Hey everyone, well, I got my stuff yesterday and put it together after work. I didn't power up last night because it was really late and I was dog tired and didn't want to screw anything up. Plus I had to work today. I thought I'd explain what I did so maybe someone might see something I missed or don't know about.
After I pulled the mobo out and looked at it for a while (I have a thing for motherboards!), installation went smooth as silk. I disabled the firewire and raid for now, other than that I didn't mess with anything. I'll go thru the bios tonight. My Enermax PSU (what a great looking psu!) has a two-wire strand with a 3-pin plug on the end (like the cpu fan plug) that I'm not sure where it goes. It says it's for the fan monitor, should that go to the PWR FAN connector or the Power Supply thermal connector on the mobo? The connector fits on the PWR FAN connector but only has two wires, It doesn't fit on the thermal connector, though that is two pins. ????? A little help please on that one.
The CPU installation was a snap, impressively easy, which I'd heard about P4's. The massive heatsink was a little different, I went the AS3 route, and after cleaning it thoughly I "tinted" it, which went well. I then applied the grease to the CPU and installed the HSF, all which went okay, I really just don't know if I put the right amount of grease on it or not. I put a thin coat with a razor and smoothed it out real good, but afterwards I started thinking I didn't put enough on, and now I kinda wonder if I put too much on. I'm a little worried that it might have spoodged out the sides and might hurt something, and wonder if maybe I should pull it back off to see (and wipe up any spoodged grease). Any opinions?
I love the mobo, normal Asus quality and the package contents were good. I do, however, have a minor complaint. It didn't come with a little bag of hardware like they used too, and though I have plenty of spare standoffs and screws, my bitch is that that bag costs what, a buck or two? If that? And I paid how much for the mobo? Enough said. But that's minor, Asus still rocks in my book. What exactly is worth installing off the CD? I never installed anything with my old board. Any opinions on that?
Also, the Pioneer 106S is one good-looking drive. I've got my hard drive on primary ide and my dvd and cdr on the secondary. And that's about it. Sorry this was so long. Any opinions or tips are well appreciated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!