My Portable Electrix 7428 Halogen SLX Magnifier was extremely helpful throughout the assembly process.  It provided focused light, swiveled out of the way easily, and showed me small details.

Bish posted the following on the ASUS forum, which I edited to remove references to RAID because I don't use RAID on this machine: "There are effectively 3 SATA controllers - the ICH7R from Intel controls 4 ports, however one of these (#2) is cascaded over to the EZ Backup Silicon Image (SiI) controller for a further 2 ports; finally there's the JMicron controller which has one internal and one external SATA port. AFAIK, this is also the order for performance, with the Intel SATA being your preferred for hard disks and the JMicron the least preferred, but its otherwise OK for Optical drives which don't need as much bandwidth. The SiI is designed for 2 hard disks, RAID0 or RAID1. I don't think you can run a single HD on it, unless you reconfigure the BIOS to take one of the SiI ports as a 4th port to the Intel ones for RAID10 purposes (see below) and I don't think it takes an optical drive...

"You'd best connect the 2 HDs to ports 1 & 3 of the Intel ICH7R controller, leaving port 4 for one of the SATA opticals - then put the other optical on the internal JMicron controller. Make a F6 floppy disk (it will need to be a real floppy, USB floppies aren't understood by XP, still!), boot the computer, install XP from bootable CD/DVD (make sure you configure the BIOS for optical as first boot drive, I had problems otherwise), press F6 when told to right at the beginning, choose the right controller, continue with XP install, it should see your drive. Update: you need drivers, check the post "2 Raptors RAID 0, One Raptor for OS" for an explanation from Wizard."

On another post, Bish offered the following advice: "The Intel ICH7R controller is SATA ports SATA1, SATA3 and SATA4. (SATA2 was hi-jacked and split for the EZ_RAID ports) - put one disk on SATA1 as it is the master port, and the other on SATA3 or SATA4. This controller should be designed to take a full complement of disks without performance loss so yes, put them all here."

Bish is prolific: "configured the Intel ICH7R to be in AHCI mode? Its in the BIOS, under "Main" page, choose IDE Configuration, change "Configure SATA As" to "AHCI". Do you have the latest AHCI drivers from Intel? - click Download under Intel Matrix Storage Manager, select your OS, and take the latest Floppy Configuration Utility under "Utilities, Tools, Examples". After you press F6 in Windows XP setup, put in the floppy and it shows you a list of drivers, make sure you scroll down with the arrow key to find 82801GR/GH SATA AHCI (ICH7R) - this is the driver you want.

I downloaded and installed the INF Update Utility [INFINST_AUTOL.EXE] (1102KB) 8.1.1.1001

And as another poster suggested, do you have modern SATA2 drives supporting NCQ? I don't know if AHCI requires NCQ, but it certainly supports it..."

Manciani describes a similar situation as I have, however I plugged in a 400GB IDE drive without any problem along with my 500GB SATA: "I'm having problems to install my IDE devices on this mobo. This is the list of all the devices I've got: 2 SATA HD, 1 IDE HD, 1 SATA DVD, 1 IDE DVD. I connected the 3 SATA devices no problem and i'm having Windows installed on the SATA1 connector. I'm not able to have windows recognize the 2 IDE (HD and DVD) at the same time, no matter to which connector and/or configuration i use. Here's the list of all the tests i've done so far:

1. DVD to blue IDE, HD to Jmicron: HD not recognized.
2. Disabled Jmicron, both IDE to blue connector. If i set the HD as master or both devices to cable select, the HD gets recognized, the DVD appears in the list of installed devices but doesn't work: it's there but if i insert a disk it's not possible to access it and windows explorer freezes until i remove the disk. In the device manager everything appears fine though.
3. If i set the DVD as master and HD as slave, both devices are not recognized.
4. If i connect only one IDE device, it works with no problems.
5. I tried using a different IDE DVD with the same results.

One of the reasons I purchased an Intel Core 2 Duo is to support virtualization. Andyistic writes that "to enable this feature on the motherboard, you cannot use the Speed Step feature."

The ASUS P5W DH motherboard does not come with a speaker or even a piezo buzzer, nor does the Antec P180B case. Each manufacturer says the other should supply a speaker/buzzer. Can't find one anywhere! Radio Shack no longer sells them. I eventually purchased a Case Speaker (BC25920) for $1.99 from Cable123.com. Because speakers have powerful magnets, the speaker can simply be placed on any steel surface (the entire Antec case is lined with steel) and it will stay in place. Nothing to it!

There is no need to connect the audio output of the DVD drives to the motherboard's audio pins; the audio signal is sent via the IDE cable.

