endlesszeal

Well I know a while back I promised Id put up something like this up but with graduation, moving and a just a bunch of things, it got pushed away and just never got finished. Ill try to find the old post and edit info and post it up.

Anyway, to the main event. This is for an AMD AM2 build I did a while back, but most of the stuff should be relevant still. And as I said in some other posts I will be building a couple of computers soon and Ill try to get more detailed pictures with newer hardware. BTW, the steps I take are by no means the "right" way to do it. I just prefer it because its easier for me. Feel free to do it anyway you want it.

First and foremost, ground yourself. Touch someone, something to make sure you dont have any static on you. You can get a wrist strap for 5-6 bucks at radioshack, frys, or your favorite electronic hobby store. Im cheap, so I just touch a metal part of my case and hope for the best

Then take your motherboard (MB/mobo) out of it its box. Make sure all the accessory, wires, cds, etc are included. I like to leave it on the antistatic bag on top of the box.

Motherboard:


Now, I like to put on the processor and heatsink because doing inside the case is no fun. Especially if you have an aftermarket heatsink that requires you to take off the stock brackets or adding a bracket to the back. With Intel processors, the pins will be on the motherboard and not on the CPU. Just take off the protective tray and move the lever up. On the processor there are usually markings to show you which way to drop it in. It should slide in with no force. If you wiggle it gently and it doesnt go in, WRONG DIRECTION.

CPU with thermal paste on:


I like to use an aftermarket paste, but when you buy a retail processor, the heatsink should have paste on the bottom and that works fine too. So you dont have to do this part, but if you do want to use aftermarket stuff, just use a microfiber cloth and clean the stock paste off with the highest alcohol you can get so it dries faster. Then spread it on with a card to form a thin layer. Note: Each paste might have different steps, read instructions carefully.

Thermal paste:


Heatsink:


If youre not overclocking or not using aftermarket paste, the bottom of the stock heatsink should have paste on it. Dont need to do anything except but put the heatsink ontop of the cpu and mount the clips. Then just move the lever to put pressure. This part should have resistance but not a whole lot. Around the same amount force when winding up a wind-up toy.

Heatsink lever:


If mounted correctly, you shouldnt be able to wiggle the heatsink from the socket at all. Nice and snug.

Next step is to put RAM in. Just move the clips back like so:


The RAM will fit in only ONE DIRECTION. Look at the slot and the bottom of the RAM, it should line up. Once you put the RAM in the slot, it should kinda of set there but not be all the way in. Just push the RAM down on both sides to even out the force and it will slide in. The clips on the side should come down by itself and lock the RAM in. Sometimes you have to push the clips yourself, no big deal. Force used should be around the same amount you use to push in a thumb tack or pushpin.

RAM:


RAM Slot:


**Now what I usually do is hook up the video and powersupply. Then boot to see if the thing comes on or not, but we wont do that here. Just makes it confusing because of partial diassembly and reassembly.**

Next it setting up the case. Take the motherboard backplate out:


This part will require some force. I like to use the back of a screw driver and bang the backplate in:


Now to install the motherboard. The mobo and/or case will have these pins. They are called mobo standoffs. Follow the direction on the case to see where to put the pins according to the size of the motherboard.

Mobo standoff:


Once you get them all in it will look something like this:


Now carefully put your mobo instead the case and line them up according to the stand offs. Some motherboards will come with paper washers. Install them and use a non magnetic screw driver to install the screws like so:

So are really annoying to get too, but you'll manage.

Now I like to install any cards I have like video, wireless, sound card. But since everything was onboard on this one, I dont have pictures or anything. Just move the case brackets for the slots and slide the cards in. Same amount of force for the RAM will be used here. Easy peesy.

This particular case had hard drive slides which were blue. Just attach them to your hard drive and optical drive.


If you are using older IDE drives, the back will look like this:


Make sure to move the little jumper pins and set them accordlingly. One master, one slave. On the IDE cable, the furtherst one is Master and the middle one is slave. I will post pictures if this is confusing.

IDE/Floppy cable:


Now just slide the drives in the cages.


If you are using the most current form SATA, it will look like this:


The cables will be 1 per device. Cables will be 5 times smaller than IDE and you dont have to set the jumpers to slave or master. Just plug them in.

