Damn. I’ve never had an SSD before so I didn’t know I needed a mounting bracket to put it in the bay. Which means I need to order one and wait a few days before finishing this.
Since there are no moving parts you can literally set the SSD directly on top of that 1TB you’re using for storage. There’s no real need to mount it (in fact, that’s the exact setup I use because my case ran out of drive bays) but you can always do so for peace of mind when the bracket comes in.
Just to echo this point – you can leave it sitting on top of another drive, or even just “mount” it by a single screw (or rubber band) while you’re waiting for the bracket to come in. As long as you aren’t moving your computer around (causing the drive to bounce around in the case) it should be fine.
And yes, I’ve temporarily mounted SSDs using a couple rubber bands!
Thanks for the ideas. I did indeed mount it vertically with two screws against the lowest bays. It’ll be fine.
Now I just need to figure out the tiny connectors for the front panel. How do you tell positive from negative?
Damndamndamn. I finished the build, turned it on and…
Next to nothing. When I hit start on the front panel, the back of case fan, power supply fan and GPU fan begin spinning for a few seconds, then slowly come to a stop. The CPU fans moves slightly, but never really spins. It just jerks. There is no other sign of anything powering up.
I then noticed that the top-of-case fan was not moving at all at power up. And that fan was wired to the motherboard. The back of case fan was wired directly to the power supply. So I then hooked the top-of-case fan directly to the power supply, and it joined its back-of-case partner in spinning for a few seconds on start up.
I did switch the power switch front panel connector at the mother board from one direction to the other in case I messed that up, but it made no difference.
I have no idea what to do. Is it the case? The motherboard? The power supply?
And I hope I didn’t just fry the CPU.
Help!
Enjoy the perils of DIY! This is exactly why I recommend just buy prebuilt these days.
CPU won’t be fried since the system shut itself off because the CPU fan wasn’t coming on.
You also didn’t budget $99 for Windows.
As I said in the OP, I do have a legal copy of Win 7 ready for install.
Now, if anyone has suggestions on what to try, I’d gladly welcome them.
Strip the system down to the essentials:
- Motherboard
- CPU with cooler
- One stick of RAM
- Video card (if no on board video)
- Power supply
Fire it up. If it still doesn’t work, take all those parts out, then put them back in (something may not have been installed all the way).
Also, is it giving you any beeps or anything?
Thanks. Will try. No beeps.
Do you have your CPU fan connected to the CPU fan header?
Yup. Triple checked.
Is your motherboard properly mounted in the case (i.e. using the standoffs and not shorting something out)?
Mount it on cardboard out of the case.
Computer advice is so weird; what works for one person just won’t work for someone else, despite being functionally the same thing. I recommend using Boot Camp instead of buying a new PC: they destroy their Mac and end up spending over a thousand getting it fixed and buying a new Windows computer anyway. I recommend using an iPad over a PC, and they can’t figure out how to press the icons on an iPad (consistently and correctly). I recommend blowing out their PC to keep it clean, and then afterwards the computer constantly reboots, shorts out, and the monitor glitches continuously, including random hard reboots. I’m at the stage of life where i feel like computer advice is more dangerous to give than simply letting people muddle about and find their own solution that works for them, because there are so many random variables that both parties do or do not understand, and so many ways computers can glitch out, that you may or may not understand… If person A is only comfortable buying a weird off brand PC from Best Buy and spending hundreds of dollars at Geek Squad to get it set up, because they had a similar said off-brand before and it worked for them, even though it’s a bad deal and represents (to me) a giant waste of money and time… knock yourself out if it’s what works for you.
Hmm. Jerking PC fan? Hmm. Intermittent grounding?
I agree taking everything out of the case and setting it on a table is probably step one. It’s also possible the power supply is fried for some reason.
Success! And I figured out my mistake without pulling everything out of the case.
I realized in looking things over that I had never connected the supplemental power connector to the motherboard, only the primary. It wasn’t getting enough juice. Now, with both connected, it boots fine, all the fans run fine, I’m getting video off the GPU card, all seems well :).
Thank you again folks for the suggestions. You guys are great. I just need to install the OS (tomorrow night) and I should be good to go.
And so another adventure in PC rig building comes to a happy ending.
LOL – I was just catching up on this thread and about to suggest making sure you connected the secondary power cable to the mobo. That’s a common oversight but an easy fix. Congrats!
Enjoy the Win7 installation and update marathon.
Great news tylertoo. I just went through the Windows 7 install - update - upgrade to Windows 10 process for another computer. Make sure you have a movie or two queued up and ready to watch while your computer runs updates!
Congrats, tylertoo! Now I’m getting itchy to build another PC…