This month my self-built AMD Athalon server died. It was the family computer and the autopsy showed that it had been slowly suffocated by dust over the period of 2 years. Part of this is my fault for not completely sealing it. The same thing happened to my refrigerator some months earlier. I also discovered that I had not hooked up the fans in the front thus the hard drives had no cooling whatsoever.

So I ordered some new parts from newegg.com. As always, there were very little parts in the computer that could be reused. Pretty much the video card and harddrives was it. I opted for Intel this time since AMD hasn't been doing much. It seemed the best mix of price/horsepower was a Pentium Quad Core + Gigabyte Motherboard and  4 gigs of ram. Once assembled this would be way more horsepower than the family needed. So I planned to switch out the core 2 duo once the new hoss was assembled.

When the parts arrived, it was like christmas time at the Willis Compund. I proceeded to get everything put together. I'm always very anxious until I see evidence of a new bios screen. So I rushed it probably more than I should have. Once everything was together for that first boot I plugged it in. That's when the first tragedy happened. My brand new 750 Watt power supply shot orange sparks and blew a fuse in my house. After resetting the fuse I moved to another room and tried again. Second attempt yielded a nice loud pop and then no life from my new computer.

I rushed out to the closest place to my house for a new power supply which happened to be Circuit City. The biggest PS they had was a 500 which barely met the requirements for a Quad core, but I grabbed it anyway because if I could determine that the CPU was bad, I needed to RMA it right away.

Brought the new PS home hooked it up, turned it on. All the cas fans came to life, lights on the motherboard lit up, but the CPU fan jerked once but never spun up. So I figured that either the PS fried the cpu and or motherboard, or vice versa, and I would RMA everything except for the RAM.

Next day I spent driving around looking for a UPS store to ship my stuff.

About 10 days later I got my replacment parts. I hooked everything up again. Turned it on, no orange sparks or loud pops or blown fuses, but still the same problem with the CPU fan not spinning up.   "WTF" is shouted and walked away to calm myself before investigating further.

As is always a good bet I surfed google in search of answers and came across plenty of over clocking forums giving various explanations , all of which didn't seem to apply. "CPU cooler must be bad..." or "You must've plugged it in wrong." Finally, I decided to swallow my pride and actually look at the Motherboard manual.

I paid special attention to the section on the PS this time. After confirming I plugged the CPU cooler in right and had attached it correctly. There was one little line that didn't seem to apply to me. Something about a"ATX_12V_2X4" connector...

The ATX_12V_2X4 power connector is compatible with power supplies with 2x2 12V power
connector. When using a power supply providing a 2x4 12V and power connector, remove the
protective covers from the 12V power connector and the main power connector on the motherboard.
Do not insert the power supply cables into pins under the protective covers when using a power
supply providing a 2x2 12V power connector.
 

From the above verbage it seemed like it was a suggestion. Furthermore I couldn't determine whether the 2 connectors were to be used in conjunction or one instead of the other. So, I decided to determine by process of elimination and hope I didn't fry anything. I already knew that plugging in just the ATX connector didn't work. So I unplugges it and plugged in the "ATX_12V_2X4". No life whatsoever. Tried both and the computer sprang to life, I hear a beep from the speaker and then the CPU fan spun up. "IT'S ALIVE!!!!!!!!!"

This being the second time in my life I've built a computer, I resolve to read the docs from now on. As painful as it may be, it pays off in the long run. So much time could have been saved.

In other news, I am the proud owner of a new Quad Core custom built server. I spent all day yesterday moving data around via rsync, and poking around the bios to see what goodies are available,  I hope this sucker lasts 2 years as well.