Time to do the wiring. I like to do the case lights first because they are the most annoying. Check the manual from mobo and just plug them in. Usually they are located on the bottom right of the mobo:


And time to hook up the USB, firewire and front audio wires:

After you have the hard drive, optical drive, front panel, usb and all that plugged in, its time for the power supply:


Just carefully slide it into the case, making sure you dont hit anything. Most cases should have rails or some sort of small platform to put it down on. Some cases even have the powersupply sit at the bottom of the case. Anyway, just screw it in.



Now plug in the power supply to the motherboard. Most current motherboards will require 3. 1 x 24pin, 1 x 4-8pin right next to it, and then 1 x 4 pin usually next to the cpu socket.

Then plug it the power to optical, hard drive, video card (if applicable) and case fans. I dont like to hook up the fans to the motherboard pin because that will just stress it unless they are low power fans. Then your case will look something like this:


Lol . If youre good or patient, you can reroute the cables and hide them. But im lazy and not that creative at hiding cables so I just leave them be. The ride cable is the SATA cable, the big yellow round cable is the IDE cable. Next to it is the 24pin ATX power cable.

Put the side window on and youre DONE. Hook up the monitor, power cable and hopefully it will boot up!

endlesszeal

save. i will clean up the grammer, minor details and get clear pictures. im really hung over right now.

endlesszeal

save. i will also post pictures for OS installation.

Calesta

grammer -> grammar

Good quick write up- just scanned through it... I should shoot a picture of my desk right now. There's about 4 motherboards piled up on it right now in various states of assembly plus the two towers to my left and the one to my right.

One thing you might want to add though- make absolutely sure that your case has enough airflow. Good ventilation is very very important.

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Matts96HB

Nice thread mang. Definitely will be using this for reference.

94civicturbo

thats a nice writeup man i will be using it because i need to put a computer back together that i have its just an old hp that i wanna use for video making and photography which i wanna get into soon

reikoshea

also, you should have more intake than exhaust fans. 1) it keeps the temp down and 2) it keeps dust off of your components because of the pressure difference (which is why your shit gets dusty as hell when you take the side off)

also, a quick correction on the comment above about the IDE cables. It doesnt matter which position on the cable your devices are plugged in unless you have the jumper on all devices set to 'CS' or 'Cable Select'. If you set master/slave via the jumper the device will try and be whatever role you specify.

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jeffie7

Don't just touch someone to remove any static built up. Install the power supply into the case, then plug the power supply into the wall, from there anytime you work on the computer make sure you grab the case, this will ground you out.

Also, stock fans really do have issues keeping up with heat when being pushed, I always replace my fans from the get go.

P.S what's an IDE cable? lol old school yoooo!

reikoshea

well if you're replacing a computer and you have an IDE DVD drive laying around why spend the extra 20 bucks? I'm cheap...i had the same 8x dvd burner for 3 computers. it took it getting stolen (the entire computer) before i broke down and bought a new burner.

endlesszeal

For case fans, Ive always had more exhaust than intake because with intake itll just tumble around in the case. However, with exhaust its pulling air out and some in somewhat because of the negative pressure created by the exhaust.

For IDE drives, for a while the best burners only came in IDE. But now, almost all drives come in SATA and those are the ones you should be buying because chipset manufactures arent even putting the controllers on the chipset anymore. they are using a separate chip for it and some just leave them out.

Anyway, like I said, gotta clean it up more and get better pictures. some of those are horrible.

Oh yeah, you want at least 1x120mm intake and 1x120mm exhaust fan at the least. Unless its a htpc, mini-itx or something like that, it will be hard to fit something as big as the case itself.

reikoshea

Case cooling – the physics of good airflow | Technibble

CRX-YEM

How about a parts list?? and what case is that I like the way the hard drives slide in.

riceracerex

I want that mill! How much do those normally run? 2000$?

jeffie7

You must always use cheap cases =)

I dislike the way his case holds the harddrives because you have to put screws in it. any newer case will allow for you to slide the whole drive into a slot and the case will have little latches that hold the drive in place with zero screws, takes longer to plug the SATA cable in then it does to install the drive.

Check out almost any cooler master case, they're pretty good for the price.

reikoshea

that is crap. i thought that case was screwless too. most of em have trays that you can kinda pull apart at the side and have little pins that fall into the screw holes. I've never seen one that you can just slide the drive in and that's it.

endlesszeal

i just did a quick google and positive pressure vs vacuum is very debatable. alot of variables depending on setup.

http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&articID=535

anyway, i currently have the cooler master 690 and with this review, the case did better with Front intake, top and rear exhaust vs rear exhaust, front and bottom intake. only 0.5C better.
http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=get...63&articID=620

Regardless, if you feel like setting up tests to see which fan setup suits your needs best, more power to you and if you can post results, that would be awesome (comment directed to everyone). But just as a generalization, just make sure you have enough airflow in your case.

