i'm surely not perfect and with this new motherboard and CPU i was happy with my initial setup of the board and those worked to where i could put the machine back together.
first i installed the few expansion USB boards i had extra as really i would rather wear those out instead of the main plugs on the motherboard. my old motherboard i had an extra 10 USB ports added by these expansion boards but this motherboard only allowed one each of the USB3 and USB2 expansions so that was what i did. then i put the motherboard in the case, plugged everything back in and got the drives wired in so they'd not flop around too much when i stood it back up. the fun part turned out to be that not all USB ports could be used by certain devices (the motherboard would not boot correctly and it would be complaining about not being able to find init). i figured that out, got things to boot as they were before (well not really but that is a whole different issue having to do with UEFI and this particular mobo) and then the last device to get going was the USB speakers. they are an old set from back when i bought the Dell machine. very good sounding speakers with a subwoofer. the previous machine just took the audio feed from the audio out jack. so of course that was the first one to try for this mobo too. i plugged it in, turned everything back on. hmm, sound was really strange, a lot of noise, no real volume. i scratched my head and tried a few of the other audio ports available. no real change. i was starting to think that i would have to send this mobo back after all. grr! then i realized i had not pushed the audio jack plug in all the way. whew! that was it. sound works fine now as it usually did before. hahaha... :) silly me. :) songbird
