Your Comprehensive DIY PC Dummies Guide

royfrosty

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Welcome all newbies on how to build your very own PC.

This guide aim is to encourage newbies to take up the challenge on DIY PC. Assembling a PC is easy and does not require nuclear science knowledge to fix.

Although there are many video guides out there in YouTube, but not many newcomers will know there are available guides on YouTube.

I will try to have all the walkthrough done up and be as detail as possible.

Pardon me as this are all live pictures. If there is a better chance in the future to snap a good pic, it will be re-uploaded and replace.

The benefits of building it yourself
1. Allows you to know your PC better.
2. Allows you to perform simple troubleshooting steps in future if there is a fault.
3. Gives exposure on hardwares
4. Last but not least, ENJOY~

Tools that you will need:

1. A size 3-4 philips screwdriver
2. Pack of cable ties (optional but advisable)
3. Wire cutter to cut off unwanted cable tie tails
4. Anti static wrist wrap (optional)
5. A good working space table
6. A small container/cup coaster with side guard to put screws aside

PC components that you will need:

This varies and depends on each individuals.

1. A motherboard
2. Rams
3. HDD - Hard Disk Drive or Solid State Drive - SSD or Both
4. Processor with provided heatsink fan
5. Chassis
6. GPU - Graphcis Processing Unit (Optional)
7. PSU - Power Supply
8. DVD/Bluray Drive
9. Operating System
10. Keyboard
11. Mouse
12. Monitor
13. WiFi card (optional)
14. Extra Fans for the chassis (Optional)
15. Extra SATA Cables (check if you need more SATA cables, default entry level motherboard will only provide 2 SATA cables. Generally people whom install a HDD, SSD and Optical Drive will need 3 SATA cables in total. So please check on whether you need extras)



Step 1 - Unboxing the motherboard and Processor

Place motherboard on any flat surface with a non conductive material padding or the best bet would be placing it on top of your motherboard boxes.



Take out the Processor together with the heatsink.



Step 2 - Placing the Processor

Locate the black squarish lid on the motherboard. That is the socket for the processor. Take note of the processor orientation. The pic below shows a intel processor with a golden triangle found on the bottom left corner of the chip.



Release the socket latch by puling the handle towards your right and lift the lid up.





Please do not use your fingers to touch the socket pins.

Lastly place the processor into the socket. Take note of the golden triangle orientation. It is still on the bottom left corner.



Close the lid. Make sure the lid is latch by the screw below it.

 
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royfrosty

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Push the handle downwards, take note that you will find a little bit of resistance to push the handle down, it is normal. But for some reason if it is too hard to push down the handle, then you are most likely doing the wrong way and please check the orientation of the processor.



Once fully latched, the black plastic lid will come off. Please keep the plastic lid.

Final looks of a proper installed processor.



At this point, it's not a must to add your own thermal paste. There will be thermal paste on the Stock Fan provided. However if you do wish to add your own thermal paste instead you can follow the following video below by tek syndicate:

http://youtu.be/-hNgFNH7zhQ

Take note if you wish to apply your own thermal paste, please remove the thermal paste found on the Stock Heatsink using either Zippo found in provision stores or isopropyl alcohol found in convenient stores such as Watsons, Guardian.

Step 3 - Installing the stock cooler

Place the stock coolers and align with the four holes around the processor socket area.



Push all 4 corners all together till you hear all 4 clicks sound.



To know whether the heatsink are properly installed, please look at the back of the motherboard. You should be seeing black studs protruding out with a translucent white lock pins.



Insert the 4pin fan connector to anywhere on your motherboard that has 4 pins that states "CPUFAN1" for some it will state as "CPU1"




Step 4 - Installing RAMs

Towards to the right of the processor are the RAM slots. RAM stands for - Random Access Memories.

Take note that not all motherboards have 4 RAM slots. It varies from 2 slots to 8 slots. In this case its 4 RAM slots.



Some motherboard will indicate somewhere near the RAM slots on which slot to allocate the RAMs into.

Such as the pic below...



The indications will tell you on which slots to put the RAM first. If there is no indications, please consult your motherboard installation guide.
 
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royfrosty

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Next will be the RAM installation is pretty straight forward.

Depress the RAM clips on the slots that you wanna put. Then match the groove with the RAM slots groove as shown in the picture below.



Slowly push the RAMs downwards till the clips latch on to the RAM



Do it the same to the 2nd piece and so on



And there you have it, both processors and RAM have been installed. Now time for you to put this aside first.



Step 5 - Your Chassis (Casing)

Unbox your chassis and put it on your working space. Go to the back of your chassis and remove the side panels by removing the thumbscrews/screws found at the rear of the chassis.



