If you have purchased all the necessary hardware your are ready assemble your PC. Before unpacking your components from its original anti-static bags you must put on your anti-static wrist strap, which will discharge your self. It is important that you discharge yourself or there is a danger that you can damage your components by anti-static shock by touching the components. If you don't have an anti-static wrist strap you can discharge your self by touching the metal edges of your ATX case, although this is not recommended. Be careful not to cut yourself as some ATX cases have sharp edges. Have all the mounting screws that come with the motherboard and a philips screw driver handy as you would need them during the later stages.
Now you can proceed to the first step:
Install Motherboard
The first thing you should do is unpack your ATX case. Take off the cover of your case so that you can access the inside. Place the case on a desk so that you are looking down towards the open case. Your case should come with motherboard mounting screws. If your ATX back plate it not already fitted you can fit it by placing your plate near the ATX back plate cut out and pushing the plate outwards, it should clip on.
Now place your motherboard on top of the mounting screw holes. Make sure your ATX devices on the motherboard such as PS/2 and parallel port are facing towards ATX back plate cut out. Gently push your motherboard towards the cut out, every devices should fit easily into its corresponding cut out, as shown below.
The screw holes on your motherboard should align with the screw holes on your case. Place your screws that came with the case into the appropriate holes and gently screw it on using a screw driver.
The motherboard is now securely mounted to the case. You can now place the ATX power connector to the motherboard. Your ATX case should come with a power supply unit (PSU) and should already be mounted to the case. The ATX power connector is shown on image below.
Place the ATX power connector on top of the power socket on the motherboard. Push down the power connector and it should clip onto the socket. If you try to fit the power connector the wrong way round, it won't fit, it will only fit one way. So, if the power connector does not go in, it should go in the other way round.
Install a Processor (CPU)
Locate the processor socket on your motherboard. I am installing an Intel PIII 866 processor on a socket 370 as shown on the following image. The installation would be slightly different if you have a different processor i.e. Slot1 PIII CPU, P4 Socket 478, Core 2 Duo Socket 775, AMD Slot A / Socket A, Socket AM2 CPU etc.
Raise the brown lever on the socket and slowly put the processor in place. You have to make sure the pin 1 of your CPU goes into the pin 1 of your CPU socket otherwise the CPU would not get into the socket, so don't try to force it in. It will go in gently if you fit it correctly. Now close the brown lever which will securely hold the CPU in place.
If you bought a retail boxed CPU it would include a heatsink + fan. If you bought an OEM CPU make sure you got a fan that is correct for the speed of your CPU, otherwise your CPU will overheat and behave abnormally or could be damaged. Take off the plastic cover from the bottom of the CPU fan that covers the heat transfer pad. Now place the CPU fan on top the CPU and push down the metal clips on the fan so that it clips onto the CPU socket.
CPU fan has a power connector which needs to be connected to CPU fan power socket on your motherboard as shown on the image above.
Finally, you have to specify what frequency (speed) your CPU is running at. This can be done using jumper settings, or on some modern motherboard it can be done in the BIOS, or your motherboard may have automatic detection for your CPU frequency. Please refer to your motherboard manual for more details. The motherboard I am using (Abit BX133) has a dip-stick jumper setting and it can be setup in the BIOS. I have left the jumper setting to default as I will use the BIOS to specify the CPU frequency. The CPU runs at the bus speed of 133Mhz therefore I will use the settings 133 * 6.5(multiplier) under the BIOS, which will the run the CPU at 866Mhz.
Install Memory - SDRAM
Installing memory is quite simple. Find the SDRAM banks on your motherboard, they should look similar to the banks below. Notice the memory banks has a white clip on each side. Make sure you release the clips so it bends to each side.
Hold each corner of the SDRAM placing it on top of the bank 1. You will notice that the SDRAM has a cut at the bottom side, it is there to prevent the memoy going in the wrong way round. If you are holding the SDRAM the incorrect way you will not be able insert it. Gently push down the SDRAM and it should clip on to the memory bank. The two white clips will now become straight holding each corner of the memory. If you have more that one SDRAM perform same steps as above but placing the SDRAM in memory bank 2 and so on.
Install SATA Hard Drive
If you look at the rear side of a SATA hard drive it should look similar to the image below.
Figure 1 - SATA Hard drive
The SATA cable connector is on the left hand side which consists of few pins. Next to the SATA connector on the right side is SATA power connector which consist of many pins. You will notice that SATA hard drives do not have any jumper settings for slave or master as each drive will connect to a dedicated SATA port on the motherboard.
Place your hard drive into the HDD mounting slot of your case, make sure the SATA connector is facing outwards. Screw the HDD to the case using screws provided with the HDD or the ATX case.
