Building a Graphics Workstation: Assembly and Testing
July 2, 2008
Putting It All Together
There are multiple tutorials on the internet about how to physically assemble the components for the computer. Majority of initial steps do not differ in the case of graphics workstation as opposed to the systems designed for other purposes. You can decide to either properly educate yourself or use the skills of the staff in your local computer store. Focus here will be mostly on those steps that are specific for graphics workstation. While there is a emphasis on a computing performance of the workstation, stability and reliability of the whole system is even more important. That puts the overclocking into different perspective...
After you assembled the basic components (motherboard, PSU, CPU, RAM, GPU, fans) and successfully passed motherboard's POST (Power on Self Test), make sure that all the fans are working. You might decide to install a hard disk for OS, an optical drive and possibly a floppy drive at the same time or at the next step. Let the computer run for few seconds, check that the fans are spinning, then turn off the system, disconnect from power and check if the components are not 'too hot' to touch. Notice any error codes if the motherboard provides them.
Restart and enter the motherboard's BIOS. Verify the version of your BIOS, and then check that all your installed components are properly recognized and set up in BIOS. Likely motherboard will load some safe/ defaults settings for the components and some of these settings will need to be adjusted. The initial goal should be to set safe parameters allowing for easy troubleshooting in the case you encounter problems later.
- Check the frequency, voltages, and temperatures of the CPU in the BIOS and adjust as needed according to the manufacturer's specifications. Surprisingly my initial settings for Intel® Core™2 Duo Desktop Processor E8400 were (minimal) overclock to 3.1 GHz which I changed to default 3.0 GHz.
- Check the amount of the recognized RAM, timings and voltages. Initial time settings and voltage for the RAM were lower then manufacturer's specifications (5-5-5-18, 1.9V). If you want CRUCIAL Ballistix 4GB KIT RAM run at 4-4-4-12 timings, the voltage will need to be increased to 2.1-2.2 V.
- Check that motherboard can read the rotational speeds (rpm) of the installed fans and set up alarms for failed fans.
- Set up temperature alarms for CPU. RAM does not have specific temperature sensor and the simple way how to check temperature of RAM modules is to power off the system, disconnect from the power source and carefully touch the modules.
Once the parameters in BIOS are all set, reboot and proceed with initial hardware testing.