New Box Soon

[Eric]

This was the first computer I built, and it turned out great. Hopefully it will go smooth for you and you won't encounter any difficulties. The main thing is to follow the instructions, and don't fry any of the static-sensitive parts.

Thanks! I have a friend who has done this sort of thing a bunch, so I'm trying to enlist his help to smooth out some of the bumps a little bit. Funny -- I used to be that guy. Times change, huh?

 

[Eric]

So I put the box together last night, but it was too late by the time I finished, so I never turned it on. I think I did everything right, but I do have one lingering question: when installing the CPU cooler, there was no thermal paste. Some googling told me that the cooler/fan comes with a layer already on there, but do I need to peel off some protective layer to expose the paste? I just popped the fan on directly without removing anything, and I'm afraid that there's a layer of plastic or something in between there. Thankfully I didn't turn anything on yet, but I just want to know if that's a valid concern before I bother to take off the CPU fan.

 

[tunghaichuan]

So I put the box together last night, but it was too late by the time I finished, so I never turned it on. I think I did everything right, but I do have one lingering question: when installing the CPU cooler, there was no thermal paste. Some googling told me that the cooler/fan comes with a layer already on there, but do I need to peel off some protective layer to expose the paste? I just popped the fan on directly without removing anything, and I'm afraid that there's a layer of plastic or something in between there. Thankfully I didn't turn anything on yet, but I just want to know if that's a valid concern before I bother to take off the CPU fan.

My processor chip was bare metal, no coating or layer of thermal paste. I had to add my own.

Those quad core chips run very hot so it is essential that you have some thermal paste between the chip and the cooler. If you don't want to wait for it to arrive by mail, most of the office places, Staples, Office Depot, Office Max and Best Buy usually carry it. Don't run the machine without taking care of this first.

 

[Eric]

My processor chip was bare metal, no coating or layer of thermal paste. I had to add my own.

Those quad core chips run very hot so it is essential that you have some thermal paste between the chip and the cooler. If you don't want to wait for it to arrive by mail, most of the office places, Staples, Office Depot, Office Max and Best Buy usually carry it. Don't run the machine without taking care of this first.

Hmm, I think maybe I was unclear. What I meant to say is that there's already some paste on there (pre-applied), but I didn't really know what I was looking at, so I couldn't identify what it supposed to look like. The point was that even if it has paste on there, it might have shipped with some sort of peel-off plastic layer to protect the pre-applied paste. If there is something like that, I didn't remove it. So I was just wondering if anyone had any direct experience with that.

I guess I'll just pop the fan off tonight and see what I find, now that I've watched a youtube video or two and am slightly more familiar with what should be there. I was SUPER cautious at first due to my inexperience, but now I think I'm getting slightly more comfortable.

 

[tunghaichuan]

Hmm, I think maybe I was unclear. What I meant to say is that there's already some paste on there (pre-applied), but I didn't really know what I was looking at, so I could identify what it supposed to look like. The point was that even if it has paste on there, it might have shipped with some sort of peel-off plastic layer to protect the pre-applied paste. If there is something like that, I didn't remove it. So I was just wondering if anyone had any direct experience with that.

I guess I'll just pop the fan off tonight and see what I find, now that I've watched a youtube video or two and am slightly more familiar with what should be there. I was SUPER cautious at first due to my inexperience, but now I think I'm getting slightly more comfortable.

Sorry, I didn't understand you. You're using the stock Intel cooler? There was a thin layer of cooling past applied to the stock cooler. It didn't have a plastic layer covering it. In fact, I smudged one of the corners of the paste when I was handling it. Hope this helps.

 

[Eric]

Sorry, I didn't understand you. You're using the stock Intel cooler? There was a thin layer of cooling past applied to the stock cooler. It didn't have a plastic layer covering it. In fact, I smudged one of the corners of the paste when I was handling it. Hope this helps.

Yep and yep! That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

Now that I have Ubuntu 11.04 downloaded and a boot drive made, I think I'll just make the connections and see how it goes when I get home tonight. Fingers crossed...

