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Fatal1ty Z170 Professional Gaming Build Advice

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Xaltar View Drop Down
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    Posted: 24 May 2016 at 12:58pm
Awesome! Enjoy your new build Thumbs Up
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Riggz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 May 2016 at 10:35am
Well the build is all finished, and now I'm tweaking Windows, which will take a few days, but it went very well indeed : )
I had a little bit of a worry when I first booted up and the EUFI monitor said that the CPU Temps were a steady 53C. I thought that was strange, and bad, so I reseated the Heatsink, and they still hovered around 53.

I decided to let it go, as they weren't all that high, and proceeded with the rest of the build. Afterward, I installed HWMonitor, and it reads the temps as being around 30C on all cores, which is fine by me.
I'm pretty tired, didn't sleep much last night due to being excited about the parts arriving today, and work comes pretty early tomorrow morning, so I'll say Thank you very much once again, you really made this a good experience for me.
I'll update as things calm down some here.
Cheers
Todd
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Riggz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 May 2016 at 3:35am
Thank you Xaltar. I actually watched that video as a part of my research, it was the most helpful one!

I ended up using the wire with the little triangle as the positive one.

I like the look of the all-black wires that the case uses, but it did take away the possibility of telling the positive from the negative from just the colors.

Thank you very much for getting back to me.
Now back to the build : )
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Xaltar Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 May 2016 at 3:15am
The connectors usually have their purpose written on one side and small holes where the copper contacts clip into on the other. The writing should face toward the outer edge of the board. 

With colored wires the white or common color (could be black or white) is always neutral and the colored wire is always positive. The colors are usually 1 white/black wire and one wire of a different color. Green for power LED, red of HDD led etc. Here is a youtube video that should be of some help if my explanation was unclear.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Riggz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 May 2016 at 2:07am
Hello
The parts have all arrived! I have the motherboard all set up with the CPU and heatsink, RAM and one graphics card, and it's in the case.
The CPU went in fine, as did the SSD.
But I have run into a little snag. For the case front panel plugs, that connect the power, reset, HD LED to the motherboard, I can't tell which is the positive wire and which is the negative.
The wires coming from the case are all black, and although on the plug itself I see a little triangle one of the connections, I do not know if that is supposed to be the positive or the ground.
I did some searching online, and so far most people say that the triangle one is the positive one, but I wanted to run it past you people just in case.
Neither the Case nor the MB  manual goes into this.
Thank you for your help : )
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Riggz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 May 2016 at 5:40am
Hi Parsec!
Thank you for the very informative reply. I am sorry that I did not reply immediately, but I didn't receive a heads up, via email, that I'd gotten another reply.

I am getting really excited about this build. I ordered the parts on Tuesday (May 17th), and have gotten the case and the SSD so far. The rest will arrive on Monday, so that's the big day : )

Today I transferred the PSU to the new case, and put a Corsair in my AMD PC so I can still have an active one to use. I also put in 3 extra fans (Two exhaust in the top, for a total of 3 up there, and intake on the bottom of the case, beside the PSU.

I am really liking this Phanteks case! The inside parts (drive bays, PSU cover, etc) are held together with screws (many of which are thumb screws) not the usual rivets. This allows me to move things around if I need to, not that I have thus far, which is good.

Way off topic, but on the Phanteks Luxe page on Newegg, in the Image Gallery section, they have a video about the case and it is pretty amazing. For the price, I've never seen a case that offers so many well thought out features. The music is cool too.

Thank you for the info about the SSD's. That is one area that I am sorely lacking experience in, but one for which the learning curve looks to be pretty straight forward.

I appreciate the advice about starting the system up with minimal components. I was generally planning on doing that, but knowing myself, and having all the parts right there, I would tend to want to get it all together. But patience and a methodical approach is what is called for here.

I had planned on updating the BIOS the very first thing though. You say that it can cause problems doing it that way? Not to disagree with you, but from the reviews that I have read, it seems that updating the BIOS smoothed things out in many cases. Maybe that was just for the early adopters.

