By now I assume you have purchased the components you’ll need to assemble your computer and you either have a bunch of boxes unopenned, or you’ve openned everything, and are not sure where everything goes.

The first thing you should do is to get out your computer assembly tools, and set aside a working area to build your computer.  This could be an area of the floor, or a table.   This may or may not take you a couple of days depending on the time you have, so it should be an area where the kids or other people will not be picking up parts and moving them from one spot to another.  You don’t want the kids playing with the parts.  It should be a spot where you have access to a power receptacle or power strip.  Gather all the components together in your work area and let’s get started.

Open up the computer case box.  Remove the computer case from the carton.  Remove the protective cover.  Put the boxes and packing material out by the trash, unless your planning to ship the computer to somewhere when your done.

We now have a nice and shiny new computer case.  The first thing we want to do is remove the both sides of the computer case.  They are held on the case by four or six thumbscrews on the back of the case.  Remove the screws and slide the covers backwards to remove them.  They should be a little tight, apply consistent pressure and they will slide back.  On most cases the covers are aluminum, they will bend and scratch easily.  Put them in an out of the way place where no one will trip over them.  We will not need them until the computer is completely assembled.  Put the four or six screws right next to the panels.  That way you won’t lose them, and you’ll know exactly what there used for a couple of days from now.

You should find a bag of screws, and an instruction booklet.  The instruction booklet will be referred to as we start assembly of the components in the case.  Set it aside for now, and look at the bag full of screws.

Look through the screws for the cooper stand offs.  These are screws with a screw hole in the top of the screw.  There should be nine of them.  They are used to raise the motherboard slightly away from the case, and ground the motherboard to the case.  The ATX motherboard has nine holes in the motherboard.  The motherboard will rest on top of the stand offs, and other screws will go through the motherboard and screw into the top of the stand off posts to secure the motherboard to the case.

Stand Offs

For now all we want to do is screw the nine copper stand offs into the tray inside the case in the holes provided.  There are more than nine holes in the case.  The holes you need should be stamped with an “A” or some markings.  On the Gigabyte cases they are marked A1 through A9.  Screw the posts in tight, but not super tight.

When done, put the case aside, put the bag of screws inside the case with the instruction booklet.  We won’t come back to the case until we get the motherboard ready.

Let’s unpack the motherboard and the computer chip and marry them together as a single unit.  First, we’ll get set  up to work.   Fold a towel that will not generate a lot of static electricity, i.e. an older towel, and place that where your going to place the motherboard after you take it out of the packaging.  An old plastic cafeteria tray underneath the towel is ideal.  Do not use a metal baking tray.  The purpose of the tray is to be able to slide the motherboard around easily without picking it up, and the purpose of the towel is to give you a little cushion as your plugging the fan and memory into the motherboard.  Be careful not to bunch the towel as you don’t want an uneven surface when your plugging in components which could bend the board.

Remove the motherboard from its packaging.  Do not take it out of the antistatic bag yet.  With the motherboard may be an instruction booklet, a cd with some software on it,  and some wiring, depending on the motherboard manufacturer.   There will also be a thin aluminum panel with holes in it.   Be careful with this, as it bends easily.   Put everything, but the motherboard, aside for now.  Ground yourself from static electricity by touching a something metal like a metal electrical outlet cover, or although at this point not the best, the computer case will work.  Take the motherboard out of the antistatic bag and place it on the towel.

Remove the Intel Core 2 Duo from its packaging.  You will find a computer chip and a CPU fan.  Put the fan aside for now.  When handling the computer chip handle it by the sides of the board it is on.  Do not touch the pins.  Put the chip down by the motherboard for now.

Looking at the motherboard, you’ll find a square with a gray plastic cover on it.  This is the LGA 775 socket where the chip will plug into the motherboard.  The socket has a latch on the side that is held in place by an outcropping on the motherboard.    Press the latch down and then out and it should pop up.  Once the latch is up you can lift the metal hinged cover over the socket, which will fold up like the page of a book.   The metal covers purpose is to apply uniform pressure to the chip.

Lift up the plastic socket cover, and remove it completely from the socket and motherboard.  Do not touch the socket pins.  You want to save the socket cover in case you have to return the motherboard back to the manufacturer.  They require you to have the cover in place when shipping.  Just put it aside for now.

