11 Steps to successfully building your PC Author: Greg Monkiewicze-mail: gmonkiewicz@gmail.comWarning: Some tweaks and steps mentioned in this guide such as overclocking are ment to be used by experienced users only and not by beginners. I am not liable for any damage that could have been caused by this guide. Index of reference: ---------Contents:---------1.Body Step 1: Preparing your case. Get your case ready before you get started Step 2: Adding power. If your case didn't come with a PSU it is time to install it now. Step 3: Preparing your motherboard, installing the backplate and mounting it,. Screw the motherboard mounts into your case, install the backplate and mount the motherboard. Step4: Socketing your processor and adding the memory. Install your CPU and RAM modules. Step 5: Arming the switches. Connect the case switches and lights to your motherboard. Step 6: Powering external peripherals. If your case and your motherboard have them, connect them. Step7: Installing your video card. Step 8: Taking your computer for a test ride. Giving it a test boot will help you solve your problems easier than having to deal with all of the hardware at once. Step 9: Preparing your hard drives and optical drives. Connecting your hard devices. Setting jumpers, powering them and connecting them to your motherboard. Mounting them into your case. Step 10: Installing the rest of your cards such as your sound card, TV tuner, etc. Step 11: Final steps. Connecting any remaining peripherals to the PSU such as fans. Configure your Bios to have to correct CPU speed and boot drive. Vocabulary: Don't know what PSU means? Definitions will be listed below. 2. Credits3. Legal4. Contact Information------- Step 1: ------- Most PC cases are packed with a small amount of hardware. Things such as screws, standoff mounts, front-mounted USB ports and proper screws for fans should all be included in a box inside your case. Before continuing any further you must first remove your case door and pull out that box. Since the case will be probably laid down on its side to facilitate your job it is suggested to take off the other side panel in order to prevent it from getting scratched. ------- Step 2: ------- If your case didn't come with a PSU (power supply) then you need to install the one that you bought. Normally there is some sort of mounting bracket screwed onto the back of the case. You need to first unscrew it, and then slide the power supply into your case and screw the bracket down. ------- Step 3: ------- To mount your motherboard you must first install the motherboard mounts into your case. Each motherboard has a somewhat different standoff configuration. All that you must do is hold the motherboard close to the tray and note which holes line up with the holes on the tray. It is important that you do not add any extra standoffs since short contacts on the back of your motherboard can render your system unbootable or can either cause permanent damage to your hardware. There are dozens of possible backplate configurations, the thing on the back of your case with holes for the PS/2 USB etc. Each motherboard comes with a custom plate which can be placed into a standard size hole in your case. It is to be mounted from the inside. Make sure that is facing the right way. The PS/2 ports or usually near the PSU. To install the motherboard you must simply line up its rear connectors at a rough 45 degree angle and slide it in. Once you have lined up the backplate and the rear connectors then lower the front edge of the motherboard. And screw down the motherboard. Make sure not to strip the screws. ------- Step 4: ------- The most delicate part of assembling your entire system is socketing your processor. Make sure you are grounded before you handle your CPU. You may simply touch a metal portion of the case before you pick it up. For the Athlon and Pentium 4 procedure is simple, but if you have a new Intel LGA775 processor it is more complicated. (later on) The first step that you must do is lift the little lever beside the socket. The processor will slip into the socket by itself without any means of force if properly aligned. Once it is sitting in its socket you can lower the lever back down until you hear it click. Now you NEED to add thermal paste to the CPU. If you are using a stock heatsink you may use the thermal pad that is provided. If not, apply a thin layer of paste to your CPU's heat spreader and smooth it down with a business card. This is usually as simple as setting the heatsink in the socket, lining up a couple of clips and snapping them into place. Intel's new LGA775 CPU is supposed to have a new era of performance by removing the need for pins in the CPU and reducing resistance. The socket's life span is a skimpy 25 insertions. Before you handle a processor make sure you are grounded. Unlock the socket leaver and flip the load plate open. Remove this plate and keep it in some safe area. If you need to ship the motherboard back without a processor in it this cover will provide protection. Pick up the CPU with your fingers and carefully align it with the notches in the socket. The CPU simply must be inserted straight down into the socket. Be careful not to drop the processor or let it slide when you seat it since this little movement will be capable to bend the pins. Once the CPU is seated and the notches match you finally have to put the load plate back down and lower the socket lever. Job Done. Installing the memory, RAM, is very easy. Before you install the memory you should first consult your motherboard's documentation to determine which slots need to be filled in order to enable dual-channel mode. Usually the slots are color coded but this can differ among manufacturers. Examine the Ram and the memory lot and note that the sticks only go in one way. You must simply line up the notch in the RAM stick with the slot and then push down on the stick