Before we start assembling the components you may want to check the power supply
for the correct cable connector for your hard drive. If you have a SATA hard drive the
power connector is different from the normal hard drive. Look at the hard drive
installation guide, it will show the power connector. Does the power supply have
the same type of connector? You may have to buy an adaptor that goes from the
old four pin connector to the new SATA power connector.
Fist we want to look at the case, we need to look at how the components fit into
the case. Some cases have a tray for the mother board that slides out making it
easier to install the mother board, ram, processor, and any add on cards. The
case should have hidden bays for the hard drive. The front panel will have the
power, power-on LED, hard drive activity LED, openings for the floppy and cd/dvd rom(s).
When we mount the hard drive, floppy, and cd/dvd drives we will not connect the
power at this time, we want to have all the room we can to connect the
controller cables first.
Mounting the motherboard. The case or the tray the motherboard mounts to will
either have raised stand-offs or small brass hexagon stand-offs to keep the
mother board from shorting out on the case. You will have to attach the brass
stand-offs to the case first, then set the mother board on the stand-offs, then
secure with the correct screws. start all the screws, do not tighten them yet,
insert the video card and any other add on cards you have in the mother board,
this will align the mother board with the back of the case or tray. Now tighten
the screws, be careful to not over tighten them, you may compress the mother
board to the point where it will crack. Over tightening the screws will crack
the mother board ruining it!
Once the mother board is mounted, there are three or four wires from the front
case panel that you need to connect, the power and hard drive led cables, a
reset cable (if attached) and sometimes a power cable.
Next we connect the drive controller cables. If you have an IDE hard drive, you
can use one cable to connect the hard drive and the cd/dvd rom drive, (if you do
use one cable be sure to set the master/slave jumpers on the two drives). If you
are using two cables, one for each device, be sure that if the hard drive is IDE
that it is connected to the Primary IDE connector on the mother board ( if you
don't the hard drive will not boot). If it is a SATA drive, be sure to connect it
to the Primary SATA controller connector. Connect the CD/DVD ROM Drive cable.
Connect the floppy drive cable. Now we connect the power connectors depending on
the lay out of the case it may be easier to connect the power to the mother
board fist, then the drives.
Next insert the ram, look at the pin edge of the ram, you will notice some slots
in the module, DIMM modules have two slots, DDR has one. The DDR module slot is
not half way on the module it is off set, this keeps from inserting the module
the wrong way, same with the DIMM slots. Move the locking tabs on the socket
outward, orientated in the correct direction, insert the module and press on
both ends at the same time, you should see the locks move inward on the module
and hear a "click" when they lock into place.
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