In the last few iterations in this series we talked about all the internal components required for a complete PC build. Now that all the components have been collected, you need to put it together into one system. Before you begin, however, make sure you have all the essential tools required to help you through the build. Most importantly, you will need a few screwdrivers—the easiest tool for this would be the combo screwdriver kits that you can find at hardware stores. These combo kits come with various screw-heads and you can choose the exact one you need during the build. You will also need a pair of plyers, cutters and zip-ties for wire management. Get a small flashlight to help you see inside your PC case and an anti-static mat to work on. If you can’t find an anti-static mat, you can always use the box your motherboard came in. Also, do not forget to buy a tube of thermal paste before you start building your PC, this paste is essential while installing your processor (some processors also ship with a tube of thermal paste, so see if you have one inside your processor box).

After you have all of your tools ready, unbox your motherboard. The motherboard should come inside an anti-static pouch, use this pouch as your mat and the box as your base. Do not install the motherboard inside your case at this point. You will need to work with the motherboard quite a lot and installing it inside the confined space of your case will only make it harder for you to install components on it.

One you have your motherboard out, unbox your processor. Use extra caution while handling your processor and don’t touch the sensitive pins on the bottom of the processor. If even one of these pins bend your processor won’t work. Just hold the processor by the edges and look for a golden triangle on the corners of the top of the chip. Make a note of this corner and move to your motherboard. On your motherboard’s processor retention bracket, you’ll find a small metal lever. Gently pull it away from the bracket and the retention bracket should open up easily. Now, look for a triangle indentation on one corner of your processor bracket. Gently place your processor on the bracket aligning the triangles. If your processor does not have this triangle, look for small round notches on the side, you should find similar notches on your bracket, align them together. Now, gently secure the bracket by using the previously-used lever to lock it in place.

After making sure that the processor is secure, apply a small dab of thermal paste on top of the metal centre of the processor. Don’t use too much paste because you don’t want it to mess with your connecting pins and applying more thermal paste will not result in better performance—just use a rice-grain sized dab. You don’t need to spread the thermal, once you install the processor fan, the thermal paste will spread itself. Your processor will come with a stock heatsink, you need to apply this on top of your processor. Applying stock heatsinks from Intel is pretty simple because they come with push-pins that hold it in place. Find four heatsink holes around your processor bracket and align you heatsink on top of these holes, after aligning it well, push down on the four push-pins and they should lock in place. Turn the locks on the push-pins towards the heatsink and make sure that the heatsink has been installed properly by turning the motherboard around to see in the pushpins have made it all the way through. Find a header called ‘CPUFAN’ on your motherboard and plug in the header from the heatsink into this header.

Now that you’ve installed your processor, install your RAM sticks. Your RAM sticks will have a notch in the middle of the row of connecting pins. You will see a similar notch on the RAM slots on your motherboard. Before installing, however, consult your motherboard’s manual to figure out which slots need to be fitted first, installing RAMs in incorrect slots could lead to performance degradation or boot problems. Align these notches together and push down on the RAM until the two retention arms on the side snap into place. Again, make sure everything is installed correctly.

After you’ve installed there two components, you can install the motherboard inside your PC case. You can install smaller PCI or PCI-e cards at this point too, but I would recommend installing heavier cards like graphics cards after you’ve installed the motherboard inside your case. Before you actually start screwing your motherboard to you case, you can find an IO shield inside your motherboard box. The IO shield is just a piece of metal with cut-outs for the different input and output ports behind your motherboard. You can find a big square hole on the back of your case, this is where the shield goes. Gently snap the IO shield in place.

Installing the motherboard in the case is the tricky part. Inside your case, or inside your motherboard, you should find stand-off pins. These pins are small pins that elevate the motherboard from the metal case. They’re basically screws with additional screw holes on top. But because PC cases will have holes that support different kinds of hole configurations, you will need to figure out exactly where to place these stand-off screws. Take your motherboard, place it on top of the cases pin holes and identify which holes you’ll need to install stand-off screws in. You can easily screw them in with your hands, tighten them with your pliers though. Once the stand-off screws have been installed, screw in your motherboard with the screws that came with it.

After you’ve installed your motherboard, you’ll have to install storage devices, graphics cards and plug in your power-supply cables to your motherboard. Limited by word-limits, we will talk about how to plug in all of these components properly in the next episode in this series.

If your technological devices are giving you a hard time or if you’re just curious about certain technological questions, please drop us an email at [email protected] and we’ll try to answer your questions as best as we can.