while applying even force to both ends of the stick until it clicks into place. ------- Step 5: ------- To connect the case's buttons and light to your motherboard you will have to consult your motherboard's manual since each motherboard is different. Connecting the headers is as simple as lining up the pins and adding a little amount of force until the wire slides into place. All that is needed to get your system up and running is the power switch connector. Once you have connected the reset and power switches it is time for the lights to be plugged in. It doe not matter which wire goes to which lead for the switches but the lights require proper polarity. Your manual will be able to tell you which of the pins are positive and if you do manage to get it backwards nothing will happen so do not worry. ------- Step 6: ------- Connecting a USB and FireWire post is extremely easy since case enclosures include pre-configured connectors for each type of port. All that is needed to be done is to line up the connectors with the appropriate header on the motherboard and gently push down. FireWire and USB cables are both keyed so they won't go in if they are not aligned properly. Sometimes you will find a case where the USB cables are not in a convenient block but are instead each separate wire. You must consult your motherboard manual in that case to make sure that you connect your wires correctly. You must be absolutely certain that you do not switch the USB and the FireWire headers. If you make a mistake and plug the wrong device into the wrong port you can destroy both the device and the motherboard. Many motherboards lack onboard headers for front mounted FireWire but there is alternative since most Sound Blaster Audigy 2 cards include internal FireWire headers, When installing the soundcard just slip your fireWire cable onto the header at the top of the PCI card. ------- Step 7: ------- To install a video card is simple. First of all you need to remove the slot cover (metal) that lines up with the AGP or PCI Express slot. If you are having trouble telling which the video card slot is, you can usually choose the one closest to your CPU. The trick to installing if to apply an even gentle push across the length of the board. There should be no need at all to push hard to get an AGP or PCI Express card into its slot. Just make sure to line up the card's backplate with the slot and make sure that the card is level with the slot and gently push the card down into the slot. Once the card is properly inserted into the slot you must then screw the backplate into the case and connect any external power from the power supply if needed. If your graphics card needs multiple power inputs then you should refrain yourself from using one cable with two ends since it will not deliver enough power. ------- Step 8: ------- Before installing all of the hardware you should take a moment and power up your computer to make sure everything is working properly. Make sure that the ATX power connector is in (the big one) that comes out of your PSU. You cannot connect it in a wrong fashion since it is keyed. You should also connect the ATX 12V connector to your motherboard and it too will only fit one way. Verify that your CPU fan is connected to either a three pin motherboard header marked CPU or to a four pin Molex connector from your PSU. When all of your power connectors are in place, connect your keyboard, monitor and power to the system. You should be able to see the POST screen. ------- Step 9: ------- Before being able to use your HD you must first consult your case manual and mount whatever is necessary to install your hard drive in your case. Then you must configure your hard drive for your machine. There are currently two types of basic hard drives today. There is the familiar parallel ATA which uses the wide 80-pi ribbon cable and the new Serial ATA (SATA). Two drives may be connected to a standard Parallel ATA ribbon while on a SATA cable only one drive can be connected. Parallel ATA can be either used with Hard Drives or Optical Drives. They are configured using the master and slave method. Parallel ATA drives connect to the IDE ports on your mother and each port is single IDE channel. Your machine will only be able to either read or write to one drive at a time if you have two drives connected to your IDE ribbon. You must set up a drive's master/slave setting with plastic jumpers in order to use either one or two drives. To find the jumper settings simply look at the device's configuration labeled on it or look in its manual. There are three main different configurations that you can chose to use for parallel ATA devices. You can use the Hard Drive and Optical Drive on separate channels mode which means that each drive has its own channel and at the system can access both drives at the same time. The performance issue is good when you are copying big chunks of data from an optical drive to your hard drive. You can use the Hard Drive on one channel, two optical drives on the second channel which means that your hard drive is going to be on the primary channel while the other two optical drives will be sharing the secondary IDE channel. This is great for optical drive to Hard Drive performance for either drive but it is pointless to do optical to optical disk copying since both drives share the same time and only one drive will be able to read or write at a given time. The last configuration that is possible to use is the each drive on its own channel mode which would be perfect since each hard drive and optical drive would have its own IDE channel and all devices would be capable of working simultaneously. This mode will allow you to do optical to optical copying without a problem, HD to HD copying and optical to HD copying without any problems. The procedure to mount a HD is different in every case. You would most probably like to slide your hard drive