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OK... This is what I got. Keep in mind that my budget was supposed to be about $700, and I spent over three times that much.

Case: Deep blue Sunbeam Transformer, with lots of blue & uv lights & fans

PS: Hiper 650W SLI Ready

Mobo: EVGA nForce 750i SLI FTW

CPU: Intel Quad Core Q6600

RAM: 4G Crucial

Cooler: ASUS V-70

HD: 2 750G Seagate Baracudas

Optical: Sony DVD

Video: EVGA EGeForce 8600 GTS

Audio: SoundBlaster Audigy SE

TV: AVerMedia AVerTVHD MCE A180 HDTV Tuner Card

Networking: Linksys Wireless-G Broadband Router & Gigabyte PC card

Monitor: LG 20" and Monitors/TVs I already have.

Whew... I really blew through my budget! Starting the assembly today! Wish me luck!

This is my first... Hope it's as easy as I think it will be... with your help...

Edited by Surfer_Gurl
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Let us know when it posts :-)

I work slowly, as I have a disabled husband and a crazy bird to deal with, but it's all together, except for the last hard drive, that arrives today.

Two problems, though:

1) The front audio header cable is too short to plug into my mobo when all my cards are in. I'm going to look at xoxide or somewhere for an extention.

BTW: evga is awsome: I noticed that a back-panel cable wasn't in the package, so I emailed them. Got a reply in minutes apologizing, and a replacement was UPS-ed that same day!

2) I think I need an RF Blaster to run the TV tuner? I know nothing about this, just to plug the satellite output into the TV tuner... then...?

I appreciate your help. I KNOW everything is correct, and seated properly, but I've heard that they don't always post on first try. This mobo Has a two digit alphanumeric output, that tells what post problems there are! KEWL!

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If you haven't built one in a while, pay close attention to the BIOS settings. I even had to enter if my CPU fan was a 3 or 4 pin with my Abit board

Will do, Garmanma... thanks for the heads up. THis system seems to do most all of the set up for me, so I need to go in and check everything ater I install the drivers, which I'm doing fight now.

I know you all are far away, but this is my first build, and talking to you all has helped boost my confidence... Back in a bit... with more questions, I bet.

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I was too sleepy last night, and accidentally installed my OS on the F: drive (both drives are partitioned into two). Will this cause problems? I think I need to figure out how to reinstall it on c:

Suggestions? Thanks

One issue I found, is that my graphics card has DVI-I, and LG monitor has DVI-D cable... sigh... four little pins prevent me from using the good cable, so I'm using the old-style cable. Have to look for an adapter today

Edited by Surfer_Gurl
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I was too sleepy last night, and accidentally installed my OS on the F: drive (both drives are partitioned into two). Will this cause problems? I think I need to figure out how to reinstall it on c:

Suggestions? Thanks

One issue I found, is that my graphics card has DVI-I, and LG monitor has DVI-D cable... sigh... four little pins prevent me from using the good cable, so I'm using the old-style cable. Have to look for an adapter today

Just for convenience I'd reinstall on the C drive, programs usually look for it to install stuff to, it'll say invalid path or something and you'll have to manually fix the C to be an F in the install path.

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I was too sleepy last night, and accidentally installed my OS on the F: drive (both drives are partitioned into two). Will this cause problems? I think I need to figure out how to reinstall it on c:

Suggestions? Thanks

One issue I found, is that my graphics card has DVI-I, and LG monitor has DVI-D cable... sigh... four little pins prevent me from using the good cable, so I'm using the old-style cable. Have to look for an adapter today

Nose around this sight. I've used them they're reasonable

https://www.cablesforless.com/c-352-dual-link.aspx

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Just put in the disk... duh

I'm looking at that cable site... if they don't have it, it probably doesn't exist...

I looked there and at other sites, and a DVI-I to DVI-D adapter doesn't exist, and I figured out why... DVI-I has analog and digital, but DVI-D is only digital. Therefore, I just need to get a DVI-D cable for my monitor. I should have done a bit more research before I bought this cable.

Edited by Surfer_Gurl
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Well, I can't find a DVI-I to DVI-D adapter, although one site suggested just breaking the analog pins off of my cable... but I dont think I want to do that. Guess I'll check out Circuit City next time I go into town (over 20 miles!) to look for an adapter, or just get a new cable.

Also, every time I turn on, I get a 'Floppy Not Found... hit F1" message. I didn't buy a floppy, because I don't think I need one, probably get one someday if I can find one that matches the other stuff in the bays. I know I can get it to go past this, just haven't figured it out yet...

All in all, this was surprisingly easy, posted after I realized that one of my RAM sticks had worked loose, and a SATA cable also was loose. THe post codes on my mobo made it trivial to fix.

And the audio header on my case is too short to hook up with cards on board... and the cool blue UV SATA cables I got from xoxide have ends too long to plug into the tight space between the side of the mobo and the case. Maybe I'll look for a right angle adapter if it exists, because I really want my lights to make this thing pop

Oh, yeah, I either forgot, or didn't realize that the Crucial RAM sticks have 8 lights on top that change... 1 and 3 the same and 2 and 4 the same... way cool ! I was thinking of putting a little hint of color into it, other than the blue/purple theme, and this RAM, along with the LEDs on the mobo really accentuate the look!

