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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What it does say is that hard drives are not as wide as DVD drives, which means there has to be two cage sections in the case one with a small width for the hard drives, and a larger width cage for your DVD drives.

The problem with installing drives is that there are several different methods of installing drives in the computer case depending on the manufacturer and the size of the computer case.

Some basics, if you look at your hard drive, you’ll see 3 screw holes along each side.  Most of the mounting methods consists of screwing screws in these holes through holes in the case, which holds the drive.  Some cases have pull out cages that make drive installation relatively easy.  You install the drive in the pull out cage and then slide the cage into a slot in the computer case.  I recommend you check out the installation booklet that comes with the case to see the recommended method of installing hard drives in that particular case.  Each case is different.  The screws you got with the computer case are the screws you will use to install the hard drive.

DVD drives install slightly differently.  The front of the DVD drive has to go through the front of the computer case so you can load the DVD.  To do this install, some cases require you remove the front panel of the case, which is usually held on with plastic latches.  You’ll have to remove a plate in the front of the case for the DVD drive to come out the front.  You don’t have to do that with hard drives, since they are entirely internal. Because of this, there are different methods of installing DVD drives.   Some DVD drives require you screw in slider rails that you can move the DVD drive back and forth to align it with the front of the case.  Some slide in from the front and are locked in place by a sliding brake mechanism.  Others have the same screws in the side as with the hard drives.  Again check your installation guide that comes with the case for you case particulars.

Let’s talk about the connectors on the back of the drives.   If you purchased SATA drives, your all set.  Just install the drives in the case with the interface connectors on the back of the drives facing the motherboard so we can hook up cables.

If you did not, that means your hard drives and DVD drives use an IDE interface.  If you have IDE drives, you have to be aware of the jumper on the back.  This is a 6-pin connector on the back consisting of two rows of three pins.  There is a jumper over two of the pins.  If you have more that one DVD drive one of the jumper should be connecting the “Master” pins on the connector panel, and on the other DVD drive, you’ll have to move the jumper to the “Slave” pins.  If you have only one drive, the pins should cover the “Master” pins.  The pins are usually labled, if not check your drive installation manual.  The same goes for the hard drive.  The good news is with SATA drives, you don’t have to worry about that anymore and you shouldn’t see any jumpers at all.

Jumper to select Master and Slave Drives

Install your drives, will do the cable hook ups in another post.

Graphics Card

Before you hunker on down.  Let’s take this a step at a time.  Graphics cards usually come wrapped in an anti-static bag and are susceptible to static, so ground yourself to the computer case before you start and handle the board by the edges.  Take the card out of the packaging and anti-static bag.  There should be an instruction booklet and DVD disk.  Put them aside for now.

Look at the motherboard in the case, you’ll see the slots the graphics card can be plugged into, but before you can do that, you’ll have to remove a panel in the bag of the case so that the outout ports on the back of the graphics card will come out the back of the computer.  That way you don’t have to open the case to hook up your computer monitor.

There are two ways to remove the back case panel and mount the graphics card.  One is to unscrew the panel screw, slide the plate out, mount the graphics card on the motherboard, and screw the motherboard down by replacing the panel screw and catching the metal outcropping on the  graphics card with the screw to lock down the graphics card.

The other is to lift a handle that lifts up and is hinged on one side, like a door.  You can then slide the back case plate out, put the graphics card in,. and close the hinged handle, which also catches the graphics card outcropping to secure it in place.

If there are any other cables supplied with the graphics card, look at the instruction manual to see how their hooked up.

If you have purchased two graphics cards, install the second like the first one, and you’ll need to install a cable connecting the two graphics card together which comes with the graphics card.

That’s it, your done with the graphics card for the moment.

You might be asking why are you hooking up wires when you don’t even have the power supply in the case yet.  Well, there’s a method to my madness.   These wires are difficult to get in place, I like to put them in before any other wires get in the way to make the job a lot easier.  So we’ll start with the computer case wiring.

