OK, brain dump time..
Almost invariably these mobo’s like the PX79XPRO have in addition to the Intel X79 sata ports some others, in my case Marvell, but you find Highpoint etc too, and these are always used for software raid.
- Never use software raid, never, ever, ever, if you want a raid set up go out and spend the bucks and buy a pukka LSI or Adaptec card.
- Never ever use these ports for anything except “last” when all the other sata ports are full.
Software raid is like fucking a bloated bitchy entitlement pwincess skank, hardware raid is like fucking a hot 16 year old slut with a great body who worships your cock… so the moral here is unless you have used hardware raid you don’t know shit about how raid is supposed to look and feel and perform.
When doing a new build;
- set up the bios
- with NO network cable installed (network hardware possibly wont work anyway without the drivers) install winders flavour of your choice
- make a folder called “Drivers” on your HD, make a new folder inside this for your drivers CD‘s, mobo, gfx, etc
- copy the entire contents of each cd to the appropriate folder
- go to control panel > device manager, look at all the hardware without drivers, work your way through it updating the drivers and telling it to browse to the “drivers” folder and search sub-folders, if it can’t find one, move on to the next.
- repeat #5 with the aid of another PC, Google and the hardware makers website support / download section if required.
Basically the idea here is to install the drivers, not all the bloatware and crap that using the cd in auto-run mode will install, Asus, like everyone else, are cunts for this… the reason for unplugging the network cable is you want the manufacturers drivers, not Microsoft ones via MS update.
If the drivers asks you to reboot, LET IT, don’t be tempted to save time by whacking half a dozen in before rebooting…
You need ALL the drivers sorted before going any further, or even thinking about installing software or testing your PC for speed or reliability.
On another PC, go to ninite.com and tick all the stuff you want, click get installer, save to a USB stick, put on new build. It will be a tiny file, 300k or so in size.
Then you can connect the network cable and run the ninite exec, and let the background winders update.
Prior to doing all this, at the build stage, hot air rises, so your fans should promote this, my build has a 120 mm fan low at the front of the case drawing air in, and a 120 mm fan high at the back of the case expelling the air, creating a good flow path through the case, the big noctua HSF is angled to work WITH this flow, not against it or across it.
Always “offer up” the motherboard before installing it, personally speaking I place the mobo on something soft but firm, a clean dish towel laid on a table is fine, then install the following;
and then install that into the case… this can make some screws awkward to get at, but a tiny dab of grease or Vaseline on the end of the screwdriver will hold all those screws to the screwdriver.
Don’t cable tie and tidy your cables away until after you have checked nothing is fouling or pulling on anything else, and that the build is basically working.
Don’t force anything, even though everything is within spec, you can get situations where some shit just don’t fit, that big Noctua HSF just fouls the side on lots of cases, because those cases go outside spec and put windows or dished centres or grilles or fans and crap in the side door, stop the build and go and buy a proper fucking case.
Once your basic PC is built and sorted, you have your windows updates done, via ninite you have your a/v software (I like !Avast) in, and you have some basic utils, NOW IS THE TIME to ensure you have a good system restore point, and set up backup, ideally to a network location such as your NAS, if you don’t have a NAS box yet, use your old PC to build one.
NOW you are ready to install your software, and start with the shit that is going to stay on there longest, so, no matter how much you are itching to try GTA-V on that baby, Office comes first.
Everything installed and working, one last job…
- right click the disks in my computer and select properties > disk cleanup
- hopefully you grabbed auslogic defrag in ninite, so do a full defrag and optimise, yes, even on an SSD on a new build.
- do a full, in depth a/v and malware scan.
Good to go..
