Formatting the hard drive

We still had the big Western Digital hard disk to format, so that the computer could use all that space.  It took a little investigation on the web to find out what to do, but once we did that, it wasn't too hard.  We went from the Windows Start button to the Control Panel, then to System and Security, then Administrative Tools, then double-clicked on Computer Management.  This opened a new program and in the left part of the screen, under Storage, we had to double-click again on Disk Management.  That's a lot of steps, but I guess it stops you accidentally formatting anything by accident!.  What we ended up with at this point was a map of all our disks, including the big space on the Western Digital drive.  We had to right-click on that to create what's called a new "volume".  We left all the default settings, except we changed the drive letter to "W" (for Western Digital) and changed the volume name to "Western Digital A".  Oh yes, and we unchecked the button that said "Quick format".  This meant that the formatting program checked every location on the disk to see if any were damaged.  Formatting this way takes a long time - about 3 hours for our 1.5 Terabyte drive! But we thought it was worth it since it was a brand-new drive and we wanted to make sure it was all OK.  We just went and did something else while it was doing its stuff.  And 3 hours later all was finished and Windows could see all that new space ready to use.

Installing the operating system

Windows 7 OEM 64-bit

Now that we have checked out the BIOS, we can get down to installing the operating system.  We are going to use Windows 7, but there are still some choices to make.  First, we need the 64-bit version, because our system has more than 4GB of memory.  Second, we don't need the retail version but can get by with the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) version, which is much cheaper.  The difference is that the OEM version can only be installed on one computer, once, but that's all we need.  Also, the OEM version comes in a plain package with no manual, but installing it is very easy - just put the CD into the drive and restart the machine.

Our first Windows screen

After a while we got screens appearing to set up a few things in the Windows installation, like the language we wanted to use, and soon after that we were creating the admin account for our new computer.  Also, this is the point where we had to choose a name for the computer - this led to a lot of debate and maybe we should have thought about it in advance!

We had a choice of which hard drive we installed Windows to, and chose the solid state drive - that way the computer should boot up more quickly.  This means we still have the big conventional drive that isn't ready to use, but we'll deal with that next.

The big turn-on

The first signs of life

Well, the time has come to flick the switch and see what happens ...... big drum-roll please ......  But first we need to connect our new computer up to a monitor and keyboard and mouse.  For the keyboard and mouse we just used old ones that we had lying around and for the monitor we used the HDMI input on our TV.  We'll need a new monitor eventually but for the moment this will do.  And ..... what happened?  Well, no fireworks, so that's good, and the first screen we saw is the top picture here.  Fantastic!

The first screen in the BIOS settings

Remember that there is no operating system installed yet, so what we can see here is the program called the BIOS, which is already installed on the mobo.  Hitting the Delete key got us into a bunch of blue setup screens - too many to show them all but here are a couple.  We looked at them all, but didn't change any settings.  It's mainly just reassuring to see that the computer thinks you have installed all the same components that you think you have.

CPU temperature: 28 degs

One thing we couldn't help noticing though is that the computer sounds like a jumbo jet!  Sounds like we've overdone it on the fans!  You might not be able to see it clearly, but the second blue screen here shows that BIOS has measured the temperature of the CPU at 28 degrees Centigrade.  From the Intel specs for our processor, it seems like this number could safely be as high as 69, so we have a little room to play with.  We plan to tinker with the fans a bit to see if we can reduce the noise without raising the temperature too much.

Getting wired and cabled

Our spare SATA data cable

Now that all the bits and pieces are safely in the case, the next things to do is to connect up all those wires that are hanging around.  We thought that might be really tricky, but it turned out to be all OK.  You need to use the instruction book that came with the case and the one that came with the mobo.  First there are the wires that were always part of the case, from the ports and LED lights and switches on the front panel.  These connect to pins on the edge of the mobo (handy tip: white and black wires are 'negative' and coloured wires are 'positive' and you need to get these the right way around for the LEDs).  Next is the big bunch of wires coming out of the power supply - these supply power to everything else.  The two most important supply power to the mobo.  We had a big connector (at 5 Volts) and a smaller one (at 12 Volts).  The others supply power to the hard drives, DVD drive and fans.  We had some wires left over, but that's no problem.  We just tucked them away in the handy space just above the DVD drive, and at least we know they are there if we ever want to add extra drives or other goodies.  The last set of cables are the data cables that connect the drives to the mobo.  We got four of these with the mobo.  They are called SATA cables and our are blue (don't know if they are always blue).  We've used three of the four - one for the solid state drive, one for the disk drive and one for the DVD.  The picture here is of the SATA cable that we didn't use.  We'll keep it safe in case we want to add more drives later.   The wire that we really need to remember is the one from the fan that's attached to the removable side panel.  This gets its power from pins on the mobo and so now, when we open up the case, we need to be careful that we don't yank the cable out.

Nearly done!

We've got everything from motherboards to hard drivez drives to processors. And we still haven't actually turned the computer on!

P.S. Get the OEM version of the operating system you have chosen (you save £100) - more on this soon.

Where did the mobo go?

The mobo, now installed

The case now - filling up nicely

Time to get back to the mobo - the single most important part of the computer, but we haven't mentioned it in a while.  Well, here it is, attached to the side panel of the case.  Compare the bottom photo with this one from earlier, when the case was completely empty.  The large round object on the mobo is the heatsink/fan unit that covers the processor.  Above that are the two memory modules running across the picture.  And above the right hand end of the memory is a long white rectangular connector - that's where the main power cable will be connected to the mobo, but we're not quite ready for that yet.

The case here is lying on its side, with the back towards us.  At the bottom left of the picture is the power supply.  At the top right is the cage for the disks, and you should be able to spot our drives installed in the first two of the five trays.  At the top left, just under the metal bar that runs across the case, is the DVD drive - we pushed that in from the front of the case.

The first little snag ....

We've been trying to fit the solid-state drive in a drive tray.  Not so easy at it sounds, because the trays are built for regular hard disks, and SSDs are quite a bit smaller.  Some posts on the web say that you can just use sticky tape, but we wanted to do it properly, since we are new to all this.  So we got a bracket, made by Icy Dock.  The SSD fits in the bracket and the bracket fits in the tray ...... in theory.  In practice, the bracket didn't fit in our trays.  So ...... we instead we got what is really just a plastic box (still made by Icy Dock) that the SSD slots into.  You can see the difference between the bracket and the box here.  I hope we can return the bracket to Amazon for a refund!

This didn't work ....

.... but this did