So my CPU arrived! I installed that next. Modern CPUs are fairly easy to install, so let's take a look at the motherboard CPU slot.
Fairly simple to get into this. Push the lever down and pull it away and lift. The remove that cover and we're good. The socket has a grey mark to align with the triangle on the cpu, as shown in these bad boys.
So place it in the socket with those two lined up. And unlike most parts, actually just place it. Don't press down until it clicks, it just sits in. Then pull the lever back down and lock it into place.
Next to install the CPU cooler. As I'm just using the standard one in the box, it is really easy to install.
Those four fan mounts just need clicking into place through the four holes in the motherboard to secure it and the wire hooking up to the CPU fan socket. If you had an AMD CPU/motherboard it's even easier, just 2 clamps and bam.
Now to hook up the fans on the case. For this you just take the 4-pin power cables and plug them into the 4 hole fan power connectors.
At this point, I have everything hooked up for a working PC, so we can see if all of this is installed properly. Lets flick the switch!
LIFE
BIOS! YAY!
Alright, turn it off and lets have a look at installing everything else. What I did next was install the GFX card and this was.... STUPID. It's easy enough to install, but this should be left to last I now know as it's so huge, it makes everything else difficult. But to do it, first I removed the screws from the back plate cover to fit it in.
Then I pushed the card into the slot until it clicked and screwed it in at the same point. If you have 2 or more slots it would fit in like I do, use the top one as it's usually the fastest one.
As well as being huge, modern GFX need their own power supply and PSU's now have plugs for the card specifically. If yours doesn't though, you can get converters for the 4 pin sockets to work with the PCI power. You need two of these plugs and they fit here:
So that's the motherboard and internal components pretty much done. Admire your handywork.
Don't tidy the cables yet though as you still have DVD and hard drives to go!
Disc drives just go in the top slots from the front. Remove any cover, slide them in and then just use 4 screws to secure it.
Hard drives are just as easy. Most of the time, they're installed from inside round the back, then secured with 4 screws. Mine has specific caddies that slide out the front and are then screwed in making it even easier!
Both of these things then just need a SATA power point from the PSU and a SATA cable from the motherboard to the drives. They fit so easily and only one way.
Screw that bitch up, you're done! Time to power it on again.
Looks fine... But it doesn't boot. Once it gets to the BIOS screen, it says the CPU is too hot. Well, one issue only is better than a load of them. I took to the internet and found the only people who had 85 degree celcius running CPU's are people who screwed up installing the cooler. I took a look around the back of the motherboard and found this:
So I opened it back up and lined up the mounts better so they go through the holes and gave it a big click again and they are now all pertruding through.
Now that's been done after installing Windows and all the software, I've had the PC on for about 20 hours at this point and even when it was under load overnight, it never went above 30 degrees. Fantastic.
This is easy to do and really feels like you achieved something. I built this whole PC! Now I can't wait until BF3 downloads so I can really test this sucker out.