What are all those wires attached to the case?  Most of you have seen the front lights on the computer when the disk drive is accessed.  You’ve turned the front power switch on and off, and you’ve hit the reset button when your software hangs up.  Well all that is controlled by the motherboard, the lights and switches on the front of the case are hooked to the motherboard through these wires.  If you have any USB or Firewire ports on the front of the case they’ll have to be hooked up also.

Let’s get started.  Get out your motherboard user’s guide that came with your motherboard.  Look for the diagram of the motherboard.  What your looking for is where the ports are on the motherboard.  Keep this page open as we proceed so you will know where plugs and cables are connected to the motherboard.  Most User’s Guides also show the connector pins in a diagrams so you know which pins are for what.

Look for a block of pins usually called “panel,” or “front panel connector.”  The power on/off switch plug and the reset swith on/off plug usually are two-pin plugs.  They should slide over their respective pins which should be labeled “PWRSW” and “RESET.”  You’ll find a four pin plug which is your system warning speaker for beeps and warning signals when something is wrong, slide that over the four “SPKR” pins.

Computer Case Wires

We have two lights on the front panel.  One lets you know there is power to the system, the power on light, and the other is when the disk drive is accessed.  Each are two pin plugs.  The system power is usually labeled, “PLED,” and the disk drive light is usually called, “IDE_LED.”  After you slide all these small pins over the posts on the motherboard, the hardest wiring is taken care of.

Most of the current cases, have a USB port on the front panel.  These USB port(s) are different from the USB ports in the back of the computer.  The ones on the back are already hooked up directly to the motherboard.  So we’re hooking up the front USB ports.  Look for a connector on the motherboard labeled “USB58″ or “USB76″ or just plain, “USB.”  The plug from the front panel should be labeled, “USB.”  This is a 10-pin plug with one pin plugged up so there is only one way to install this on the motherboard.

The next cable is the audio cable, usually labeled “HD AUDIO,” or “AUDIO.”   There may be another plug on this wire labeled, “AC97.”  Ignore this, and use the “HD Audio” plug if you have digital audio on your motherboard.  If you  don’t the motherboard diagram will give you the AC97 port.  The HD Audio plug is a 10-pin plug with a different pin blocked than the USB plug had.  On the motherboard diagram is usually called “Front Panel Audio connector.”  This connector usually just looks like 9 pins sticking up in the air.

Audio Cable

The last front panel cable you may or may not have.  This is for your 1394 “Firewire” port, and this depends if you have a Firewire port on the front of the case or not.  The plug is usually labeled “1394″ and the motherboard diagram is usually called an “IEEE 1394a connector, or simply, “Firewire header.”

That should be it for the computer case front panel cabling, except there’s still a wire, or maybe two, floating in the case.  These are for the case fans.  Most motherboard have a couple of connectors for fans called “Fan header,” or “Pwr Fan2″, “Pwr Fan2,” etc.  These are three-pin connectors.  Hook up your case fans.

You should now have all the loose wires in your case hooked up to the motherboard, congratulations.

The first is the old version which is called IDE or EIDE, or ATA.  This is a 16 bit wide bus that transfers data from anywhere between 16 Mb per second to 133 Mb per second depending on which version your using.  Each IDE connector on the motherboard can hook to two IDE storage devices, a master and a slave.  Remember when we installed the DVD drives, we put a jumper wire over two of six pins to designate master or slave drive.  IDE stands for Integrated Drive Electronics, just a little tidbit.

IDE cable

IDE cables look like flat ribbons 2″ wide with three connectors attached to the ribbon.  The cable is normally 18″ long, but you can get round cables that go up to 36″.  Round cables are nice, because they do not get in the way of other cables in the case, are more flexible, and do not redirect or impede air flow.

The three connectors on the IDE cable are spaced two close together and one at the othe end of the ribbon.  The stand-alone connector at the end goes to your motherboard.  The other two cables go to the master and slave drive.  There are 40 holes in the connector consisting of 2 rows of 20 holes.  One of the holes in the middle is blocked to let you know which way to insert the cable into the socket.  So do it.  Put the cable in the motherboard and the other end in your DVD drive.  If you do not have a 2 rows of 20 pins to put the cable into, then you probably have a SATA drive.  Read on.

