OneAndOneIs2

Yesterday, we took components and made a working PC out of them. As always, there were bits that were harder than they should have been.

1. The motherboard resented having to line up its screwholes with the case risers. It was a two-man job (Well, two-person, anyway) to get all the screws in.
2. There was no information in the MoBo manual about which pins to put the Power Switch, HDD LED, and Reset Switch cables onto - we eventually got the required information from Lou's MoBo manual, since they're both the same brand.
3. Putting the heatsink onto the CPU always scares me
4. The IDE sockets on the MoBo would be easier to use the other way round
5. The blue light on the Power button didn't light up.

Overall, tho, it wasn't too bad: The case had plenty of room to work, all the screws that could be needed, easily-removable racks for the disc drives, and dozens of power connectors.

Once all was assembled, we powered it up, corrected the BIOS settings, and got as far as refusing to boot because there was no OS.

In went Knoppix 3.9 and Wooo! It booted, no problem.

So we had assembled a fully-working PC capable of running a Linux distro. That's a good start. Sadly, the KnoppMyth CD wouldn't boot, so we may have to look into doing it the hard way. . .

Overall impressions just of the hardware, tho:

The case is well worth splashing out on. It was whisper-quiet even with the rear fan on full-speed. At low-speed, it was barely even audible. The rear fan is right by the hard drive, so it'll be kept really cool. The case lid is perforated above the CPU, so the heat from it will rise straight out of the case, and there's also perforations over the PCI slot area, so this case should run really cool as well as running really quiet.

The heatsink for the CPU was also bought with noise level in consideration, and seems to have lived up to the promise. Overall, it's about the quietest PC I've ever encountered - exactly what you want in a media center!