CPU Fan

I purchased a Zalman CNPS9500 CPU fan so that I could overclock the CPU without damaging it due to overheating.  This fan is very large and heavy and has a lot of very sharp edges that are guaranteed to cut you any time you brush your hand against it.  Notice how much bigger it is next to the stock Intel CPU fan in the left-hand image below.

The oversize (and overweight) Zalman CNPS9500 CPU fan is held in place by a clamp which is held in place with a frame that is through-bolted to the motherboard at four points.  This means that the CPU fan's frame must be attached to the motherboard prior to inserting the motherboard into the case.  It also means that special care must be taken when moving the computer.  The right-hand image below shows the top and bottom parts of the Zalman CPU fan's support frame, without the motherboard which is normally sandwiched between the top and bottom frame members.

 

The ASUS P5W DH motherboard easily fit into the large Antec P180B case - just take care when fitting it through the backplate that the little tabs don't cover any I/O ports.  Inserting the CPU was also very easy - once I realized that the CPU is cleverly packaged such that the pins on the bottom are covered in a plastic cap that looks like it is part of the chip.  Taking care not to touch the pins, I opened the clamp, removed the socket cover and placed the CPU in its new home.  The frame for the Zalman CPU fan made locking the CPU down a bit harder to do than would normally be the case ... not a problem, however.

 

The Zalman manual warned that installing the fan might be a problem in small cases.  The Antec 180B is a very big case, and there were two orientations that the CPU fan could have been placed in.  I went with front-to-back flow as shown in the left-hand image below.

 

Before bolting in the fan, I carefully applied a thin strip of Arctic Silver 5 thermally conductive grease to the top of the CPU.  I then placed the Zalman CPU fan gently on the CPU and carefully wiggled it from side to side so I only got cut a little bit more than before.

 

Time to bolt down the fan to the frame. Note that the frame was only loosely attached at this point.

 

Once I had the fan securely attached to the frame, I screwed in the frame to the motherboard, tightening alternating screws - much as you would tighten tire studs.  The only problem with this procedure is that the fan's radiator fins obscure the bolts.  You can push the fins aside with the screwdriver, but unless you are wearing gloves there will be blood.

 

Now it was time to plug the fan. As you can see from the picture on the left, taken before I had attached the fan, the power cable for the fan is attached to the center of the fan.

 

Memory

Nothing to it!  All you need to know is that the orange sockets should be used before the black sockets, and to listen for the two clicks as the memory seats into the socket.  The two CORSAIR DDR2 TWIN2X2048-6400 1GB chips worked like a charm.

 

Omni posted the following on the ASUS forum: "I have Corsair's 6400C3 and the stock specs are 800 mhz/2.2 volts/3-4-3-9. Straight out of the box I can change the timings to 3-3-3-9 and have a completely stable system. I can also get them running at 1066 and stable just by upping the voltage to 2.25 and changing the timings to 4-4-4-12. I bought this memory; because of the research that I did said that it was superior to the 8500C5 in latency and could substitute for the 8500 at its specs or better."

Dust

(Written after the system was assembled and in use for several months) - The Zalman heat sink traps a lot of dust, and can completely clog up. Every three months you should open the case and use a soft brush to clean off the dust, which packs down due to the fan blowing on it. If you want to use a vacuum cleaner to remove the dust, please note that most vacuums emit sparks from the end of the hose which can damage the CPU, RAM and motherboard. I recommend that you resist the temptation to vacuum the insides of your computer unless your vacuum runs on batteries. Dust can have a lot of static charge, so an empty vacuum should be less dangerous than a full vacuum.

Dead system

(Written after the system was assembled and in use for several months) - This system has twice gone completely dead. Each time flicking the power switch on and off did nothing. After opening the case I could see a green LED glowing on the motherboard, so I knew there was some power, but the Antec power supply's blue inicator light did not glow. Both time the solution was the same - reset the motherboards' CMOS RAM as described in the section entitled "Clear RTC RAM (CLRTC)" on page 26 of the motherboard manual. ASUS told me that if the CMOS RAM recieves a spark of static it will contain invalid values that will cause the system to become completely non-responsive. Odd that the Antec power supply's blue LED also goes dead in this circumstance, which might cause you to think that the power supply has failed.

USB

Bish posted this: "Take care that the lower 2 USB ports on the motherboard are auto-sensing so don't put here your mouse, keyboard or anything that can be accidentally activated - it will turn the computer on when you least expect it! (This may be dependant on the "restore power state after power loss" option in the BIOS.)"