Step:2 INSTALLING A CPU

Opening CPU Socket

Time Required: 5-10 minutes
Tools Required: Screwdriver, plastic bag

Motherboards only support specific brands and types of processors. Please read all documentation for your motherboard and processor before proceeding. In addition, please refer to the documentation for the motherboard, processor and cooling solution for the proper location of the processor slot, heat sink mounting clips and CPU fan header locations.
These instructions assume that you are installing the CPU onto the motherboard before installing the motherboard into the computer case.
Locate the processor socket on the motherboard and open the processor slot by lifting the lever on the side of the slot to the open position.

Align the Processor

Locate the keyed portion of the processor that is signified by a diagonal corner of the pin layout. Align the processor so that this corner matches up between the processor and the socket.
 With the processor aligned based on the key, make sure the pins are all lined up with the socket and gentle lower the CPU into the socket so all the pins are in the proper holes.

Lock the Processor in the Socket

Lock the processor in place to the motherboard by lowering the lever on the side of the processor slot until it is in the locked position.
If the processor or cooling solution came with a protection plate, align this over the processor as instructed with the product documentation.

Apply Thermal Compound

 Apply a thermal pad or several rice grain size drops of thermal paste to the exposed portion of the processor that the heat sink will be in contact with. If using paste, be sure it is spread in an even thin layer across the whole portion of the processor that will be in contact with the heat sink. It is best to spread the paste evenly by covering your finger with a new clean plastic bag. This prevents the paste from being contaminated.

Align Heatsink

 

Line up the four heat-sink fasteners with holes in the motherboard and press down.

 

Align the heat sink or cooling solution above the processor so that the clamps are in line with the mounting points around the processor.

Clamp the heat sink in place using the proper mounting technique required by the solution. This may be lifting a tab over a mounting clip or screwing down the heat sink to the board. Please refer to the documentation for the heat sink to ensure proper installation.
It is important to be careful at this stage as a lot of pressure will be placed on the board. A slip of a screwdriver can cause a lot of damage to a motherboard.

Attach the Heatsink Fan Header

Locate the power lead for the cooling solution's fan and the CPU fan header on the motherboard. Plug the cooling solution fan power connector into the fan header on the board. It should be keyed, but make sure it is properly plugged in.
Once these steps are taken, the CPU should be physically installed into the motherboard for proper operation. When all the remaining parts necessary for operation are installed, it will be necessary for the motherboard BIOS to either detect or be told what type and speed processor is installed on the board. Please refer to the documentation that came with the computer or motherboard on how to configure the BIOS for the proper CPU model.

STEP 3: INSTALLING A DESKTOP MOTHER BOARD

INSTALLING A DESKTOP MOTHER BOARD

OPENING THE COMPUTER CASE

The first step will be to open the case up. The method for opening the case will vary depending upon how the case was manufactured. Most new cases have either a side panel or door while older ones require the whole cover be removed. Remove any screws hold the cover to the case and set them aside in a safe place.

Some cases have a removable motherboard tray that slides out of the case to make it easier to install a motherboard. If your case has such a tray, now is the time to remove it from the case.


REPLACE THE ATX CONNECTOR PLATE

While there is a standard ATX connector design for the back of the motherboard, each manufacturer can layout the connectors however they need to. This means that the basic ATX connector face plate will need to be removed from the case and the custom one that ships with the motherboard be installed.
To remove the basic ATX plate, gently press in on the corner of the installed ATX plate until it pops out. Repeat this on the opposite corner to fully remove the plate.
Install the new ATX place by aligning the connectors properly (PS/2 keyboard and mouse should be on the side towards the power supply) and gently pressing from the inside until it snaps into place.


DETERMINE THE MOTHERBOARD MOUNTING LOCATION

There are a variety of sizes that a desktop motherboard can come in. In each case, there is a series of mounting holes that need to be lined up between the motherboard and the case or tray. Compare the motherboard to the tray that it is going to be installed in. Any location that has a mounting hole will require a standoff installed in the tray.


INSTALL THE MOTHERBOARD STANDOFF'S

Install the standoffs in the appropriate location. The standoffs may come a variety of styles. The most common is the brass hex standoff that requires a hex driver to install. Others include a clip style that snaps into the tray.


 FASTEN THE MOTHERBOARD

Lay the motherboard over the tray and align the board so all the standoffs are visible through the mounting holes. Starting with the center most mounting point, insert the screws to fix the motherboard to the tray. After the center, work in a star pattern to affix the corners of the board.


ATTACH ATX CONTROL WIRES 

Locate the power, hard drive LED, reset and speaker connectors from the case. Using the manual from the motherboard, attach these connectors to the appropriate headers on the motherboard.


ATX POWER CONNECTION

 

This is the common 20-pin ATX power connector that is needed to power the motherboard and all of its other components

 

This is the ATX12V power connector that most modern motherboards require. It's used to power most modern high-speed processors and in some rare cases, it's used with AGP Pro ports.

 

This is the AUX (auxiliary) power connector that some older Pentium 4 motherboards require. It's seldom used in Athlon-based systems. It's used in most high-end server boards, especially dual processor systems. 

This is the popular Molex four-pin power connector that's used with most devices such as your optical drives and hard disk drives. It's also used with some high-end graphics cards, Firewire cards and casing fans.

 

This is the smaller 4-pin power connector that is normally used to power floppy disk drives. It's also used with certain graphics cards, Firewire cards, coolers and the Sound Blaster 

This is a recently introduced power connector used specifically only for SATA hard disk drives. Most motherboards provide a converter cable for this power connector, so it's not a compulsory requirement yet. However, it's handy to have it included with the power supply unit.