into one of the 3.5 inch bays with the connector side out. When the drives are in the drive I recommend using two screws on each side of the drive. If you use less screws then your drive will be unstable and will be prone to moving around and there is not point of having more since that is just too much. To connect your drives you will simply have to connect the power to your hard drives from your PSU and the data connectors. If you are using SATA drives then you job is simple. You must simply plug each drive into one of your motherboard's SATA ports. It is recommended to use the ports built into your motherboard's chipset for the drive that will contain your bootable version of Windows. It is possible to find which ports on your motherboard are SATA controllers since it can be found in your motherboard manual. You should be careful not to add too much pressure since the SATA controllers are fragile and can easily break. Some SATA drives offer both types of power connectors, the four pin Molex and the new SATA connectors. DO NOT USER BOTH CONNECTORS! since it will fry your drive. You may use either or since it does not really matter. To insert the cable it is as easy as aligning it with the port and using even pressure to push the cable into the port. If you are planning on installing Windows on a parallel drive it is recommended to use native parallel ATA ports since you will have to suffer the hassle of installing mass storage controller drivers every time you reinstall windows if you use a RAID controller. Configuring your Optical Drive is as easy as configuring It to be the proper master or slave. To determine what the settings are you should refer to the top of the drive where normally the configuration is displayed for the jumpers. To mount the optical drive you must simply remove the front slot cover from your case and push in your optical drive in thru the front. To connect your optical drive you must simply follow the same steps as with your HD. You must simply connect your power supply and data connectors to the drive. The old analog or SPDIF connectors on the optical drive are no longer needed to be connected since all drives can digitally extract CD audio. ------- Step 10:------- Installing the rest of your cards such as your sound card, TV tuner, network card and any other type of card that you may want should be installed with this simple procedure. First you must remove the slot covers (metal) covers from your case for the PCI slot you want to use. You may decide to use whichever one you want since it really doesn't matter. Next line up the card with the slot, push down on the card evenly into place and then lock it down using screws. ------- Step 11:------- It must feel great to know that you have complete putting all of your components together but you aren't done yet if you really are a PC enthusiast. You must first do a complete double check to see if everything is properly connected and that your cables are tidy by tucking them out of sight which will improve air flow and tidiness. You then must tweak your BIOS for Performance and Reliability. You must first press the "del" key or F2 while computer is POSTing. You should first adjust your memory latencies. These small settings can yield big performance gains. You can find the memory timings setting normally in the Advanced Chipset submenu of the main screen. You must change your "Configure SDRAM Timing by" setting from "SPD" to "Manual" or "User". SPD uses the default settings which were built into the chip. The "Manual" or "User" setting allows you to determine the settings for your RAM Clock, CAS Latency, Row Precharge Timing, RAS Pulse Width, RAS to CAS Delay and the Bank interleave. Memory speeds are measured in MHz and the latency is how fast the module can send and receive a request. DDR RAM is capable of having a CAS latency of 2.0 or 2.5/. To improve performance you should try lowering your latency values. If your CAS latency is 3.00 you can try to lower it to 2.5 and see if your system works properly. If it does then you can try to lower it to 2.0 and see if it can handle those timings too. If not then move it back up to 2.5. You can try the same with the other settings as well. To test the stability of your memory you should get yourself a memory benchmarking utility such as http://www.memtest86.com/Memtest86. The other main settings that you must tweak before you start installing Windows are the CPU speed and the boot order. Adjusting the CPU speed is as simple as entering the appropriate submenu and setting CPU speed to automatic. If you feel confident you may try to do some overclocking techniques to make the best out of your processor. You must never forget that to do this you also need appropriate memory which can take the heat. An important thing to also set in your BIOS is the boot order which will let it know which hard drive to boot off first. You should look for a setting labeled "Boot Order" and change the default order so that your main HD is first. This will allow you to boot off of the HD without waiting for the optical drives to spin up every time you boot the system. -----------Vocabulary: -----------BIOS: Basic Input-Output System CAS: How quickly a module can send date after receiving a request. CPU: Central Processing Unit or Computer Processor DDR: Double Data Rate Dual-Channel: Running two exact memory modules which boosts performance since two tasks can be done at any given time. You may write and read information simultaneously. HD: Hard Disk Drive IDE: Intelligent Drive Electronics or Integrated Drive Electronics MHz: Megahertz POST: Power On Self-Test PSU: Power Supply Unit RAM: Random Access Memory or Computer Memory SATA: Serial ATA, ATA stands for Advanced Technology Attachment SDRAM: Synchronous dynamic random access memory SPD: Speed
Orignal From: PC Building A Computer FAQ
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