HarryTaco Posted March 17, 2006 Posted March 17, 2006 Ok, Ive been comming to the boards almost daily since Dec 05, and reading tons of posts and the How To Sticky's. Ive gotten confident I can handle my new Expert mobo and now it comes time to actually fire it up(first time) and im going to pieces. So now Im going thru the sticky tutorials and such, some of them having many many posts in them. Its embarrasing I know, becuase Ive read so many posts about guys asking for help. At the same time Im wondering why there hasnt been a specific tuturial for initial setup of the Expert Mobo. Something including what to enable or disable in the bios for certain circumstances, including a walk-thru for Hardware. At this point, imho, it would be so nice to see a sticky or three titled, NF4-Expert Initial Hardware Set-up, Bios Setup. Searching the boards for a little tidbit here and there is like trying to find a rare flower in the south american jungle. Im trying to download the video tutorial 48mb but there arent any seeders. Doesnt the expert board deserve specific attention like the beloved Ultra-D? Its been 4 months since release. Okay here is what I have. One drive attached at the moment, both Ram Modules in the orange slots, video card, sound card, and of course cpu and cooler. Everything installed in my case. I have the Tony mod Expert E 704-2bt bios chip installed and a back-up. Id like to try the intial setup with two ram modules as its a biatch to take off my cowling and active cooling on the Ram. If there is trouble there, I will go the extra yard and just have one Module installed. I also have the old mouse and keyboard installed (non-usb). Yes all power connections incl floppy power installed. Also have done an AS5 application on the chipset cooler just for the halibut. Next bios settings- Disable Cool and Quiet, turn off anything you wont be using at the moment. Initial Ram Timing stock board setting 200mhz. Lots of Ram timing help on the boards, I feel good about setting this up. Anything else? What am I missing? This is what is really bothering me atm. Run Memtest before or after bios settings eh? Okay then, load up Windows XPpro sp2. Is there anyway to get thru this part without Slipstreaming all the updates and drivers for the mobo? Is the CD provided with the mobo that bad? Now do a HD wipe and reformat with Raid-0 setup, 16-4 striping. Make a seperate OS partition mebbe 30gigs. Yes? Everything still at stock settings. Run Prime95 for half a day and maybe another memtest. Yes? Save my bios settings to a hot-key, yes? Now, if I want to do any over-clocking at this point, I should feel good about it yes? Install all the rest of peripherals, printer, usb keyboard/mouse, speakers, etc. At this point, I think I should feel confident about what I have. My goal is to have an everyday, dedicated gaming machine running cpu at about 2900 mhz, Ram with good timings between 250 and 290 mhz and a moderately overclocked video card. Might some generous soul on the boards with the capability to fill in the blanks lend me their expertise? I can dedicate most of the weekend to this if thats what is required. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
boatasiaus Posted March 17, 2006 Posted March 17, 2006 This build guide will get you up to your RAID: Ed Jacobson’s Build Guide You've skipped some of the first part, but continue on and hope for the best. You must run memtest (I usually run 3 passes) before attempting to install Windoze Can't help with RAID Post back with issues Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HarryTaco Posted March 17, 2006 Posted March 17, 2006 The Ed Jacobson thread is very good. Perhaps I should have been a little less plaintive about the lack of Expert Specific Tutorial Titles. The whole topic does kind of fill in some of the gaps in my insecurities. I guess Ill just have to close my eyes, cross my fingers and "Hit the Button". Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ICON57 Posted March 17, 2006 Posted March 17, 2006 you must be an old king crimson fan?....your post was kind of rambling (to me anyways) but i will try to answer a few questions... first thing is to memtest each stick of ram to verify no errors on each stick...but since you have 2 sticks alreay in...you could start that way....so get going on running memtest... i see you have 2 bios chips? or did you load the tmods bios from cd? which ever...good to have the back up. You REALY should remove the sound card, before you install your os... i like to use a 30gig partition for the os...but thats just me.. so yeah, thats sounds good are you hds new? used? have they been in a raid array on another rig? hopefully you broke down the array from your previous build... looks like you have some good parts and everything else i read seem to be in order. good luck Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HarryTaco Posted March 