Building a Media Centre/Center HTPC (Part 2) 7
So… after much delay all the components arrived. Ten days in all, I am not used to having to wait more than two or three days typically so that was a real test of my patience! However I will forgive them as they sent me a faster processor (2.2ghz as opposed to the 2.0ghz I ordered). The previous order with these guys saw me receive 2GB of RAM instead of the 1GB I ordered, so all I can say is Thankyou www.komplett.se 
But anyhoo, everything arrived, the components were correct and so it was onto the fun part of building the machine.
As with any PC, the chassis was critical to how easy the building was going to be. For someone who builds a lot of PC’s, I am somewhat afflicted by a disease my father called ‘Complete Cack-Handedness.’ Seriously I have the dexterity of an elephant when it comes to small cables and switches so I was a little concerned working about working on a ’small’ chassis and a micro ATX board. However the Antec fusion helped tremendously with it’s well thought out design and things were not so bad.
The case is based around 3 compartments, one for the motherboard and associated components, one for the PSU and one for the Hard Drives, the idea being to isolate heat and noise from each compartment. The case has cleverly pre-placed cable ties and cable passages to aid in that (most hated for me!) process of cable management. And a note that is my bug-bear with many cheap cases… PROPERLY labelled connections from the front panel!
I did however have to read the manual carefully concerning the VFD (the front display) connections as they are somewhat unique! As a correction to part one of this guide, the VFD no longer uses the floppy connection for power and has its own unique connectors which are detailed in the manual.
A big tip for you with such a smaller design case though is to avoid anything that uses fat old IDE cables. My hard drives were SATA with their nice thin and flexible cables, but I bought an IDE DVDRW and it was very tough to fit that fat ugly cable through the cable passage with all the other cables running through there too. Spend a couple of pounds more and get a SATA unit instead just for the cabling benefits.
So the process ran something like this:
1. I go against all the rules in my builds in that the first thing I do before even looking at the case is put the CPU in the CPU socket of the motherboard. Then put on the heatsink/fan, and throw in the memory sticks before mounting the motherboard in the case. I do this because of habit now really as in the ‘olden’ days this was sometimes difficult and awkward to do after mounting the motherboard in a confined space. This is frowned upon because manhandling the motherboard with the CPU in, and then a big heavy heatsink on top could lead to damage to the motherboard PCB due to flexing and/or damaging the CPU core. However, with the old styles of heatsink clips, a severe amount of brute force with a sharp screwdriver only millimetres from the PCB of the motherboard was usually required to get these clips on, so I considered my method a far lesser risk to the components as long as I am very careful with how I handle the board. But now with the new heatsink designs the process is much easier, pushing down 4 pins at the corners of the heatsink is much safer and easier so I shouldn’t really use my method any more… but still old habits die hard!
2. With the motherboard, CPU/heatsink and RAM in place I dropped the lot into the case and screwed it in.
3. Before putting the rest of the components in, now is a good time to do a lot of cabling whilst there is still space to move around your ‘cack-hands’ and start with the fiddliest cables… typically those tiny front panel connections. Route the power cables to where they will be needed but dont tighten any cable ties yet as you may need to adjust lengths and positions. Finally I do the ‘data’ cables such as the SATA cables and the fat ugly IDE cable. When tying up the cables and placing them, bear in mind that you still probably need room to be swinging PCI/PCIe cards around in there. Connect the 24 pin power cable to the motherboard, the 4pin 12v one too, and connect the CPU fan to the header on the motherboard.
4. With the cabling in place, it’s time to throw in the Hard Drives and the DVDRW. There are removable cages for both which makes things very simple, and Antec supplied (with the Fusion) silicon grommets and special long screws to reduce rattle, another nice touch!
5. Last but not least do the PCIe/PCI cards. I had a bitch of a time getting the Hauppaugge HVR1100 TV card in. This was because the silver mounting plate at the end of the card seems a millimetre or two thicker than most and the Fusion case seems to have a very narrow slit between the motherboard and the chassis for the bottom of the plate to fall through. Thus it was very difficult to get the thing sitting in the PCI slot at that end, but a combination of 15 minutes of swearing and sheer luck bending the mounting plate to the exact angle seemed to do the trick, though I am not sure I will ever get it out again! The Geforce 7300 went it very easily, but its heatsink is HUGE!!! So huge that it completley covers the neighbouring PCI slot so I in fact would never be able to fit another PCI card in there… good job the motherboard has built in sound eh?
6. Now all the components are in, you have a better idea of where all the cabling can finally lie and be tightened up. Connect up all the power leads to the components and tie them up, and connect the data cables. DOUBLE CHECK the cpu fan cable is still sitting in its header as it can be easily dislodged when fiddling around in the case. Nothing worse than a fried CPU!
7. Final note: Again common practice is to only install the motherboard, CPU, RAM and graphics at the start and do a quick test to see if you can actually get a POST screen before throwing everything else in. This is to check that these critical components all work as you can understand that to take everything out of a fully built machine, after painstakingly tying up all those cables to perfection, would be a royal pain in the ass, but I have been very lucky over the years in that I have never received a faulty component.. ever!! Hundreds of machines built with no faulty components leads me to being more gung-ho and just doing everything before testing. It will bite me on the ass one day… but so far I have been very lucky!
So the build is complete and it’s that heart thumping moment to switch the thing on and hope for some life! I would say I typically have a 50% success rate with that first boot. Common issues are things not being seated properly (RAM and GFX card especially) but this is very hard to identify with the Fusion case as it has no system speaker, and thus you cannot hear any wailing beeps from the motherboard that typically tell you what is wrong.
Another thing I am always forgetting is to connect that 4 pin 12v connector as it’s something you didn’t have a few years ago. But the immediate thing to check for when you switch on is that the CPU fan is spinning. If not, then pull the power pronto! Then make sure all other fans are spinning like the one on the graphics card (if applicable) and case fans. If these are all spinning then you know a) that you have power and b) that you aren’t damaging any components leaving it running even if for some reason you have no display at the moment. Assuming you pass the ’spin check’ then hopefully you have a display and the POST screen is beginning to go through the motions.
Check the front of the chassis and see that the various LED’s are working (otherwise you have put them in the wrong way round) and then your POST should have finished. It may even then move on and try to boot but having no OS installed means that you won’t get any further. If all good (or fixed!) so far, then it’s time to go through the BIOS with a fine tooth comb, rebooting and entering the BIOS is important for a few reasons.
1) Often motherboards mis-detect the CPU if the BIOS is not up to date. In the worst case this can mean a overclocked CPU, but can more often mean an underclocked CPU. Indeed this motherboard had a BIOS almost one year old and had my E4550 Core 2 Duo running as only 2.0ghz per core as opposed to the 2.2ghz it is supposed to run at.
2) Often RAM settings are mis-represented and can be corrected
3) On board devices you dont use can be switched off, and in my case the onboard sound was set to default mode as opposed to HiDef mode.
4) Check the power saving options, often manufacturers leave these at safer settings for compatibility, but would mean you would not have hibernate as an option
5) Go through every setting, research what they mean and set them sensibly. Remember you can always optimise or overclock later. For now you want a stable system with all on board components you will use switched on, and those you wont use switched off. Save your BIOS Settings and allow it to reboot.
If you want to pause the POST screen so you can check everything is working as it should… hit the Pause|Break key on your keyboard. This time your CPU and RAM should be correct, and now is a good time to check that your Hard Drives and DVDRW are also detected ready for the OS install. If everything is good, you are ready for Part Three… Install and Configuration of the OS.
