Yesterday I put together my new computer.

Specs:

AMD Athlon X2 3800+ (dual core 2GHz)
2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR800 (2x1GB dual channel)
Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe motherboard
CoolerMaster Stacker case (the oldest one, STC-T01)
Saphhire ATI Radeon x1900GT 256MB
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2ZS Platinum
2x320GB Seagate 7200.10 SATA drives
1x300GB Maxtor IDE133
1x120GB WD IDE133
Promise TX2133 IDE controller card
2xNEC DVD+RW's
Seasonic S12 500W Power supply



Installing it was a breeze; the case is large enough for me to route anything I want wherever I want, with plenty of room for future expansion. I was a bit scared when I first booted it up; it beeped, then beeped 4 times and appeared to do nothing.

I had accidentally left a DC motor next to the CPU on my workbench for a day without realising it, so that was my first thought; I fried the CPU.

But if I had, I would be getting video output, right? So I focussed on the video problem, trying to figure out why I wasn't getting any video. The motherboard should be outputting a video signal, if it's stable enough to beep out an error code, then it's safe enough to output a video signal. I know the monitor works, too, because I had it hooked up to my old computer a few minutes prior. So then I focussed on the video card, which I hoped to god wasn't defective; this is the most expensive video card I've ever bought in my life ($200).

So, I fiddled around with the cables, and then hooked up the VGA cable to my video card through the DVI adapter (I had it going straight DVI before), and all of a sudden the video worked. It was then when I realised that my monitor auto-defaults to VGA mode if the VGA cable is plugged in (it has a VGA and a DVI connector); so I unplugged the VGA and went straight to DVI again, and the video worked.

Hooray, one problem solved.


Now on to the beeping. I bought a Zalman CPS9500 fan for my CPU; not for overclocking, but for noise reduction. The only problem is that it uses a 3-pin case-fan power connector, rather than a 4-pin CPU fan power connector, so the motherboard thought that my CPU fan had failed and automatically halted the system (the four beeps).


Okay, whew. My 15 minutes of heart pounding are over... so I go into the BIOS, disable that handy check, and I'm on my way.


Installing Windows was a breeze, and in fact almost everything went okay until I tried to use the Internet. It appears that windows won't auto-detect my LAN drivers, so I had to use the Asus install disc for those, then go online and download newer drivers (as a general rule, I never install drivers from a disc, and opt to get the latest from online instead).

Everything was good for the next hour or so, then I decided to play some music, and found that I was getting no sound. Long story short, Creative sound cards don't like it when you install downloaded drivers without installing the disc drivers first. So I got that cleared up as well, and decided to close up the case.



A few minutes later I started hearing a faint clicking noise, which slowly grew louder. I popped open the case to find my PCIe power cable slack had become dislodged and was slowly inching towards the CPU fan. So in the process of removing the cable and trying to wedge it somewhere safe, I accidentally hit the CPU fan and stopped it for a moment. I didn't think much of it, and after I fixed the cable, I went off to the bathroom and fixed some food up, came back, and my computer was completely frozen. I'm not sure if my fan mishap had anything to do with it, so I treated the incident with some caution, but not a lot of worries.

around midnight I finally got too tired to continue setting up my applications, so I went to bed, leaving the computer running overnight to see if anything wrong happens.


Unfortunately, in the morning I awoke and the computer was at a freshly booted desktop. D'OH.

I have no way of knowing when or why this happened, but this worries me now. I left it running while I went to work today, to see if it would happen again. I left it running a stress tester application, so if it's unstable, then I should come home to see it crashed or rebooted.


If that happens, I'm going to download my motherboards latest BIOS (there was one released 10 days ago) and see if that fixes it.