"Too noisy", I said. "You can never get what you want" and "I can do better".
That's how the nightmare began. But lest you think this is another "no system will ever be quiet enough for you" story, or even a "how much time is this eating up" rant, let me put you straight. It's much worse than that.
I researched silent computing, discovered SPCR, started my planning and well generally obsessed a lot. As one does. I determined my requirements, chose an appropriate budget, and started selecting components.
As is to be expected, a number of components weren't quite available yet, so I had an annoying period (about two months) of ordering individual bits and pieces from all over, and waiting for everything to arrive.
Eventually it all did. Not in time for Christmas, and certainly not to my original budget, but I finally received the last item (an ATX 4pin extension cable) and was ready to start building my dream machine.
In common with (I'm sure) a large number of people I ran into a number of snags:
- I didnt have a previous desktop system, so had no spare parts to swap bits out with
- I hadn't had to mount a heatsink before, and was amazed with how hard it was (I have a Scythe Ninja, which the regulars around here say is relatively easy to fit)
- I had not bought a floppy drive, which made BIOS updates and driver loading harder than it should have been
- I hadn't bought an IDE drive, plumping instead for RAIDed SATA drives... which needed drivers loading
- My motherboard was new enough to need BIOS updates in order to support my hardware platform
Had I changed anything? Of course I had - when you're building a new system, you make some change each time you turn it off and on again, but I swear I'd done nothing more than plug in the USB and firewire connectors into the motherboard in this particular yoyo.
But the machine wouldn't turn on. It wouldn't even POST. The fans whirred, but that was it. Unplugging stuff and retrying didn't help.
At this stage I had a problem, not having any spare parts to swap things with. When planning to build the machine myself, I'd asked myself what could be the worst that could happen. If a part proved faulty, I'd send it back, right?
But what part had failed in my machine? The CPU? Maybe I'd not mounted the heatsink properly, or let an air bubble get into the thermal paste? When I'd gone into BIOS, the CPU temperature had seemed fine and stable, but maybe I hadn't checked for long enough? How about the motherboard? Could I have damaged it? I have no carpets in the office, but I'm told that static can strike anywhere. Could the power supply have sent damaging currents/voltages through the motherboard? I didn't know.
So I ate humble pie, and called up a local computer dealer, and asked him to help. "Sure" he said (jawohl, actually) and took the bits away from me. That was a Friday. On the Saturday he called to say that he didn't like the look of that heatsink, so he'd removed it to fit "a much better one". In doing so he said he'd not found evidence of much thermal paste on the cpu. I'd just put enough on to cover the middle and most of one side; he said I needed enough to completely cover the heat spreader.
Well, a few of the things he said jarred somewhat with advice from SPCR, but I told myself he was the expert and started writing the experience off as a learning exercise. We discussed prices for new components, and he said he'd bring the machine round on Monday.
On Tuesday when I called up, I was told that the machine had died again. (Taking with it the brand new CPU that he'd bought in order to sell me...) Same symptoms that I'd had. He returned all the bits that day, understandably grumpy, and suggested I try returning the motherboard and the power supply to the original vendors.
I was expecting the PSU vendor to point a finger at the motherboard, and vice versa, so it was some time before I got up the energy to send things back. When I did, I was pleasantly surprised. Seasonic sent me a replacement power supply, and the motherboard dealer tested the board, pronounced it healthy and returned it to me, at no cost.
So last month I got up the courage to try again. I bought a new CPU - this time from the same place as sold me the motherboard - and a floppy drive, and both arrived super-fast. I started assembling everything again.
Boy was I careful. I took each step one at a time, adding one component each time. I'd got the right drivers and updated BIOS, had RAIDed the drivers and installed Windows on them, had installed all the motherboard drivers and even all the updates for Windows and Norton Security. All was going so well. I even started mentioning my computer to my friends again. It was so fast... and quiet!!
The machine was on for the best part of four days before it happened again. After one particular yoyo (to attach the game port, com port and USB ports to the motherboard connectors), the machine failed to turn on. I'd be running ASUS' Probe utility constantly, and can confidently say that the MB temp never got above 52 and the CPU temp never over 45, and yet on power-on I'd get no beep, no POST, just the little green light on the motherboard and the fans whirring.
Now I'm right back at square one again, except that I've spent €600 on CPUs which I'll never recover. Worse, there's nothing to suggest that the root problem isn't still there. How much confidence should I have that if I bought another CPU for the machine, that one would work?
My wife is only human. And who can really blame her for her "I told you so"? And "now are you finally going to get a proper computer from the store?"
The real horror is... maybe she's right.
). All I had to do was to move the RAM to another slot in the machine and it magically worked. I remember that this happened to me on several machines and I think it is worth a try. Back in the days, when RAM still was quite expensive, I often had to try 3-5 different sticks of RAM until I found one that worked with the computer, even though they were the exact same model!