 

[Eric]

It lives! Amazingly, everything seems to work fine. I'm still kind of in disbelief that I managed to avoid screwing up. Thanks for your help!

 

[tunghaichuan]

It lives! Amazingly, everything seems to work fine. I'm still kind of in disbelief that I managed to avoid screwing up. Thanks for your help!

I know that feeling. Seriously, I owe a huge debt to Duhvoodooman who helped me through my build.

Congrats on your new screaming computer.

 

[deeaa]

How's that Linux holding up? I'm always having issues with my dad's machine, it has Ubuntu on it but he or I always just manage to get the whole system all messed up so that I've re-installed it from scratch like 6 times by now. Namely it has an NVidia 6800 series display card and I can't get it to work properly. But it always screws up somehow anyway. Not a big fan of Linux, with Wintel boxes it always seemed so much easier and more stable.

Linux however keeps intriguing me because of the idea. Of course being free one can't expect similar stability or trustworthiness as with Windows, but still...free is free. Not that windows costs much, for me it's something like 20 bucks anyway. Of late I've been thinking of again installing the Mac oS on my PC...but I dislike macs even more than Linux. Would be good to know how that works though. Mac OS is also just something like 30 bucks or so. But mainly its' the multitude of programs and accessories I'm accustomed to using that keeps me secure on w7...they won't work on anything else...and basically, dual-or triple booting between OS'es is just for fun basically. I've had four OS'es on my PC at one time at best, but I always tend to use just Windows anyway. Currently I do have also Linux but I can't remember the last time I booted to it...w7 is so much faster and nicer and I never did learn enough of the Linux lingo to survive on Linux.

 

[marnold]

I've used Linux as my only OS for years now. Currently I'm running Slackware 13.37. It really is rock solid. I've never had problems with NVIDIA cards in Linux with the binary drivers except when I had bad hardware to begin with and once when a problem crept into the driver that was also present in the Windows version. Thankfully, I never "upgraded" to that version of the driver. I bailed out on Windows right before XP came out. Neither XP nor Vista convinced me that I made a bad decision. I've heard Windows 7 is nice, which would have been great three generations ago. That crossroad is way in my rear view mirror.

The only "issue" I've run into is trying to get some Windows programs to run in WINE. Thankfully, the only thing I use that for anymore is games. My PS3 gets the lion's share of my gaming time anyway so that's really a non-issue.

I like 13.37 enough that I bought it and a Slackware t-shirt to help support continued development. I can't even fathom how much I've saved in software. Don't know how you can get Windows for $20. CyberPower has it as a ~$90 mark-up. Buying it off the shelf is much more than that.

My son just spent some of his confirmation/graduation money on a CyberPower laptop. He wants to install Kubuntu on it. I was pretty proud that he wanted to stick with Linux and even try a different distro. I'll be interested to see how Kubuntu compares vis-a-vis Slackware.

 

[Eric]

I like it. I definitely had to pay the price and learn the ropes when I first started using it (5 years ago?). I'm still no expert, but I know a lot of the basic things about Linux. Oddly enough (to me, anyway), I have actually never used Windows 7 except maybe on my parents' computer for a few minutes at a time.

The big thing about Linux/Ubuntu (since that's what I use) right now is that it sucks for audio and recording unless you really know what you're doing. Supposedly the open-source DAW Ardour is pretty sweet once you figure it out, but my attempts in the past -- navigating all of the sound servers and audio wrappers and what-not -- have been hellish. I just gave up and keep a partition of WinXP for any recording. I also sometimes go to the Windows partition for old-school games too; lately I've been on a Civilization II kick.

As luck would have it, I also have that nVidia 6800 on the computer I just upgraded from. Initially it was a big PITA, but the recent proprietary drivers weren't bad at all. I just don't try to use the fancy accelerated desktop effects -- that's a quick way to get frustrated.

