This one is really easy. Take the CPU, and hold it with your right hand. Look on your motherboard for the CPU socket. With your left hand hold the motherboard with a firm grip while you insert your CPU. Then connect your CPU fan. Easy isn't?
Screwing the motherboard to the computer case.
This process can be a little frustrating. A good thing to do would be to remove the piece where the motherboard screws too, which is a large panel within your computer case.
Next you should have little plastic looking screws. Use these to secure all four corners of your motherboard. Don't worry if you can't secure each corner, more often than not you will only be able to get 2 to 3 corners.
Finally, you will see holes in the middle of the motherboard. You should be able to insert two screws to secure the middle of your board. Screw these in, but make absolutely certain that you have those little red rubber looking washers. This will protect your board from damage that the metal screws can cause. Like the corner screws, it's really no big deal if you can only screw in one center support screw.
Inserting your RAM.
Once your board is securely inserted within your case, you will want to pop in the RAM. Here you will discover exactly how easy it is to perform the 40-50 dollar job that CompUSA and other stores will charge you.
Look up in your motherboard manual exactly in what sockets your RAM has to go into. Then insert your RAM slowly, but firmly into its socket. DIMMs can only be inserted in one way. Simply align the indents found on the lower part of the DIMM to the indents found in the RAM socket.
LED cords and the RESET Switch cord.
In the lower right part of your case you will see a bunch of cords ending with black heads. These black heads will be labeled HDD, RST, PWR, TURBO, etc. If they are not labeled, then good luck trying to figure out which goes where. I've actually had the chance of trying to figure that out ... it took me a few tries, but basically it's trial and error.
Anyhow, take a hold of those cords, look up in your manual where the proper connectors go to, and plug them in.
Connecting your power supply to the board.
You should refer to your computer manual as to how exactly the power supply cords should be connected to your board, but generally the black cords of the two power supply strips will be found in the center of the two connecting power supply outlets on your motherboard.
Next, take your floppy drive, insert it into an available bay (in the upper right hand corner of your case). Connect a power supply to the drive, which will be a thin cable coming out of your power supply. Next, take your floppy drive gray ribbon (it's the only one that will connect to the floppy drive). Connect one end to the floppy drive, and the other to the board. Look in your manual if you're not sure where this is located. Like in the above step (#6), the red stripe/dots must face towards the left part of your board.
Installing the IDE drives.
The IDE drives are the hard drives and CD-ROMs. Before putting them in their respective bays, make sure you have their jumpers set up right (consult their documentation). You will need your hard drive to be set as a master, or slave (depending on how many hard drives you have).
Then connect the IDE gray ribbon (it's the only one that will fit to the IDE drives) to the drives themselves and then to the motherboard. Like in the above step (#6), the red stripe/dots must face towards the left part of your board.
Finally, connect the power supply to the drives.
Inserting your expansion cards.
Next you will want to insert your expansion cards into your motherboard. These are the sound cards, video cards, modems, etc. Each one of these go into their correct slot (AGP, PCI or ISA) with the metal bracket facing the left part of the case so you can screw them in.
If you have an AGP card, this one will go into the AGP slot, which is brown, and there shouldn't be more than one AGP slot on your board. Slowly but firmly insert the card into the slot. You will know when it's all the way in.
PCI cards will go into the PCI slots. These slots are the smaller white ones.
The ISA cards will go into the ISA slots. These are the longer black slots.
If you got a sound card, which supports CD-ROM audio, now would be the perfect time to connect the digital audio cord to your CD-ROM.
Booting up for the first time.
Now it's the moment of truth. Connect your monitor, mouse, keyboard and power cord to the computer. Don't screw the exterior case cover just yet, because you might have to fix something that doesn't work (let's hope not).
Now turn the power on. If you see something on your screen that matches your CPU speed, then a Memory test that matches your amount of RAM, then you got it done!
Sure you may have to fix some problems, but you can rest assured you got the core stuff done. If you don't see nothing, then you probably omitted one of the steps above, or you didn't do it right. Consult your hardware manuals! They will explain to you exactly how everything needs to be connected.
Setting up your BIOS.
Once you boot up, you will probably see a heading labeled "Press DELETE to enter setup", or maybe "Press ESC to enter setup". Whatever the key, press it to enter your BIOS.
First thing you will want to do in your BIOS is set up your hard drive. More than likely you will have an option labeled "Auto-detect IDE devices". Use this to configure your BIOS to use your hard drive(s).
You may also want to screw around with other items. I can't really help you there, but grab your motherboard manual, and read what it says about your BIOS.
That's it! You're all done! Well at this point, if everything worked great, you deserve a good pat on the back. It sure isn't an easy task to build your own computer.
Some people tend to "rush build" their PCs. Well unless it's a dire emergency, I don't recommend this. You're better off taking each step one at a time, and to make sure everything is securely screwed and connected.