Now have a look at the SATA data cable as show on the image below. You need to connect one end of the SATA data cable to the SATA connector of the hard drive. Look at the top of the cable to see which way it should go in. It would only fit one way so you can not fit it the wrong way round. Gently push the cable into place.
Figure 2 - SATA Cable
Install SATA Hard Drive
The image below is a SATA power connector. This needs to be connected to the power socket of the SATA hard drive. Gently push it into place. It will only fit one way so there is no danger of fitting it wrong way round.
Figure 3 - SATA Power cable
If you have an old ATX power supply you will not have a SATA power connector as they only have 12V molex connector. In this case, if you do not want to replace your power supply unit then you can get a 'Molex to SATA' power cable converter as shown on figure 4.
Figure 4 - Molex to SATA Power cable converter
Finally you need to fit the other end of the SATA data cable to a SATA socket / port on the motherboard. Again it will only fit one way and gently fit into position. It does not matter which socket you plug it into as it will work on any SATA socket. But it is better to plug it into SATA socket 1 if you only have one hard drive. If you add another SATA device you can connect it to SATA socket 2 and so on.
Figure 5 - SATA Socket (port) on motherboard
Install CD / DVD-ROM
If you look at the rear side of your CD / DVD-ROM it should look similar to image shown on figure 1.
On the right hand side you have the power connector. Next to power connector you have the IDE connector. On the left hand side near the IDE connector you have the jumper settings for the DVD-ROM. The jumper is set to Master by default. I am connecting the DVD-ROM on a separate IDE cable therefore I will leave the jumper setting to Master. However if you are sharing an IDE cable with another device like HDD, then you would have to set jumper to Slave, as your HDD would be set to Master. Next to the jumpers you have the CD Audio-Out socket. One side of your audio cable connects to this socket and other side connects to the sound card cd-in socket. This would allow you to listen to Audio CD's on your computer.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Mount your CD/DVD-ROM drive into its mounting slot. Use the supplied screws to screw the drive into position.
Figure 3
Connect the IDE cable to the drives IDE connector. Make sure the pin 1 on the cable is connected to pin 1 on the drives IDE connector. Pin 1 is the red or pink strip on the edge of an IDE cable. Connect the other end of the IDE cable to the IDE socket on your motherboard as shown in figure 4. Again, make sure you conncet the cable to pin 1. The IDE socket could be your primary or secondary socket depending which socket you choose. If your HDD is on the primary IDE socket and your secondary IDE socket is free, then it is better to use your secondary IDE socket for the CD/DVD-ROM.
Figure 4
Finally connect the power cable to power connector and connect the audio cable to the CD Audio-Out socket as shown on figure 3.
Install CD/DVD Writer
The rear end of your CD/DVD drive should look similar to the image below.
It contains all the usual connectors such an IDE connector, a power connector, audio connector, and a place to set the jumpers. Set the jumpers so the drive is configured to run as a Master device. It is best to connect your CD-RW on separate IDE cable. This would avoid problems while you copy CD's on-the-fly. This means copying a source CD from a CD/DVD-ROM drive to a blank destination CD in your CD-RW drive without the source CD being copied to the hard disk first. Copying on-the-fly is less time consuming than copying the source CD to the hard disk first. However if you decide to connect your CD-RW drive and another device like a DVD-ROM on the same IDE cable, it would be fine providing you make an image of your source CD on a HDD first before copying to your blank CD. You may have problems such as "buffer under run" errors if you try to copy on-the-fly.
Place your CD-RW drive into a mounting slot as shown. Position the drive correctly and screw it onto the case.
Connect the IDE and the power cable to the drive. If you want to use the CD-RW drive for playing Audio CD's then you also need to connect an audio cable to the Audio-out socket of the drive. If you have a CD/DVD-ROM then the audio cable is usually connected that drive instead of the CD-RW, but there is no reason why you can't have both.
Finally the other end of the IDE cable should be connected to an IDE socket of the motherboard.
Install Graphics Card
Most modern graphics cards are AGP based and connects to the AGP bus of the motherboard. An AGP bus (slot) looks like the following image. The brown slot is where you connect your AGP graphics card.
Place your AGP card on top of the slot and gently push it down. The card should firmly sit into position.
All you need to do now is to screw the metal plate on the front of the card to the ATX case. Use the screws supplied with case and screw the card to the case.
Install Sound Card
Most modern sound cards are designed with the PCI interface and connects to the PCI slot of your motherboard. A PCI slot looks like the slots on the following image.
Place your sound card on top of a chosen slot. Gently push down the card so it sits into position. Once the card is seated correctly into position, screw the card on to the case.
Finally insert the audio cable into the CD-IN socket. The other end of the cable should be connected to Audio-out socket on your CD/DVD-ROM drive.
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If you are running Safe Mode because you cannot get into Windows, you may want to first try loading the last known good configuration.