It's the open-source thing that keeps me coming back. I like the free part too, but I'd usually rather put the power in the hands of the end-user. It's really remarkable how far Linux has come when you consider that it's almost all free.

And that's the point I was going to make initially: Ubuntu is much more user-friendly (particularly the install) than it used to be. I think I jumped on around version...6.06 or something, and I'm amazed by how much better it is these days. Still not to Windows (and definitely not Mac) levels of user-friendliness, but at this point I almost don't care.

But for someone like you, where you're very much into recording and audio, I feel like Ubuntu still has a long way to go. I can understand why you would stick with Windows. Still, it's probably not bad to revisit Ubuntu once in awhile -- if you are patient and make it a point to learn it, it can be a good change.

 

[Eric]

My son just spent some of his confirmation/graduation money on a CyberPower laptop. He wants to install Kubuntu on it. I was pretty proud that he wanted to stick with Linux and even try a different distro. I'll be interested to see how Kubuntu compares vis-a-vis Slackware.

Kubuntu was my first version of Linux. Once I saw the light of Gnome, I had no real desire to go back to KDE. Though now, Ubuntu has switched to this Unity thing. That will take some getting used to, but I've had it on my netbook for awhile so I suppose I have a head start.

 

[deeaa]

Audio and video is indeed the biggest problems for me ever using Linux properly. That, and since I'm the kind of a user who wants to tweak every aspect of the OS myself, like never doing things the way the OS designer wants but make my own adjustments, Linux would require so much learning it's quite prohibitive. Whenever I get into it more and want to achieve something, it gets real quick down to writing your own conf files and using the terminal to write incredibly complex commands. I used to use Unix machines back in the day, so it's not entirely alien to me, but I suck at programming etc. and thus I never get the damned strings right, or just the right command for just that version of Linux, or whatever...I just never get the things done the way I like.

But, audio indeed...I could never work even 10% as well or make music on Linux. It's fine for simple audio work like recording a simple demo, but anything more complex and such...well if you have lots of analog gear it makes for a good recorder but if you want to do everything in it starting from Amplitube and Guitar Rig for guitars and DFh for drums etc. etc. I can't get very far into it and make anything work. Plus I'm addicted to Cubase...I used to use other audio editors as well, but there's no changing any more.

Also, I'm not sure how well Linuxes handle HD video and video effects etc...I've tried a couple of editors like Kino and again, they're the level of the editor that comes with Windows at best.

But, if you don't need audio or video stuff much, or are happy to do such things the hard way, it's just fine. Many people I know use Linux pretty much daily but still dual-boot to Windows for audio/video stuff. Some use a mac or hackintosh for audio as well, but for me windows has always been the only one that can do it all with no limitations. Whatever you want to do, it's for sure someone's written an excellent program for doing it in windows. With all the other OS's it's more like you're given so-and-so free tools you have to adjust your usage wants around.

 

[Eric]

OK -- nobody's forcing you to use Linux. It's funny about the tweakability though; I feel like Linux is easily the most customizable OS of the big three, but you're right that it does take a little bit of learning to get there.

 

[deeaa]

I may have just gotten dumb about such stuff...there's days I feel like I'm still a real whiz with computers, but I may just be too old to grasp the Linux workings any more

Every now and then I take a new attempt at adjusting my Ubuntu box resolution. The monitor is 1280x1024 @ 60 hz and the display card is an NVIDIA 6800 series fanless. I know for a fact the card works in NT4 for instance.

I can get 800x600 and some weird 1152x res that the monitor doesn't support well (it's a basic good quality 19" Viewsonic TFT), but never the right resolution. I've had people write me new xorg config files and I've written my own as per the directions show and everything in between, but no dice. It simply will not work in any other res on Ubuntu. I've managed to screw up the system so well it's just booted to some text interface error messages that I can't get fixed and lack the knowledge to circumvent the loading of the conf files (I've tried restoring the file from command line, there's guides for that too, but no.

