My first build

After months of research and learning, I completed my first computer build. DLN was helpful leading up to the critical moment of turning it on! I wrote a blog post about my experience at My first computer build - Stephen Cross

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@stephencross great blog post. Iā€™m no expert on modern mother boards but I figure that the board probably has the M.2 SATA slots set as boot and storage so if you only have one drive you need to put it into the slot configured in the bios as a boot drive bay. It was the same back in the day with USB when that first became usable as a boot drive connection not all the USB ports would be configured to allow this. I still occasionally come across this on older hardware. If you have access to the motherboard manual (you can probably download one from their website if you donā€™t have one with the board) it will probably have a list of all the ports on the board and what they do. Interesting your using Endevour OS as someone quite new to Linux, it took me 12 years to take my first dip into the world of ARCH via Endevour OS a few months ago. It would be interesting to see a follow up review of Linux on this setup after you have finished configuring the hardware.

Grats!

About the fans: Check the UEFI setup and see if you can set fans to "in, ā€œoutā€ etc. All the latest motherboards I have supports plug & play in the sense that you can just connect the fans (case fans in system connector), tell the system which of the fans are exhaust/intake and then just use a profile like ā€œquietā€ etc.
Even my gaming PC is set to quiet as I donā€™t overclock or have any need for a lot of cooling of other parts anyway and it works great.
Setting speeds, temp thresholds and what not does take a long time and needs a lot of testing to get right, and Iā€™m lazy :neutral_face:

Thanks for the advice on the motherboard. Since I wrote that post, I found info in the manual that the m.2 slot 1 is PCIe, so Iā€™m wondering if I have the wrong type of m.2 for that slot. My m.2 is working fine where it is, so I want to understand why is doesnā€™t work in the other slot.

Iā€™ve been mostly using Pop_os on my primary work computer. And I like it. But when you listen to Linux podcasts, you get interested in learning other distros. I have a test laptop that I install a different distro every few weeks. Iā€™ve been using Endeavor on it for a month, and I think Iā€™m drawn to it because Iā€™m learning something new every day with it. It will be interesting to see if I still like it on a critical work computer.

Thanks for the input. Iā€™m donā€™t expect to be taxing this machine too much, but I would like to understand how the fans can be optimized. Advice Iā€™ve gotten is ā€˜donā€™t worry about it unless itā€™s an issueā€™. I may follow that advice :slight_smile:

-S

Sounds like a plan.

Itā€™s also very nice to have a case with dust filters :cloud_with_snow:

Well done @stephencross

Iā€™d recommend velcro wraps for the cables because theyā€™re easy to move, resize and add/subtract cables from.

My guess is the first m.2 slot is faulty, iā€™ve never heard of a situation where an M.2 would work in one slot but not the other but I could be wrong. M.2 slots are by nature PCIe x4 slots just in a different form factor so if itā€™s an M.2 itā€™s always PCIe.

I have an Asus X470 Pro which I matched with two Intel SSD 660p 1TB M.2s with no issues if that helps any.

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Well done indeed - and glad to hear you had community support :slight_smile: Hope you get loads of mileage out of it. When I did my first build back in about 1994 weā€™d have been on bulletin-boards for support as the web was in its infancy and didnā€™t have much of a gui!

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Thanks for the input. I going reach out to MSI technical support.