First time assembling new pc and hopefully it's a good one

[Frug]

Most motherboards use either the Realtek AC889 or 892 chip. It's a cheap audio chip. It does the job but if you own decent speakers or a decent headset you will get better performance out of a 40/50 dollar soundcard.

C, but that's different from calling them worthless. I wouldn't advise anyone to get a card unless they do have the fancy speakers/headset. A video card, otoh, you should always get.

[Frug]

Assembling a PC is easier than lego~

Also built-in sound/video cards are shit and useless.

built-in sound is fine unless you have an actual sound system instead of 10$ speakers.

fyp

You'd think a guy living in the 3rd world would appreciate that most people don't have home entertainment sound systems plugged in.

[Zekk Pacus]

Thing is even some mid/low end headsets benefit a lot from a dedicated audio card. It doesn't have to be a £1000 7.1 system or anything fancy, even a £100 pair of speakers/headphones will benefit from a dedicated card. It's definitely the part most open to user's own judgement of the difference, though, but I think a lot of people haven't used a soundcard since the Soundblaster days and are just content with what they're being given now.

[Pacefalm]

Whoo posting from the actual PC in question \o/
Alas though, my build woes are not yet over. Apparently one of the mobo's PCI slots is not working so could not get my wifi card to work . Now connected via cable/power line communication. I don't know why the slot is inactive, I've tried several cards which I know work but I get nothing. Also I seem to be missing a PCI simple communications controller driver, which was not included on the disk that came with the mobo.
It was quite a pain as you can imagine since my network card wasn't working (possibly) because I didn't have that driver, and I couldn't get that driver because I didn't have a working network card
Could this driver issue be the cause of the defect or is it a hardware problem? Still have warranty on everything so if I can't sort it out I'll just bring it over and they can repair/replace it, but I would rather not since the thing is barely done.
Also pics, forgive the shitty phone camera quality:

  Spoiler:

First stage of the build, mobo, processor, PSU & gfx are in place, no cabling done yet


Part deux, SSD in place and moved the GFX one slot higher (the bottom PCI slot is the problematic one though I did not yet know at the time)


Backside view after the cables have been made a bit less messy


Everything connected and working. Case is CoolerMaster 690 Advanced II

[Daneel Trevize]

Thing is even some mid/low end headsets benefit a lot from a dedicated audio card. It doesn't have to be a £1000 7.1 system or anything fancy, even a £100 pair of speakers/headphones will benefit from a dedicated card. It's definitely the part most open to user's own judgement of the difference, though, but I think a lot of people haven't used a soundcard since the Soundblaster days and are just content with what they're being given now.

Because 2.1 48k/human hearing range sound hasn't changed its processing requirements much, and few hook their PC up to 7.1 or whatever systems and also run content also requiring dedicated chips to keep up with decoding the media for them. People are contest with that which works very well, nbs.

Pacefalm, to me your board looks like its missing the bottom 3 inches
As for the slot not working, is there any missed power connector to the PCI-E slots? I think some full sized slots take 1 to help with running beasty graphics setups.

[Waagaa]

Stock cooler, ouch That shit is noisy!

[Pacefalm]

I admit it is quite small compared to the other boards I have :P
I don't see any other power connectors... maybe the graphics card is obscuring it? The reason I moved it up 1 slot is because it was hanging over some of the sata connections at the bottom of the board, but I don't remember any power connectors that were behind there. Also the other slot doesn't have any extra power connectors either.

Edit @Waagaa: actually even the stock fan is very quiet. I can hear my old HD's more than any of the fans.

[Waagaa]

Edit @Waagaa: actually even the stock fan is very quiet. I can hear my old HD's more than any of the fans.

It gets fairly noisy when you start OCing it or when it starts working at 70%+ load.

[Xiang Jiao]

Congratulations on your first successful build!