The LGA 775 socket with cover open

Your now looking at the LGA 775 socket.  The socket consists of a bunch of pins sticking up in the air and flattened out at the top.  It looks like they’re flat against the back of the socket, but there not.  You do not want to push the chip down on top of the socket.  If you do, you could bend a pin and loose a contact point, or worse, end up with a pin touching another pin.  Inserting the computer chip into the socket should mean no pressure on your part.  Were going to let the cover do the work.

The socket has plastic outcroppings and the computer chip has notches that only allow you to place the chip in the socket one way.  They’re keyed.  Handling the chip by the edge of the card, gently place the chip in the socket in the correct position.   Do not move the chip back and forth, or push down on the chip.  The cover will apply the pressure.  Just place the chip gently on top of the socket.

Swing the cover down so it covers the chip, bring the lever down so it catches the end of the cover, and swing it underneath its anchor so it stays down in place.  Congratulations, you have just mounted the Intel Core 2 Duo to your motherboard.  All is well in life.

The computer processing unit, or CPU, is so dense with computer circuitry that as you try to run the chip faster and faster, it heats up hotter and hotter.  Any chip you purchase now comes with a CPU fan to help cool the chip down.  The cooler the chip, the faster it runs.  Seems like a paradox.  Cooler is faster, but if you run faster, it gets hotter.

With our last post we put the CPU into its socket on the motherboard.  Now we want to attach a fan directly to the CPU chip to cool it down.  You can use the CPU fan that came with the Core 2 Duo, or you may have purchased a separate cooling fan.  If you purchased a separate CPU fan, then you should have also purchased, some thermal compound.  I believe I recommended a brand called Artic Silver.

If you look at your motherboard, on the four sides of the LGA 775 socket are four holes through the motherboard where the CPU fan is mounted to the motherboard.  There are two ways commonly used to attach the CPU cooling fan to the CPU and motherboard.

The first method is used with the cheaper fans, and involves pushing posts with two barbs that look like arrow heads into each hole.  A pin is then pushed down between the two barbed ends to expand them in the hole.  The barbs catch on the underside of the hole and the fan is secured.  To remove the fan, you twist the pin up and out from between the two barbs, reach under the motherboard and squeeze the two barbs together and push it back through the hole on the motherboard.

Intel push down CPU fan

This is the way the fan provided by Intel attaches to the motherboard.  I don’t care for this method, because the barb and pins, which are made out of thin plastic, can easily tear and break.  What happens is one of the barbs breaks in the hole.  Once a barb breaks off, you can no longer attach that corner of the fan to the CPU.  You’ll only have this happen once, and you’ll quickly move to mounting method two, which involves purchasing a separate CPU fan.

The second method is much more secure.  It involves putting a screw through a hole in the fan mounting bracket, through the motherboard, and into a screw bracket you have placed under the motherboard.  It’s like a sandwich, the two brackets have the motherboard in the middle.   The brackets have four holes in them that line up with the four holes on the motherboard.  You tighten the screws and the bracket is attached.  The fan then attaches to this bracket with two small screws.  To take off the fan, you unscrew the screws.

Third Party CPU fan. Bracket not shown.

The only problem with this second method is if you ever want to change your fan to a different one, with a different mounting set up, you will have to get to the bottom of the motherboard in the computer case.  That means unplugging everything and pulling out the motherboard.  A real pain, as you’ll see as we start putting our computer together.  You pick your poison.  Since I usually don’t switch fans, I prefer this method.

I’m going to assume you purchased a separate CPU cooling fan.  The one that comes from Intel is noisy, and barely gets the job done.  There are much more efficient and quieter CPU Cooling fans  out on the market.

Here we go.  Take the CPU cooling fan out of it’s packaging.  Be careful with the fan and cooling fins that you don’t bend them.   Carefully unwravel the power wire and plug from between the fan.  Before actually making any attachment, to see how everything will go together place the CPU Cooling fan on top of the CPU, and play with the mounting hardware until you understand how everything will attach together.  You have the square screw holder under the motherboard, the top bracket has a notch in it for the CPU latch to swing up, so the bracket should be lined up so the latch can be lifted.  You’ll notice a separate bracket with two screw holes that attach the fan to the bracket attached to the motherboard.  Once you see how everything goes together,  take the fan part off, and attach the bracket to the motherboard with the four long screws.