17, 2006 Posted March 17, 2006 Hi Icon, Thanks for the reply. I only liked some of their stuff(KingCrimson). I just wanted to see if anyone could place it hehe, Grats to You. Oh and yes, definately Rambling! haha. Yes, just ordred up two Chips from Tmod with that bios, yeah, and his CD. Consider the Sound Card removed, and thanks for the advice. HDs are brand new. I will run them on the Nvidia Controller. Whew, thats a pretty nice setup in your sig too ! Oh, one question that is bothering me. If you would be so kind. Installing the OS. Do I really need to go thru the slipstream process? I dont even have Nero on this computer. What can I do if i dont slipstream the OS? I have an oem sp2 XPpro. Any other advice you can send my way will be much appreciated Icon. Thank You, Drago Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HarryTaco Posted March 18, 2006 Posted March 18, 2006 Well, Im on it. I have launch and everything workin so far. Gonna run Memtest and eat dinner. Thanks for the input guyz and to Ace Goober for the back and forth PM's. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
chynn Posted March 18, 2006 Posted March 18, 2006 I put a fairly detailed post about building and installing Windows on an Expert board in another topic under the NF4 forum today. I did not cover building the rig as angry and crew have already been there and done that ... check it out and see if it helps you. http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47136 Hope this helps ... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HarryTaco Posted March 18, 2006 Posted March 18, 2006 Wow Chynn, Im running Memtest right now. Well that Post reference certainly is a mouthfull. I think I got sleepy and went to bed half way thru it lol. Seriously, that is a great help for me and I will use it but heck, I am just sooo lazy at this point to make a slipstreamed OS Boot CD. Isnt there any other alternative for me? Also, I was advised to install the OS and the Nvidia drivers with one HD then do a HD Wipe and install again with my two HDs in a Raid Setup. Can I just do the two HDs and the raid first time around eh? Thanks for the Post, Drago Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
chynn Posted March 19, 2006 Posted March 19, 2006 Wow Chynn,Im running Memtest right now. Well that Post reference certainly is a mouthfull. I think I got sleepy and went to bed half way thru it lol. Seriously, that is a great help for me and I will use it but heck, I am just sooo lazy at this point to make a slipstreamed OS Boot CD. Isnt there any other alternative for me? Also, I was advised to install the OS and the Nvidia drivers with one HD then do a HD Wipe and install again with my two HDs in a Raid Setup. Can I just do the two HDs and the raid first time around eh? Thanks for the Post, Drago You are free to do as you will, Drago, but from what I have read about the Expert board, XP installs, and from what my own experiences have told me are that taking "shortcuts" or being "lazy" with building an Expert system will get you nothing but trouble later. OTOH, if you put all your drivers and the SP2 download on a spare hard drive, or on a CD-ROM, you should be able to install XP and SP2 without having to load any nVidia or sound card drivers ... and that's what Angry and crew are trying to do ... no nVidia driver install until after the OS has been successfully installed. And, in my case, specifically, no nVidia driver installs until AFTER I have installed the dual-core CPU fixes. I installed directly to my RAID array ... don't know about any pre-installs and wipes to hard drives. I think, however, that some folks don't know what the XP installer does when it finds extra hard drives ... it will always install to the IDE hard drive if it finds one ... even if you tell the XP install to use your RAID array, it will still put several, critical boot files on the IDE hard drive. You can guess what happens next when you try to reboot from the RAID array ... That's why the instructions tell you to disconnect (or unplug) every drive you don't need to install the OS. Don't worry, XP will find them after you've installed it and rebooted from the RAID array a time or two. That's also covered in the instructions. And, please, do the install in the morning (or what ever time) when you're awake and alert ... Hope this helps ... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HarryTaco Posted March 19, 2006 Posted March 19, 2006 Good Day Chynn, Well I did take a break eat dinner and go after it this morning. Im going to make a new post about my whole experience for other guyz like me. You know what I mean, guyz with just enough knowledge to get themselves into trouble. :cool: These boards truely are the place to be if you own a DFI board.... or not. Thanks, Drago Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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