Frycook ZOMG gaming computer build

This was my first foray into building computers. it was pieced together today from about 10pm to about 1am. It went pretty smooth except being super hot in WA right now haha. I did run into one problem, my computer wont read my HDD? My SSD works just fine and my computer boots on that just fine, I'm kinda stumped. Im guessing I need to change SATA ports or maybe its broken? Idk some help on that would be nice. Ill post pics in a bit, be warned crappy cell phone pics. And if you could help with that problem that would be amazing!


Here's the what I'm putting in there:
CPU- ASUS Z87 Pro
GPU- ASUS Direct CU II GTX 780
Power supply- Seasonic Platiunum 860
processor- i7-4770K
CPU cooler- Noctua NH-U12 S
RAM- Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2X4)
HDD- 1TB western digital Black
SSD- Samsung 160GB
Case- NZXT Switch 810
Random- 6 120mm noctua fans, Dell 27" monitor, Corsair Vengeance K70 keyboard, and a Razor Abyssus mouse

 

Is the HDD showing up in bios or disk management?

 

when i look at my sata info, its there.. but not in boot priority..
Heres my HDD (sorry about the potato pic) Am I missing a cord?

 

Go to start, in the search box type disk management. Open that up. Is your HDD displayed there as unformated or not?

 

Not sure if you have built rigs before, but just as a suggestion from looking at your setup, and seeing some of the common problems I have seen with rigs: How do you have your case fan and CPU fans configured to blow? MANY rig builders have their back case fan draw air in, and most all CPU double fan configurations are configured with both fans blowing away from the CPU. If your configuration is the same you will risk a "hot spot" in between the leftmost CPU fan and the case fan as they would be blowing towards each other, and not in complimentary form. I would set the case fan in this situation to blow outwards, which will help draw airflow away from the CPU better. Of course this is a moot point if you already have done it that way, but I felt I should comment on it since I have seen it done the first way many, many times.

Looks like a nice rig! What do you play to be playing?

 

Yes it was my first build, and it was a leap of faith to just jump in and build it, I tried watching videos, they didn't really help, and i just kinda winged it. Plugged cords where they were labeled pretty much.
all the CPU fans are blowing out towards the rear case fan (which is also blowing out) I have 2 120m on top blowing out, and 2 120 intakes, some where i read it was better to have more fans sucking air out than pushing them in. The CPU was hovering around 30*C and it was on for like 6 hours. Its very quiet with the Noctua fans, just still havent figured out the HDD thing. I plan on playing most total wars, BF4 when it comes out, ARMA, and others..

 

Nice Build. If you're playing any BF3 I have 2 servers up and we'll be switching to BF4 servers once it's out.
Just search [LOD]


Edit: I forgot. My buddy had the same issue with an HDD/SSD setup. Trying to get a hold of him and see what he did to resolve the issue.

 

I got it, thanks a lot. It showed up in disk management just had to format it and make it a drive!

I also Tried my hand at cable management, was kind of a crap shoot. But it was my first attempt be gentle

 

Ran into my 2nd big hickup. When my computer was booting into Windows 7(64bit) it got the black screen. But I could hear windows boot up on my speakers. So I restarted again and I unplugged my HDD. Didnt work. So I wound up reformatting my SSD and it installed fine. Then I restarted my computer plugged in my HDD and it was working, installed my GPU drivers and restarted again. Then I got the black screen again. So I am starting to think my HDD has some corrupted files on it.. Which really sucks, because all I downloaded was steam/origin games (about 100gbs worth). My ASUS Z-87 mobos screen say AO on it if thats a clue. When I try to do system restore it fails and just goes to black screen again. Now I tried to see if I could reformat my HDD and put Win7 on that. And it say it cant because there are files that wont work. Ok now I'm thinking both hard drives are shot. quite frustrating.

UPDATE: Walked away for a little bit, put the Win7 64bit cd back in. Its installing windows finally. Both hard Drives are plugged in at this point during the install. So first order of buisness once Win7 is running will be to wipe my HDD. Then hopefully see what comes of that... Also did a memory test to see if my RAM was alright and it was fine.
Update 2: well after my clean install of Win7, deleting the files off my HDD, I backed up my computer at this point so i could have a middle ground to start at instead of a clean wipe this time. I used the driver CDs that came with my stuff, the mobo cd went fine. The GPU driver cd is what i think was messing it up. I had to go back to the back up i just created (reinstall the drivers again) and then i just went online for the GPU drivers. this is stressful..

 

Been a while since I updated y'all on this thing, so all those problems I was having were just a dead graphics card from the start, I was just in disbelief because it was a asus gtx780, so all those troubleshootes in the laps post were null and void, it just died haha. So I slapped a 760 in there I got from a friend and awaited the return of my 780. It got back with in a week(good job on asus) and works as it should.

Game update, I got Rome 2, bf3, arma 3, coh2 and more

 

Good call on the SSD for your boot drive. This is one of the biggest performance boosts a person can do to a new or old machine.
Sucks about the vid card.. but it happens. Nice they took care of it quick. That's a kick ass graphics card!

Since you're running on an SSD, and have lots of ram, I'd recommend following the SSD Optimization Guide for Win 7. Six pages of SSD performance tweaking goodness. They have a Win 8 version as well.

Something else to consider at some point is CPU water cooling, and overclocking that i7 for some free gains. I've got a Corsair H100i cooler on my gaming rig, and easily clocked my i7 950 from 3.07 to 4.2Ghz and it doesn't even break a sweat.
Either way you've got a nice rig there.. happy gaming for sure.

 

Yea it's amazing how fast boot is, I want to overclock everything but I need to continue learning about it before I make the leap. I watched my buddy overclock his double 7950s last week and fail miserably so now I'm a little gun shy. So I will continue to read up on that kind of stuff.
Thanks for the link to the optimization, I'm not sure I will switch to water cooling anytime soon. But there is limitless potential to grow because this case is huge.
Also was thinking raid possibly. Idk there's just so much I want to do haha

 

Yeah if you aren't at the comfort level for OC yet.. take your time.

For the record, I've done every step on that optimization guide with no issues. On multiple systems too, one with only 4 GB ram, one with 8, one with 12.

 

The optimization will be a project for tomorrow, looking forward to it! Thanks again