Pull out the side panel by shifting it sideways. Do it the same for the other side panel.



Once removed, lay down the chassis flat on the table for easy installation of the motherboard.

Take note, for some chassis they do not install the motherboard standoffs. PLEASE INSTALL THE STANDOFFS. This is to ensure that the motherboard does not short or come in contact with the entire chassis. For some brands, they did install the standoffs for users by default.

Please install the standoffs by following the pic and legend provided.

Legend:
Red circle - For ATX motherboards
Green circle - For mATX motherboards
Pink circle - For mITX motherboards



Once done, take out your motherboard I/O Shield that looks like this...

 
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royfrosty

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Insert the I/O shield at the rear of the chassis (from the inside of the chassis).

Depress the I/O shield till all the 4 corners are fully secured with a tactile sound.





Next place the motherboard inside the chassis. Align all screw holes with the motherboard standoffs.



Take note that at this point the screw holes and the motherboard standoffs will not align, you will need to push a little bit more to your left towards the I/O shield till you align all screws with the standoffs and then hold it there while you start screwing in all the screws.

Use the screws provided by the chassis that you bought.



Step 6 - Installing the Graphics Card (Optional)

This step is for people whom bought the Graphics card. Else please proceed to the next step.

Remove the PCIE bracket screws found at the back of the chassis. Remove the second bracket and the third bracket (If your graphics card requires 2 slots, majority of the graphics card in market now are 2 slots).

Note: If you are install more than 1 GPU, please remove the forth and 5th slots.





Release the PCIE latch on the 1st 16x PCIE lane.



Align the GPU to the PCIE Lane and slowly depress it into the PCIE lane till the latch hook onto the GPU.

 
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royfrosty

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Once installed, use the screws that were removed from the PCIE bracket before to screw and secure back the GPU Bracket.



Step 7 - Installing the HDD and SSD

Find the HDD bracket found in the chassis. Some will come in a tray form, and just come with "legs".

Find the bracket that is for the 3.5inch HDD. How to know if it is for 3.5", by looking at the bracket holes and align it with the HDD mounting holes.



Insert the bracket for both side of the HDD.



Lastly slot it into the HDD rack till you hear a lock sound.



Next would be the SSD or 2.5" HDD.

Find the bracket for 2.5"



Do the same for both side and slot it into the 2.5" HDD rack.



Step 8 - Installing the DVD or Bluray Drive

Remove the front 5.25" bay cover. Most chassis will have 2 latch from the inside of the chassis. Squeeze both latch and depress the bay cover from the outside.



Once removed you will have a hole for you to mount your Optical Drive.

 
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royfrosty

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Push in the Optical Drive from the outside in.



Note: For some chassis it has some locking mechanism. Consult the chassis manual on how to remove it before inserting the Optical Drive.

For some is using screws to secure the Optical drive. Align the mounting holes on the Optical drive with the screw holes of the chassis and use the chassis screws provided to secure it.




Step 9 - Power Supply (PSU) installation

Unbox the PSU and Place the PSU at the PSU slot.

Note: For some Chassis, the PSU slot is not located at the bottom. Consult your Manual and locate the PSU slot.



Align the four screw holes as shown in the picture below.



Use the screws provided by the PSU. Some brands provide with a thumbscrew instead.

Screw in and secure the PSU with the align screw holes.





For Semi or Full Modular PSU you will need to follow this step. For Non Modular PSU please skip to the next step.

Take out all your cables found in the PSU Box.



For Semi Modular PSU you wont need the 24pin connector and the CPU 8pin connector as it is already attached to the PSU.

Base on this setup, you will need:

2 PCIE Connectors or 1 PCIE Connectors that is in daisy Chain
2 SATA Power Cables
1 Molex Power Cables

As for Fully Modular PSU you will need both 24pin and CPU 8pin cables.

Insert all the cables you need into the PSU connectors. And reroute all the cables to the side hole cuttings of the chassis just beside the PSU.

 
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royfrosty

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Step 10 - Inserting power cables to the respective components

First would be SATA power, SATA power cables are used for HDD, SSD and Optical Drive. Its just like lego. If it fits it will fit.

SSD SATA



HDD SATA



And Optical Drive SATA



Next is 24pin and CPU 8pin

Note: Do not use the PCIE 6+2pin. Do not be confused by the CPU 8pin. For some brands, it will be indicated as CPU and PCIE like the picture below.





Plug the 24pin to the motherboard.





Next would be the CPU 8pin to be routed to the top right corner from the back of the chassis hole, it will be coming out from the top left corner of the motherboard.