 

  

Note the location of the latches

Now the motherboard needs to be connected to the power supply. All motherboards will use the standard 20-pin ATX power connector block. Find this and plug it into the connector on the motherboard. Since most new computers require additional power, there may also be a 4-pin ATX12V power connector. If there is, locate this power cord and connect it into the connector on the motherboard as well.
Replace the motherboard(If removed previously).

STEP 4: INSTALLING HARD DISK DRIVES

INSTALLING HARD DISK DRIVES

 

Use these SATA data cables to connect the hard disk drives to the motherboard. Make sure you remove the red cap before installation

 

Look at the connectors on the hard disk drive's interface board and compare them to the SATA data and power cables. Match the connector shapes on the drive and the cables before plugging them to the hard drive

 

Install the hard disk drives into the casing before connecting any of the data and power cables

Connect the SATA power cables from the power supply to the drives. Use two SATA data cables, one for each of the drives and connect them as shown. 

 Ensure that the data and power cables are fully plugged into the drive as shown. You should not leave any gaps in between

By now, you'll notice that no mention was made about Master and Slave drives. For Serial ATA technology, there's absolutely not a need for any jumper manipulation since each drive is connected to the SATA port from one end to the other. This actually simplified the installation process as users need not worry about Master/Slave conflicts, cable types (40-conductor and 80-conductor) and specific cable orientation. Also, you'll notice that the cable is now much slimmer and this makes cable management simpler, in addition to clearing up more room for greater airflow within the casing. If you don't know yet, SATA provides greater bandwidth of up to 150MB/s while the parallel ATA standard has a maximum data bandwidth of only 133MB/s. 

 

Locate the SATA connectors on the motherboard

 Similar to plugging the cable to the drive, there's only one way to do it

 The notch on the cable's connector should match the connector on the motherboard. Make sure it's fully plugged in.

STEP 5:INSTALLING THE OPTICAL DRIVE

INSTALLING THE OPTICAL DRIVE
When you're done installing the hard disk drives, move on to install the optical storage drive. Once again, we'll assume that you already know how to mount a 5.25-inch drive into the casing.

 

For optical drives, you'll need to ensure that the jumpers are properly set for Master or Slave operation. Since there is only one IDE device in this guide, we'll set the optical drive to operate as a Master device. Note, some drives denote 'MA' as master and 'SL' as slave.

  

Next, plug the supplied audio cable to the analog audio output connector on the drive. This is a four-pin connector that's usually located beside the jumpers. 

Now plug the other end to the motherboard's CD-IN header. 

  

Attach the provided IDE cable to one of the IDE ports on the motherboard. Since only one IDE channel will be used, plug it into the connector labeled 'IDE'. Alternatively, match the color of the connector on the cable and motherboard as shown. Also note the location of the notch as indicated by the red arrows.

  

Make sure the cable is plugged into the connector as shown here. 

Make sure that the side of the cable with the white strip (in most cases, a red strip) is aligned to the side marked as 'Pin 1' on the drive.

STEP 6: INSTALLING THE I/O BRACKETS

INSTALLING THE I/O BRACKETS

 

Before installing any of the brackets, remove two of the rear faceplates from the casing

 

 First, we'll install the USB 2.0 bracket as shown above

  

Plug the connector to one of the corresponding USB headers found on the motherboard. You should see two yellow headers marked as F_USB1 and F_USB2. Connect to any one of them

Finally, we have the USB 2.0 and Firewire bracket. There are two USB 2.0 ports here including a standard six-pin Firewire port and a nine-pin Firewire 800 port 

Install the bracket into the second slot as shown

  

Connect the purple connector from the bracket to the corresponding purple colored header on the motherboard labeled as F2_1394. This is the connector for the Firewire ports found on the bracket

STEP 7: INSTALLING A GRAPHICS CARD

In this guide, I have shown the Gigabyte GV-NX59128D graphics card which is a PCI Express graphics based on the NVIDIA GeForce PCX 5900 GPU. This is a decently priced graphics card with enough processing performance to play most 3D games

 

Before installing the card, remove the corresponding faceplate from the casing

 

 Insert the card into the slot as shown

 

 Once the card is fully inserted, you should be able to fasten the PCI Express card's faceplate to the casing with ease

STEP 8: CONNECTING THE FRONT PANEL HEADER

CONNECTING THE FRONT PANEL HEADER
                            Look for the front panel header which is normally located on the lower left corner of the motherboard. Consult the motherboard manual if you cannot find it. Here's how you do it.

Unlike most motherboards, the Gigabyte GA-8GPNXP Duo comes with colored front panel headers which make identification and installation very simple. Each front panel connector has been designated with its own set of color, and the polarity of the connectors have also been marked with a '+' sign which obviously indicate that it's a positive polarity

 Most casings would provide a set of connectors labeled as such. For the LED connectors, the colored wire usually indicates a positive polarity 

 First, plug the 'Power LED' connector into the header as shown. Note that we've inserted the connector with the colored wire into the header with the '+' mark. If you've connected it the other way around, you won't see the LED light up when the system is powered. In such a case, you may need to remove the connector, flip it around and re-connect it 

 

Next, connect the power switch as shown. For switches, you need not worry about polarity - any which way will work just fine

  

Connect the HDD LED next. This is an indicator lamp for your hard disk drive's activity. Once again, make sure the polarity is correct

  

Connect the reset switch as shown

  

Finally, you have the speaker connector which goes into the four pin header although effectively, only the two side pins are used to power the speaker. Note that this is not for your multimedia speaker as it does nothing more than beeps to indicate your system's boot status. You can skip this step if you do not want to use it. However, for beginners, we recommend using it as it is used for troubleshooting purposes. Some motherboards have built-in buzzers and as such, the speaker connection is not needed