It just always manages to make me feel so damned stupid about computers every time I use it. And most of my hardware it won't recognize anyway, but that's partially my own fault because I've chosen pretty much windows-geared hardware. For instance I could not get it to understand the differences between FW800 and 400 ports, and maybe as a result I never got it to accept DV transfers over IEE1394 line. Nor did it comprehend the SP/DIF multitrack transfers via lightpipe although the card functioned well. But I did manage to get drivers for the soundcard (although I had to compile the drivers myself from binary to get that) but that went awry when I managed to screw up Synaptic somehow when the machine decided to reboot in the middle of installing some upgrades and after that went into infinite loop...

Well, in short, my usage experiences with Ubuntu have been, to put it mildly, very very challenging and the sort that always makes me feel like I have no idea how does the system really work. Almost nothing save for basic printers, mice etc. seem to work, or they work partially. Whereas in Windows I've pretty much never had any problems with any such things, they just tend to work.

But, it may be simply too much of a jump for an old PC dog to handle...too much new info needed.

 

[Eric]

I dunno. Seems to me that you're pressing a lot.

I learned a little bit, and I slowly add knowledge, but I don't try to get Ubuntu to do everything right. I know I'm not a computer programmer or IT expert or anything remotely close to that, so trying to do things that require an intense knowledge of certain systems will either require an intense period of accruing knowledge in an organized manner (e.g. working with someone who knows what they're doing) or being patient and setting expectations a little lower.

I think it's kind of like if you stopped playing electric rock guitar and went to flamenco guitar. You'd be pretty bad at first, and it would probably take some intense training to learn it right. But you might be too far down the rabbit hole to be able to back out and take it slow, and that would make you too frustrated.

There's always the but-I-know-how-to-do-it-on-this-guitar mentality, but that's actually quite arrogant, isn't it? I mean, it's trivializing everyone who has spent a lot of time learning flamenco guitar. Same with Linux -- it's different, and it has different challenges. You won't be able to use it the same way or on the same level as Windows, with which you are at a much higher level.

To me, that says that Linux either has a long way to go before people like you will want to jump on, or that you would need to accept that you won't be able to just dive in and instantly be an expert. It's probably both, actually.

But it is what it is. It's not failure if you don't like Linux as it is right now. It just means that you work best with Windows and don't have the time to put into Linux.

 

[deeaa]

I'm also very very impatient with this kind of things. Like, if I can't find the thing I want in some program, I won't bother looking at help usually but just google, download and install a separate program to do just that what I want, instead of learning how to do it with existing software. It's just quicker that way, and usually a new program for each need is better too than just a side-addon function within other software.

I'm also super impatient with hardware etc...well everything that has to do with computers. When I get a problem I need a new part for, I just zoom to the nearest computer store and buy one right then and there. If it's Sunday or something, I might jump into a car and drive 40 miles to pick up a suitable part from a buddy, rather than wait for the stores to open, let alone order online.

When the rare occasion happens I get an entirely new machine, I always have to get _everything_ working that very night. That means everything. I may spend like 15 hours and stay up all night just organizing folders and harddrives and where's what and check that all the programs I'll ever need will work when need comes, test video/audio, all hardware...I just get bonkers if there's even one little thing I can't get to working my way right away.

I don't think I'm that impatient in 'real life' but for some reason, if anything concerning my computer isn't solved or working just this minute...I just can't handle it

Like right now I have this issue that my display card likely has a bad cap or a cold solder; it won't start properly when cold, causing issues until it warms up a little. It's taking all my willpower not to run and get a new card...but I keep telling myself it works flawlessly when it warms up, no need for a new one...but it irks me immensely if and when it acts up on boot.

 

[Eric]

I don't think I'm that impatient in 'real life' but for some reason, if anything concerning my computer isn't solved or working just this minute...I just can't handle it

I have shades of that. I've been alamingly fidgety this week due to my new computer. It's just not all set yet and 'lived in', for lack of a better word. And I can't seem to get a night all to myself to just work on that exclusively, so it continues to sit there and be mostly done, but not quite. Computers (and people) are strange sometimes...