Building Your Own PC, Part 2: Assembly Step by Step

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Table of contents:

    1 – Guidelines For Building Your Own PC

    2 – Opening The Empty Case

    3 – Fitting The Motherboard

    4 – Installing The CPU And Cooler

    5 – Don't Forget To Use Thermal Paste Or A Thermal Pad

    6 – Mounting The Cooler

    7 – Fan Power Connection

    8 – Installing The RAM

    9 – Graphics, Sound And Network

    10 –Installing The Hard Disk And Floppy

    11 – Installing The CD-ROM Drive

    12 – Connecting The Ribbon Cables

    13 – Drive Power Connectors

    14 – Front Panel Connections

In Part 1 of this series, we covered the fundamentals of the components used in today's PCs, discussed some of the important aspects of hardware configuration, and provided some shopping tips. Now, in Part 2, we will delve deeper, using a full tower case to explain how to assemble a standard PC.

 

An Overview Of Steps Involved

First, let's take a look at the various steps to putting together a PC.

• Opening the empty case;
• Preparing to fit the components;
• Fitting the motherboard;
• Fitting the RAM, processor, and cooler;
• Installing the graphics card and sound card;
• Fitting the hard disk and floppy drive;
• Installing the floppy and CD-ROM drives;
• Connecting the ribbon cables;
• Powering the drives and motherboard;
• Connecting the cables for the case front panel;
• Final check.

The above list is intended to be used as a general guide. In practice, you can vary the actual order of assembly to some degree. We use a tower case in our demonstration because it makes for clearer illustrations. The same assembly principles apply for midi and mini cases.
The case we use has a slide-out tray for the motherboard and the expansion cards.

For Further Reading,

Building Your Own PC, Hardware