes and exit. Put your operating system
disc in the optical drive and turn the system off. Restart it and install the oper-
ating system.
