HELP: Power?? Heat Paste?? SATAII??

[davidfox]

Hey guys.

Just put together a system, coupla questions:

Video card is MSI NX8800GT; on the card, there is a "power connector" spot to plugin a black cable to the card, and the black cable then has 2 clear plastic 'females' branching off it. That cable came with the card.

In the user manual/s it says; plug the card into the slot, now turn on the PC - never mentions the freakin power plug on the card... So what i am sposed to do? Plugin the cable and connect the two females to my PSU - or leave it?? I'm not turning it on till this is sorted :(

Also - the Motherboard says to put some "heat sink paste" when installing the CPU but the Intel E8400 cpu manual says nothing about that. Is it gonna blow up if i dont put any on?

Next: My SATA DVD-RW doesnt have an 'audio' cable like im used to with IDE drives. Does that mean it doesnt send audio, or does the SATA cable do it all now?

Last one: My HDD (Samsung SATA II) has a little jumper thingy on the back which is set to 1.5Gbs, but i can take it off to get the 3Gbs speed. My motherboard (Gigabyte GA P35-DS3L) says it supports 3Gbs, but also 1.5Gbs - so what should i do for that??

Thanks anyone who can help me :) !!

[JrRacinFan]

@vid card- The connector your speaking of on the card is known as PCIe 6 pin power. If your power supply has that 6 pin use it instead. Also, you must have something connected to it, either it be the adapter or the 6 pin from the psu.

@thermal paste- Your stock cooling Heatsink/Fan has some already applied to it. Install the fan and you are ready to go.

@SATA- Do not worry about the audio cable and remove the jumper from the hdd.

[Mussels]

^ what he said. Video card needs power one way or the other, either via the adaptor (BOTH females must be powered) or from your PSU

Thermal paste: thats more for 3rd party cooling. as said, the stock cooler should have had some grey material already on it.

Again on the HDD - you can support 1.5Gb/s or 3Gb/s on each end. so of course, you want the faster one :D (3)