Some notes:

1) mATX mobo in an ATX case. There's nothing wrong with doing this, and commonly seen in first time builds because ATX cases are generally cheaper and mATX mobos are also on the cheaper side. For me it throws the feng shui of the case off a bit, but no big deal. It's looks like you have the CM690 II Black Steel ATX case. Just note for next time that you can try for a bit of challenge and put a mATX mobo into a mATX case. If you intend on keeping the case around, then you will be able to buy either form factor mother board next build. ATX = more expansion slots. The real question is if you intend on filling some of them.

2) Spending four times as much on the video card than the power supply. While how much you spend on a video card is your own personal preference, you can't cheap out on the power supply ever. The particular one you have seems passable (no modular cables, somewhat prone to failure and has a loud fan), but you could probably do better. When it comes to any computer, I feel that you need to spend a little bit extra than you feel comfortable on an awesome power supply that will never fail you. A lot of times, cases and power supplies move along to the next build so you want them to last. Video cards tend to get upgraded every 6-12 months and prices fall quickly.

3) Don't forget to clean out the dust every once in a while.

[RazoR]

I got mATX mobo and it's bad.

GTX 560 overlaps both regular PCI slots and now i can't install a nonshit sound since the stock one transmits alot of noise on TS/Skype/mumble etc.

[Zekk Pacus]

To be honest I'm becoming more and more a fan of mATX the more I think about it. Just need to find a good mATX case and I will be building my new rig to be mATX. I mean I only run sound card and graphics card, no other cards, so it seems like a waste to have that massive mobo. Only reason for it these days is SLI/CrossFire.

[Verizana]

silverstone fortress ft03 is my fav matx case atm

[Xiang Jiao]

silverstone fortress ft03 is my fav matx case atm

That's a very intriguing design. I use the SG03 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811163085) which is designed so that my PSU fan doubles as the fan for the CPU heat sink. I have to hire a Korean girl every time I want to open the case. My hands are just too big to do anything in there. If anything, I feel that this case lacks in thermal management. Other than the one fan on the PSU, there is one 120mm fan in the front. I think you can rig a second one in there if you felt so inclined. The only other thing going for it is an all aluminum build. Recently, I had my HD 4870 with Thermalright T-Rad2 aftermarket cooler (and two Vantec Stealth 90mm fans) fry a diode or some shit. It still works but starts artifacting after extended play. I'm not sure if this would have happened anyway, or if it's due to extreme internal case temperatures. I refit the heatsink and looked at the card and sure enough it has a little brown scorch mark on it. I needed a new card anyway.

[Bombcrater]

Whoo posting from the actual PC in question \o/
Alas though, my build woes are not yet over. Apparently one of the mobo's PCI slots is not working so could not get my wifi card to work . Now connected via cable/power line communication. I don't know why the slot is inactive, I've tried several cards which I know work but I get nothing. Also I seem to be missing a PCI simple communications controller driver, which was not included on the disk that came with the mobo.

On modern Intel boards the PCI slots are run via a PCIe-PCI bridge chip, which needs a driver to work. The driver is a standard one and Windows should put it in during installation. Check the 'System devices' section of the device manager for an entry marked 'PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge'. If it's not there you need to force the PCI simple coms controller entry to use that driver.

[Pacefalm]

Well I did manage to get the simple com. cont. to work but the problem wasn't fixed. The mobo did recognise the network card (it was visible in the device manager which said it was functioning properly) but nonetheless it just didn't function as it should (could not find any networks). Couldn't figure it out from the manuals / internet search so brought it to the hardware store. They tried a different network card which did not make a difference, then they tried another one and it was magically fixed so lol. The answer they gave was "well computers can be derp like that", which was not very helpfull tbh . Anyway it works now. Thanks again for advice

[Rachag]

SSD is Ocz Agility3: why in the name of the gods did you buy an OCZ ssd, this won't end well.

[arian snow]

I have used m-atx solely for the last couple of years. I don't need a full size motherboard or case, as I only have two HDD in my computer. The rest of my storage space is residing in a NAS. Whenever I build a system for someone else it's also m-atx, and I am actually pondering migrating to the itx platform.

You should probably have gotten a m-atx case though imo.

Most people are fine with inbuild sound, most people will not hear the difference.