SATA data cable

Starting in 2007 a new horse rode into town for both power and data cables, called serial ATA, or SATA.  This is gradually replacing all the IDE ribbon cables, as you can get SATA DVD drives now.  SATA cables transfer data anywhere from 1.3 Gb per second (first generation) to 3.0 Gb per second (second generation) to 6.0 Gb per second (thrid generation), with the most common SATA hard disk drives transferring at 3.0 GB per second, at present.  Almost 22 times faster than an IDE cable, you can see why they are replacing the old technology.

SATA cables are much smaller than the IDE cable, although they are a little stiff.  The data connectors have only 7 pins with an L like notch on one end, so the connector will only go into the interface one way.  There is a slightly different SATA power connector which will talk about when we get to power cables.

SATA connector showing notch

Let’s hook up the data cables.  There should be one SATA cable per drive to one socket in the motherboard.  Go back to your motherboard diagram and look for your SATA connectors.  They should be labeled SATA1, SATA2, SATA3, etc.  Your main drive, the one with the operating system should be connected to SATA1 and so on.  Go for it.

You should now have the data cables to all your drives attached to your motherboard.  Now that wasn’t so bad.  Now all we have to do is get power to the system, something we haven’t written about yet and the topic of our next post.

When you consider that each DVD drive, your hard drive, maybe your graphics card,  and the motherboard requires power and that power has to arrive at the device needing power via a power cable, then all of a sudden you’ve got twice as many cables running all over the inside of the case.  But there is a method to the madness, so let’s get started.

Power Cables

Unwrap your power supply from its packaging, and take it out of the wrapping material.  If you didn’t get a modular power supply you’ll see a bunch of cables coming out the back of the power supply.

Modular Power Supply

If you got a modular power supply, you won’t see as many cables coming out the back, but you’ll still see some.  You’ll also see ports on the back for the modular power cables.  I like modular power supplies because it reduces the number of non-useful cables in your computer.  You only use the cables you need.   If you have a modular power supply, make sure the extra cables snap into the power supply ports with a click so it won’t come out inadvertently later when using the computer.

Let’s install the power supply in the case.  The power supply fits into its own notch in the case.  Fit the power supply into the case so the on-off switch comes out the back of the case, and the power supply fan is pointed toward the open air on the inside of the case.  Do not block the fan by having the fan pointed at the case side.  Also make sure none of your previouse wires are trapped by the power supply.

The power supply is held to the case with four Phillips screws attached from outside the case.  Make the screws tight, but not super tight.  The cables should come out the back of the power supply inside the case.

There should be at least three cables coming out the back.  One is a big wide 24-pin ATX connector that is the main power to your motherboard.  You should easily find where that goes on the motherboard.  It has a latch on the side that matches with a hook on the plug so you put the plug in the correct direction.

There should be at least one 8-pin ATX 12v and one 6-pin PCI express coming out the back of the power supply.  One of these will go into the second power connector on your motherboard.  This may be a 8, 6, or 4-pin socket, and usually the 8-pin power plug can be broken in half to make two fours.  Check your motherboard, or your motherboard diagram to find this connector.

Your graphics card may take a 6-pin power cable.  Some graphics need additional power and some don’t.  Look for a power connector plug on the graphics card, if you don’t see one, the motherboard will power the card.

Molex Connector

Each drive needs power.  The IDE drives use a 4-pin Molex connector.  The Molex connector is rounded on two edges to match the connector which is also rounded on two corners, so you can’t put it in the wrong direction.

SATA Power Connector

The last power connectors you will need is the SATA power connector.  This is a 15-pin slim connector with an L-shaped appendage on the end, like the data cable had, so you can’t hook it up the wrong way.  Make sure they’re pushed in tight to the disk drive.  You’ll need one power connector per drive, one power cable usually has two connectors.

Congratulations!  You’ve installed all your hardware inside your case.  Before we put the covers on the case we’ll will want to test things out, which we’ll write about next.