 
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royfrosty

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Next would be the PCIE for the Graphics card (optional for people whom has GPU installed)



Note: For some GPU does not require any PCIE power such as the GTX750ti and below. Others like the r9 270 has only 1 PCIE 6pin needed. And other mid to high end GPU requires 6+2 and 8pin PCIE power connectors.

And there you have it. You have just connected all the necessary connections to your components.

Step 11 - Other Connections

There are a few more connections needed. So please do not give up now. You come this close and you are left with a few more stuffs to complete.

Locate your USB 3.0 Front header. It looks like the picture below. For some it is blue in colour, and others are black.



Locate the USB 3.0 Front header that looks like the picture below from the motherboard. Usually very close to the 24pin power. Some will label it USB 3.0 and for some will have JUSB1/2/3. For this case JUSB3.

Insert the cable into the port.



Please proceed with this step if you have extra front USB 2.0 ports on the chassis you bought.

Locate this cable that states USB



Usually for most motherboard, for the USB 2.0 front headers are located at the bottom of the motherboard. It will be labeled as JUSB1/2/3 for this case JUSB1 and marked "USB". Insert with the correct orientation.



Next would be the Front headphone and microphone jack. Locate this cable called "HD AUDIO"



And goes into the port that labeled as "JAUDIO1" on the motherboard.

 
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royfrosty

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Now to the HDD LED, Power LED, Power Switch and Reset switch. Locate all this cables.



Notice: There is a triangle located on each of the connectors. This is to indicate that it is a POSITIVE "+" of the cable.



Consult your motherboard manual on how to connect the switches as this varies from different motherboard manufacturers.

In this case locate "JFP1" on the motherboard.



Those triangles are positive and you will need to put it according to the pins allocated on "JFP1" port.



The SATA cables.



This will be needed for the HDD/SSD and Optical Drive to communicate.

Note: SATA cables comes with the motherboard. Standard there will be minimum 2 SATA cables. On a higher end motherboards, more will be provided. If you buy an Optical Drive, SSD and HDD you will need 3 of it. So please buy more SATA cables if you need it for more HDD and SSD.

Insert the SATA cable.

Notice: Most of the SATA ports on components are located just beside the SATA Power Connectors.



Next you will need to locate the SATA ports from the motherboard.



Consult your motherboard manual on which ports are for SATA 6gb/s or SATA 3gb/s.

SSD and HDD can be inserted into the SATA 6gb/s port. Optical drive can be inserted into the SATA 3gb/s.
 
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royfrosty

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Last but not least the Chassis fans.

There are 4 types of fans connectors found in different brands chassis.

1. 3pin
2. 4pin
3. Molex
4. Molex + Either 3pin or 4pin

3pin Connector



4pin PWM Connector



Molex Connector



There are a few ways to connect the fan, but this guide will show you the 2 most simple and common way to connect it. Do take note that a 4pin header can be connected with a 3pin fan connector, BUT a 3pin header cannot be connected with a 4pin fan connector (not unless it is converted/modify to become a 3pin fan connector.

1. Motherboard

Locate "SYSFAN" on the motherboard such as the picture below. But do take note that certain brands will indicate it as "CHAFAN" "CHFAN".

It comes in either 3pin or 4pin header.



In some cases you may not have enough fan headers on the motherboard that you bought. However you could purchase a fan splitter such as the picture below.



2. Through a PSU Molex connector

From the PSU you should have a cable that is Molex connectors. If you are using a Molex fan connector you can directly connect to the PSU. Or if you have a 3 or 4pin fan connector and wish to connect to the PSU Molex, you will need a converter such as the picture below.



Finally. You are done with the PC. Close everything up and plug in the power cables and other peripherals to the rear of the PC.

Now the moment of truth, feel the adrenaline rush when you first turn on your PC!

Feel free to feedback if you have any queries or trouble along the way.


If everything went fine, you will see a screen that indicates please insert boot disk in drive. This is where you start installing your Windows OS or any other OS.

Follow the on screen instructions, once done you will need to start installing all your drivers. Please use the CD provided that comes with the motherboard.
 
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royfrosty

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Reserve for future posting for more pictures.
 
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royfrosty

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Thank you for showing up and for the support.

Would take a rest for now. I'm pretty exhausted for now.
 

Alternative X

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It would be a good idea to make a note stating to install just enough stand-offs for their motherboard. I scared later people install standoffs in every hole and end up also shorting their motherboard.
 

Alternative X

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When doing the PSU section, have some closeup shots of the PSU connecters, otherwise some people may take the 8-pin PCI-E connector and try to jam it into the 8-pin motherboard power socket.

One more thing, you forgot to talk about applying thermal paste.
 
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