Sata Cables - Which Do I Need Or Does It Matter?

[annie0000]

Son is building his first PC for Christmas, parts all bought and stashed away. Started thinking about anything else he may need and understand that he will need a couple of SATA cables to connect his HDD and DVD drive.

It's all wrapped now, but I think we have this motherboard:

Gigabyte GA-H97M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard

This HDD:
Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive

and this DVD drive:
Samsung SH-224DB/RSBS DVD/CD Writer

As far as I can see the Motherboard and HDD both say that they have SATA 6 GB/s and the DVD says 3 GB/s.

The SATA cables seem to come in choices and different colours - the blue ones would match nicely with the rest of the kit he's ordered but clearly that's no use if they don't work and he needs the red ones. Just trying to stave off a potential Christmas Day crisis!!

Thanks for any help I really appreciate it.

[beso]

Did you buy some RAM?

[Old_Geezer]

Someone may be around to correct but as far as I know SATA is a single standard so any cable that conforms to it will be fine no matter what colour plastic it uses. Perhaps the colour denoted length or something ?

[VHG]

The motherboard will probably come with at least one SATA cable.

Colour is not important.

He should not rush in to building the PC so you should have time to order extra SATA cables after he opens the presents.

Has he a got a little toolkit with pliers, small screwdrivers etc?

You can get a PC builders toolkit from places like Maplin if you are looking for an extra present for him.

[VHG]

>>>Did you buy some RAM?

I assume poster only listed things that need to be connected by SATA cables.

They did not mention case/PSU, or CPU either, or an operating system.

[beso]

I figured a case was obvious. Some could think the RAM came with the MB though.

[VHG]

I found a photo of the unpacked contents on the web and it shows it coming with TWO Sata cables.

The photo was on this web site (you need to select on the different photos)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128718

Or see this photo (not that clear but if you zoom in on the photo on the web site above you can see it is two cables)

http://thevaluestore.in/supershop/image/cache/data/Gigabyte/Motherboards/gigabyte_h97m-d3h_mlacom_3-500x500.jpg

[alavahalf]

Whatever you do don't start building a PC on Christmas day ... it can be really stressful.
I've built quite a few ... even though it doesn't take more than an hour or so to build the hardware. The stress will arrive when configuring it and loading software.
Wait until after Xmas as it would be less stressful to be able to nip out to the shops when they are open, rather than ruining everyone's day and putting up with ... "IT WONT WORK ... I HATE COMPUTERS"

[Old_Geezer]

I did wonder if the cable came with other things, but assumed an inventory had been taken.

Interestingly I always found loading the OS the least stressful part, well apart from waiting until the little bar finally reached the right hand side of the screen. It was double checking I'd read the info right and had plugged things in correctly (always had done) and ensuring I'd earthed myself so the components were not damaged.

Aye he'll need space to spread it all out, and time. Might be best to wait until after the Xmas celebrations.

[SlackAlice]

I expect the motherboard box will contain at least 2 x Sata 6Gb cables. One for the DVD/CD drive and one for the HDD drive. Colour doesn't matter, thats just to make it look pretty especially if he's putting it inside a posh case.

I've used Gigabyte boards before and generally always got 4 Sata cables (black ones), so you might be lucky.

Good luck with the build, but I'd use a quieter day and somewhere you can lay it all out without disturbance and interference. Make sure to wear an Anti-static strap.

[annie0000]

Thanks all, I did work out in the meantime that some cables came with it but I ordered some pretty blue ones anyway as they are fairly cheap :) I also stumbled onto the fact that the SSD drive I bought needed a wee cage thing so it fits in the tray :)

He doesn't have a little toolkit but I did get him a wrist thingy

He has 8gb of RAM and this graphics card: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-msi-amd-radeon-r9-290-twin-frozr-iv-28nm-5000mhz-gddr5-gpu-1007mhz-2560-streams-dport-dvi-hdmi

A case, a 650w PSU, an i5 processor and windows 8.1. Im hoping that is everything!

As for doing it on Christmas day, I'm not sure if I will be able to stop him! He's been looking forward to this for a long time and he has virtually nothing else exciting in his christmas pile :) The house will be pretty quiet though - it's just the 4 of us and younger brother is getting an xbox one and a pile of games so we wont see him for a while. I cook most of Christmas dinner on christmas eve so we basically have a quiet day.

Thanks once again for all your help it is really appreciated.

[SlackAlice]

If he's fitting an SSD as the boot drive, remind him to set ACHI mode on the mobo, before installing Windows in order to get the full benefits. Not all mobo's support this but it will not cause any problems if it's not available.

I notice the graphics card has an HDMI output. If the monitor has an HDMI input then that's how I would connect them.

Wish him the best of luck in his new build and we need to know how it all went after Xmas ☺☺☺

[cazzz1975]

The SATA cables normally comes with the motherboard, the colour is irrelevant.

make sure he earth's himself to the case, Im guessing he has his monitor/keyboard and mouse ;)

[annie0000]

Thanks again everyone - yes he has all the other gubbins :) we were in a computer store today and saw a £2.5k rig all set up with 3 monitors - now he is dreaming...of a bigger bedroom mainly! lol

Slack Alice I have no idea what you were talking about in that last post, but i'll google it later ;)

cazzz he has one of those wrist thingys - someone said to clip it to the radiator?

And also, thanks for the suggestion, just collected a wee tool kit thing from Maplin to chuck in his stocking.

Hoping it all goes well but I've warned him to expect problems and that help may not be freely available on Christmas day. I'll update when he is up and running :)

[SlackAlice]

///Thanks again everyone - yes he has all the other gubbins :) we were in a computer store today and saw a £2.5k rig all set up with 3 monitors - now he is dreaming...of a bigger bedroom mainly! lol ///

If he's going to be a gamer just watch him 'drool' when you say 'Oculus Rift' ☺☺☺

[annie0000]

Just to let you know we are up and running - he is skype-ing away on on-line playing with friends as I type - not without a few hiccups and we still have a few things to sort (USBs and headphone slots on the top/front not working - need to connect something but not sure and to what with what!! lol and the hdmi works fine from the motherboard slot but not from the ones on the graphic card - not sure why or if it matters). That can all be saved for another day though and he is happy just to have it all going for now.

Thanks again for all your help.