As for a parts list, ill try to find all the posts I made with part suggestions and comments, edit them and combine them. Dont feel like typing a lengthy. But with this particular build it was (budget):

AMD X2 4600+ or something close,
Arctic Silver 5 Paste
ECS Socket AM2 VIA chipset (came free with combo)
2GB PNY DDR2 RAM
Antec Trio 430 watt
Cooler Master Mystique Case
Samsung DVD Burner
Maxtor 500Gb hard drive.

But yeah, most of the lower model Cooler master cases come with the side rails and the mid model ones come with the mechanism reiskoshea was explaining. I dont move HDD much so I dont really care all that much with mounting mechanism. As long as its in there, gets good flow and doesnt make much noise, Im happy.

jeffie7

at first they only did the bigger drives but now both harddrives and cdrom drives have the quick install tabs.

something like this

TurboMirage

almost all acer desktops have the slide-pin setup you are talking about.

reikoshea

and dells over about the last three processor generations had em too.

guess i've just been a cheapskate with my cases. the external bays on my last two were screwless but the internal ones all have had screws.

Calesta

I like the expensive cases, but I've usually bought the cheap ones- especially since I tend to cut them up like in the above picture. My main system is in a $300 Thermaltake case that's REALLY nice- but fortunately I didn't have to pay for it. It's all aluminum and totally tool-free, but I still screwed all my cards and drives in where I could to lock them into place.

When I want good quality on the cheap, I'll go for a mid-line Antec or InWin case. HEC is good for bare chassis for next to nothing (server is in one), and Newegg is always running deals on their house brand Rosewill cases.

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Battle Pope

I got a CoolerMaster 690 when I upgraded my videocard and power supply, really like the extra room and additional fan spots. Having the power supply at the bottom of the case is nice too, along with the tool-free drive bays.

Calesta

The 690 is a nice case.

endlesszeal

holy cow, has this been delayed yet again.

im slowly putting together my htpc so please look forward to promised new pictures and grammar corrections (thanks mike =P). also, i will include new recommended parts list too. part of the reason i kind of lagged on this was because in the past 3 months, a lot of new product came out and will continue until release of Fermi and Thuban.

anyway, for those who are curious my parts list for htpc is as follows:

-AMD Athlon II X4 630
-MSI 785gm-e51
-Antec NSK 2480 w/380 earth watts power supply
-1 tb Western Digitial Green Edition
-Most likely Sony Optirac optical
-2Gb DDR3 1600mhz RAM (only item waiting to pick up. prices are so high)

all for around $200 because reusing hard drive and Frys allowed me to pick up cpu+mobo for $100 and htpc case for $30. woot woot!

Calesta

DDR3 is quite expensive, but there are good deals at Fry's today. 4GB of DDR3 is about the same as 4GB of DDR2 these days, so it's realy not too bad. Your build looks similar to my HTPC:

Athlon II x2 240 (2.8GHz I think)
Gigabyte 785G board
Antec Earthwatts 430
WD 400GB x2 RAID 0
Asus ATI HD4670
ATI HD 650 (don't recall exact model name) tuner card
4GB OCZ DDR2
Lite-On BD-ROM
Bigass Zerotherm HSF for air-cooled overclocking fun

endlesszeal

how do you like the ati 650 chipset? i was thinking about getting one since ive seen it at frys for $30. but i dont watch too much tv and i have dvr for recording already.

and for ram prices, actually ddr2 is starting to fall again. if you look at frys ad and newegg, you can see that ddr2 is going for roughly $20-30 cheaper than ddr3 after rebates or whatever specials they have. and i figured 2gb should be good enough until ram prices fall once production moves to smaller process.

btw mike, how come youre running raid 0 for htpc? just faster and you have all media backed up anyway?

lastly, im waiting to get the case and take some measurements. hopefully my old thermalright si-120 will fit, then i will crank the clock on the processor too (@2.8ghz stock right now). if not, probably will try undervolting to keep temps down and 4 cores @2.8ghz is plenty for htpc anyway.