Im building a pc... HELP?

Question

Ok, before you freak out about a noob building his own pc, my friend graduated with a computer engineering degree and does this for a living. He will be accompanying me :)

1. I heard you need to de-static your fingers so you don't fry your pc parts? Is it possible to use leather gloves or latex gloves?
2. Is 550 watts enough to power a 2.6ghz dual core/7600gt 256mb gfx card/ asus sli mobo/4 gigs of ram/dvd/cd drive/and a 250gig hd?
3. I heard unless you multi task with media it's not really a necessity to get a dual core... but the only single cores I can find are the athlon 64 around 2ghz. I have an amd athlon barton 2500 @ 1.8ghz, is there a big diff?

I am getting an asus m2n sli board and on their site it doesn't recommend any wattage

Answer 1

1. I just touch a concrete wall or anything metal that is fastened to concrete to discharge static. Check my profile, so far I have not fried anything YET.
2. 550W is MORE than enough. Most new 2.6 gHz dual core processor (Athlon X2 or Core 2 Duo) draw up to about 65W. 7600GT only draws up to 36W. 4 sticks ddr2 RAM draw less than 30 watts. Hard drive draws less than 20W. I bet your set up would not even hit 200 watts at the wall socket. Thus, your 550W PSU should run cool 24x7.
3. The old Athlon (Barton) uses slower technology compared to current or more recent processor technology. Even on a single threaded application you can observe the 2 cores of a dual core at work (managed by OS). One core handles the application, the other core handles the system processes opened by the OS.

Answer 2

1. Use a anti-static wrist strap. OR just ground/earth your self to the PC case first the clear any staic in your body. No not touch the contacts on the RAM Sticks or the processor.

2. Look at your mother board specs, and it will recommend a power supply size.

3. Dual core processors are cheap now and available.

I just built a PC with and Intell mother board, Intell processor, 3GB of RAM and 200GB HD.

You need to start with the mother board first then you have to get the processor and ram that will work with that mother board. Check the intell web site for a complete run down on their mother boards and processors.

Answer 3

I took an old three prong cord that was about six feet long. I cut the two power wires off at the plug and left the ground. I stripped about one foot of insulation off the end of the ground and wrap it around my ankle when I am elbow deep in a computer.

I built my first computer solo. Just have confidence in yourself.

550 watts would probably do it but I would go with atleast a 650.

Go with an Athlon 64 @ about 2.4 Ghz. Make sure your MB can handle 2.4 Ghz. If not then buy the best one you can. Yes, big diff!

Answer 4

I have a cement floor and do all of my work barefoot and never have to worry about static.
As far as your power supply gos, you could get by with a good name brand 300 Watt with what little you will be running.
The differebce in your 2G and 1.8G processor will be barely noticeable, although it should be a little faster (if the Mhz rating is higher) or able to handle more processes at one time (due simply to the fact that is has a little more circuitry).

Answer 5

have you ever set the CMOS to favourite when you consider that maximum motherboards are set to bios sparkling.. this is lined on your motherboard instruction manual, if this would not artwork then its achieveable a conflict with cable or yet another piece of hardware. take out all SATA cables and ability cables to no longer basic drives and optical drives like dvd/cdrw drives, and sound playing cards no longer required for bootup, additionally LED cables.. and then turn the gadget on if nonetheless no sign then its a achieveable fault, with CPU/motherboard/RAM/photographs playing cards no longer basic to objective those without utilising different cpu/ram and so on..