I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm bragging, but I'm not... I have no one here to talk to (my disabled husband doesn't know computers), and am going from a 6 year old business machine to this blazer... I'm just excited! Thanks, Friends!

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Since you don't have a floppy, Are you still listing it in your first boot order. I seem to remember an enable/disable floppy seek setting

I have a Geforce 8800GTX and a Viewsonic and I use this cable with no problems

http://www.mycablemart.com/

Also found out you can't use adapters with KVM switches

Edited by garmanma
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Since you don't have a floppy, Are you still listing it in your first boot order. I seem to remember an enable/disable floppy seek setting

I have a Geforce 8800GTX and a Viewsonic and I use this cable with no problems

http://www.mycablemart.com/

Also found out you can't use adapters with KVM switches

I thought there was a place in the BIOS settings or something... Thanks, I'll look in a few.

Finally, the cable I need, and at a good price! Thanks

Edited by Surfer_Gurl
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An update...

Things are running smoothly - and very fast! - except for a couple of things:

1. I still get a message when I'm booting, saying it can't find the floppy, press F1 to continue. I don't have it in the BIOS boot sequence, and have look everywhere (obviously NOT) in BIOS to fix this. Any ideas?

2. I can't get this thing to recognize my AverMedia A180 TV tuner. I install the drivers from the manufacturer, must reboot, and it's gone again. I downloaded their media software, and it says it might be weird with Media Center, so I just went in and configured Media Center (first time) and, no matterwhat I do, it won't recognize the tuner... any suggestions? For the gazillionth time... THANKS for your time and expertise.

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The floppy definitely can be disabled in the bios. The option for the floppy is usually on the first page of the bios setup.

Yep, Shanenin, it was right in front of my face... don't know why I didn't see it before!

Still can't get the tv tuner to work, and their support hasn't been very helpful so far, may have to try to return it and get a different one.

Also, In my Device Manager, I have a yellow question mark, that I can't figure out.

Under 'Device by Type", it's between 'Network Adapters' and 'Ports'.

Under 'Device by Connection', it's just called 'Other PCI Bridge Device', and it's between 'NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller' and 'PCI standard host CPU bridge'.

'Resources by Type' and 'by Connection' point to the same addresses:

In 'Resources by Type':

It's in Input/Output, between the addresses of:

[0000ef00-0000ef7f] NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS

[0000f200-0000f207] Other PCI Bridge Device

[0000f300-0000f30f] NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller

IRQ (PCI) 10 Other PCI Bridge Device

- The AVerMedia TVHD MCE A180 is at IRQ 18

In Memory between the addresses of:

[efff4000-efff7fff] Microsoft UAA Bus Driver for High Definition Audio

[efffb000-efffbfff] Other PCI Bridge Device

[efffc000-efffcfff] NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller

I don't know if it makes a difference, but my mobo is SLI ready, but the second slot, the one farther from the CPU, is empty

I know you old pros will know exactly what's wrong. I've checked every driver for all the cards, have Windows Auto Update on, and still am flummoxed!

Thanks again!

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Are you sure you have the card in the proper slot for a single video card?

As for identifying the unknown device:

In Device Manager, right click on the device with the ? and select Properties, then click on the Details tab, then on Hardware ID in the drop-down box.You should see a hardware ID that looks like this: "PCI\VEN_4444&DEV_0016&SUBSYS_40090070&REV_01"

The 4 characters after the first _ are the Vendor ID and the 4 characters after the second _ are the Device ID. Go to this website http://www.pcidatabase.com/ and enter the Vendor ID and the Device ID and it will tell you what the device is. Then you can do an internet search for the drivers you need.

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Are you sure you have the card in the proper slot for a single video card?

As for identifying the unknown device:

In Device Manager, right click on the device with the ? and select Properties, then click on the Details tab, then on Hardware ID in the drop-down box.You should see a hardware ID that looks like this: "PCI\VEN_4444&DEV_0016&SUBSYS_40090070&REV_01"

The 4 characters after the first _ are the Vendor ID and the 4 characters after the second _ are the Device ID. Go to this website http://www.pcidatabase.com/ and enter the Vendor ID and the Device ID and it will tell you what the device is. Then you can do an internet search for the drivers you need.

That is a great tip! I will have to remember that.

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Are you sure you have the card in the proper slot for a single video card?

As for identifying the unknown device:

In Device Manager, right click on the device with the ? and select Properties, then click on the Details tab, then on Hardware ID in the drop-down box.You should see a hardware ID that looks like this: "PCI\VEN_4444&DEV_0016&SUBSYS_40090070&REV_01"

The 4 characters after the first _ are the Vendor ID and the 4 characters after the second _ are the Device ID. Go to this website http://www.pcidatabase.com/ and enter the Vendor ID and the Device ID and it will tell you what the device is. Then you can do an internet search for the drivers you need.

Yep, 8600 card is in the PCI Express slot closest to the CPU.

That website is a great tip! Unfortunately, there is no VEN DEV for this device. This is what the Hardware ID says:

PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0269&SUBSYS_10003842&REV_A3

PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0269&SUBSYS_10003842

PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0269&CC_068000

PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0269&CC_0680

I swear, this shouldn't be so hard... I think I'm the stupidest person on this forum!

Thanks again

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