We’re ready for the thermal compound.  If your using Artic Silver, there is an instructional pdf on their web site on how to apply their thermal compound to the Core 2 Duo.  Read their instructions.  You only want to apply a thin bead in a line down the middle of the CPU and that’s it.  The thermal compound will fill in the microscopic holes in the fan and CPU plates to form a good thermal transfer.  Too much compound is not good.

After you apply the thermal compound, put the fan base on the CPU and attach it with the second bracket.  Note, if your using the Intel fan, they have provided thermal compound on the bottom of the fan plate already.

You’ll need to provide power to the fan.  Look around the LGA 775 socket for a white interface with four pins sticking up.  It should be labeled “CPU fan.”  Attach the wire with the plug to the interface on the motherboard.  It only goes on in one direction.  Congratulations, the CPU cooling fan is all set up on the motherboard.

The memory chips you buy for your system are determined by which motherboard you purchased.  The motherboard is designed to take a specific type of memory, and that is called out in the motherboard specifications.

Most desktop memory is on 240 pin memory boards, and most motherboards either have two or four  240 pin memory slots.  The 240 pin slots are keyed so you can only mount the memory card in one direction.

240 pin memory cards

My recommendation was to maximize your initial memory.  That translates to 4 Gb of memory for a 32 bit system.  That usually comes on two 2 Gb memory cards.  The memory cards are sold together as a pair and are a matched set.   The idea is that memory storage is interleaved between the two cards to improve performance.  It turns out the slots on the motherboard also are matched to take advantage of the matched memory cards.

On those motherboard that have two 240 pin slots, there isn’t a problem as the two cards will plug into the two slcts.  Most motherboards have four 240 pin slots, so you need to be careful about which two slots you use for the two memory cards.  The motherboard user’s guide that comes with the motherboard will tell you how the memory should be installed in the memory slots.   Usually, this is slot one and slot three.  If you don’t find how your slots are set up in the provided user’s guide, there is usually much more extensive documentation on the motherboard manufacturer’s web site.   Once you determine which slots to use, your ready for the install.

Take the memory chip out of the packaging.  It should be enclosed in a static free bag.  Memory chips are very susceptible to static electricity.  Before removing the memory from the bag, ground your self on a metal surface.  Handle the memory cards by the card edges.

Place the memory card in the slot in the right direction and push down evenly to sit the card.  The card should go in fairly easily and latches on the end should pop up to catch the card and show its seated properly.

That’s it.   You now have your memory mounted on your motherboard.

We’ve gone as far as we can putting components on the motherboard before putting it in the case.  It’s time to marry the case and motherboard.

When you unpacked the motherboard, it came with a thin 1 3/4″ x 6 1/4″aluminum plate with a bunch of stencil like holes cut in it.  Sometimes the holes are labeled.  The aluminum panel has one side of the plate with a raised, curled border around the edges.  This snaps into the back hole of the computer case, the holes correspond to the ports on the edge of the motherboard.

The aluminum panel mounted in the case

You want to orient the motherboard so the ports on the edge of the motherboard will be toward the back of the computer case, but first the panel.  The aluminum panel mounts from the inside of the case.  You’ll find that the raised rounded, curved side of the panel will snap into the hole in the case.  But first orient the panel so the holes are aligned with the motherboard ports, and then snap the panel into the case.  You’ll find the panel snaps in place like a soda paper cup lid.

Next the motherboard slips into the case against the aluminum panel.  The aluminum panel has small strips that are around the holes.  These go around the ports of the motherboard.  Make sure when you slide the motherboard in to the aluminum panel ports that there is no metal strips in the way of using the ports.

Make sure there are no wires between the board and the bottom of the case.  They should be above the motherboard.

If you look closely at the nine holes going through the motherboard, you’ll find they align, or almost align, with the copper stand off posts you put in the case earlier.  In the bag of screws that came with your computer case, there are at least nine or more Phillips screws with flat polished heads.  Get out your trusty Phillips screw driver and fasten the motherboard to the case by screwing nine screws through the nine holes in the motherboard and into the top of the copper stand off posts.  The screws should be tight, but not super tight.

Motherboard in case

Congratulations, your motherboard and case are one.