Well I've gone on long enough. Thank you very much for your very helpful replies Xaltar and Parsec, you have allayed many of my initial fears, and brought the excitement back into the build for me. I really appreciate your efforts.
Cheers!
Todd



Edited by Riggz - 22 May 2016 at 5:53am
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote parsec Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 May 2016 at 11:30am
Since your last build is so different than this one, quite a step forward by the way, I strongly suggest reading the manual for your board. Download the pdf version on another PC to refer to as a convenience. I cannot emphasize enough the need for you to use the board's manual, only noobs don't read the manual. Wink  I'm serious about that.  Geek

Regarding installing Windows 10 on a SSD, nothing to worry about on the Windows side of things. The usual suggestion to ONLY have the target OS drive connected to the board (or really connected to the PSU) during the Windows installation still applies for Win 10. Otherwise, a few things to know about using SSDs with your board.

Since you are using an M.2 SSD, and will be using video cards, the M.2 slot to choose matters. M.2 SSDs tend to run warmer than standard 2.5" SSDs, so some air flow over M.2 drives is important. If you use the upper M.2 slots, the video card will cover it and its heat will cause it to be even warmer. Use the lowest M.2 slot for your M.2 EVO for this reason. Otherwise the M.2 slot you choose makes no difference using the SSD as an OS drive. Your board's M.2 slots all provide the same performance, which is not true for some other boards.

If you get any 2.5" SSDs in the future, be sure to use an Intel SATA III port for your SSD. Your board has four extra "SATA III" ports provided by the additional ASMedia SATA chipsets. The manual will identify the two types, the Intel SATA III ports are labeled on the board as SATA3_0 through SATA3_5.

The Intel SATA III ports will provide the best performance possible for a SSD. The ASMedia SATA ports will not provide the same level of performance as the Intel SATA ports with SSDs. Without going into detail, trust me on this, I have years of experience using SSDs, and the Intel SATA III ports are superior to any others.

All of this does NOT apply to the M.2 slots, they are connected to the Intel storage interface only, and there is no need to select a Drive Type with the M.2 slots.

In the UEFI/BIOS, in the Advanced, Storage Configuration screen is where all the settings and options are related to storage drives. Most of the default option settings are optimal, but I'll review what is important.

The default SATA Mode for the Intel SATA ports is AHCI. If you plan on using RAID arrays, change it to RAID. There is no IDE mode entry, which is not needed, don't worry about that at all! Using IDE mode cripples the performance of SSDs, and is only needed by the oldest HDDs.

Each SATA drive connected to the board will have an entry in the Storage Configuration screen. The location of these entries will verify the SATA port the drive is connected to. Clicking on an entry will reveal more options. Look for the Drive Type option, and set it to SSD/Solid State Drive for the SSD. A SSD will work with the default setting (Hard Disk Drive), but the SSD setting is preferred. Again, this does not apply to SSDs in the M.2 slots.

It is NOT true that the M.2 slots on a Z170 board use the PCIe 3.0 lanes from the CPU. They only use resources from the Z170 chipset. This is one of the advantages of the Skylake platform, the M.2 slots do not use resources shared with the video cards.

Your memory is included in your board's Memory Support List, so should not be a problem. Be sure to use (as the manual states) the A2 and B2 slots for your memory, the optimal slots to use when using two DIMMs.

By default, your memory will not operate at its highest rated speed, which is normal. The default speed will be 2133. You'll need to enable the XMP profile to run it at 2666. Don't do that right away, use the default, basic speed at first and during the Windows installation, during driver installation, and in use for a while until you feel all is working fine.

That also goes for updating the UEFI/BIOS. Wait until the PC is running fine for a while before doing that. Fewer variables to deal with on a new system makes debugging much easier.

Keep the build simple at first, use just one video card, or use the Intel integrated graphics at first.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Riggz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 May 2016 at 7:18am
Excellent! That is great Xaltar.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Xaltar Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 May 2016 at 7:12am
We are happy to help with general build advice too, even if it is not motherboard related, so long as the motherboard is ASRock Wink
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Riggz Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 May 2016 at 5:26am
Thank you Xaltar, that makes me feel much better. Now it's just a case of waiting for the price on the motherboard and SSD to go down.

Newegg had $40 off, and then a $20 rebate on the MB, and $20 off on the SSD for quite a while, but recently dropped both down to $5, so I'm waiting for that to change.

If anything comes up with the install, I'll surely seek help here, as long as it is motherboard related.


Edited by Riggz - 22 May 2016 at 5:52am
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