First boot question

[PakAndy]

Hi all!

I would like to ask a question about doing a first boot before the pc is completely assembled. I have been advised and seen here http://www.mysuperpc.com/build/pc_first_boot.shtml (see towards bottom of page) to do a first boot after installing CPU, fan, RAM, power supply and video card. A main reason is to see if everything is working so far and easier to detect any possible problems. However, it also recommends to do a “Load Fail-Safe Defaults” in the BIOS. My questions are:

1. Is this recommended or necessary?
2. Is it ok to just assemble basically all your components and then boot up, as most “guides” seem to indicate?

Many thanks for any answers and advice

[juppy]

It's usually a good idea to do that test with just the minimum pieces you listed, for the simple fact that if something like, say, your motherboard turns out to be defective, it's a pain in the butt to have to remove *everything* back out of the machine again just to get the bad mobo back out (and yes, even "new" parts can be bad from the factory....happens all the time). By testing the main minimum components, you eliminate any defective main parts from the get go before you get all the other stuff piled on top of it and plugged in. Some people do just slap it all together and voila, it works, and that's fine as long as it goes that smoothly, but in the event that something is defective, like I said, royal pain to uninstall everything just to narrow it down afterwards.

As for that loading of the fail safe defaults, that's just so you don't end up with errors from some setting YOU changed. A lot of people think "I want speed!" right away and will start trying to overclock the memory timings and such before they even know if the dang computer even WORKS to begin with. The fail safe defaults should set everything at a base level that won't cause faults because something is running at way over specified speeds.

[PakAndy]

Thanks for Jumpy for your help, much appreciated.

I have ordered my components and before staring assembly could you or someone else please help me with these 2 questions:

1. I will have 2 harddrives (1 for OS and other for data) and an optical drive, does it matter in which order (SATA0, SATA1 etc.) I plug them into the SATA connectors on the motherboard?
2. In the BIOS I can set the order in which the hardrives and optical drives load first. For installing the OS I need to have the optical drive load first, but after that should I have the hardrive with OS load first?

Thanks!

[kilgoretrout]

1. It really makes no difference that I can think of but most people would tend to put the OS drive on SATA0 and the data drive on SATA1 just for logical consistency. If it's not convenient to route the cables that way, you can put the drives on any sata port you want. The important thing is how you designate the boot order of the drives in the bios setup;

2. I generally just leave the optical drive first in the boot order because I tend to use a lot of boot cds. The only advantage to putting your OS hard drive first is a slightly faster boot up because the bios doesn't have to check the optical drive first.

[PakAndy]

Many thanks for sorting that out for me, much appreciated!

[glc]

Not totally true - some SATA controllers designate some ports as "master" and some ports as "slave" - and bootable devices should be put on a "master".