Fitting your new components to your computer case

Fitting your new components to your computer case.

Computer motherboard upgrade Kits ( includes the E-Machine renewal kit )

The kit you have bought includes the following parts;

1 x motherboard, boxed with drivers disk, back plate, ribbon cable for IDE drive and a Red SATA drive cable, a power cable for the SATA power connector from the motherboard to the hard drive.

If you are building an entirely new machine or upgrading the one you have, the same rules of operation apply.

Firstly, cleanliness………. No Food, Drink, Grease/Oils etc. No Ash trays.

Create a solid place to work ideally a kitchen worktop or a dining room table. Lay out an old but clean Cotton Duvet Cover ( these are well padded, thick cotton, and fluff free) on the selected work area. Ideally folded twice to create a padded place on which to work.

Get you computer case on the work area, laid on it’s side with the side panel removed. The correct side panel to remove will be the one on the left of the machine as you look from the front.

Familiarize yourself with the internals of the case. Locate the ribbon cables for the existing hard drives, the front panel connector wire, the various power cables.

Unplug the ribbon cables and remove from the pc completely as they will be in the way when time comes to fit the new motherboard. Unplug the front panel connectors, and the main power plug to the motherboard from the power supply unit. Tie these out of the way lest they get jammed beneath the new motherboard during fitting. See below how tidy the work area is without nay obstructions.

Next remove the existing motherboard backplate from the computer case. See pictures below.

Next, fit the new backplate that came with the new motherboard. Take care to fit it the correct way round! Your motherboards’connectors will look similar to this…….

The actual layout may differ, but your backplate connectors will correspond to the backplate itself.

Note: fit the processor/fan and memory before installing the motherboard in the case, this will ensure that no bending of the motherboard takes place with the gentle forces needed to fit these items.

Once the backplate is fitted, turn your attentions to the motherboard itself.

Place your duvet/Quilt cover on the worktop, put the motherboard on it and make sure it is flat without any ripples or item underneath. Locate the memory sockets, and fit the memory module to one of the memory sockets. Make sure that the memory is offered to the slot the correct way round. There is an orientation slot which is situated part way along the “card edge” length. ( see picture 1 ) It is not evenly located hence it will only fit in one way round. Once you have the memory module the correct way round, hinge back the white retaining ears as shown in the picture 2 below

Slot the memory module into the memory slot by locating the “card edge” into the slots on each end of the memory slot on the motherboard. Push down evenly but firmly until the memory module locks into the slot and the retaining ears lock into the memory card edges at each end, see picture 3

1 2 3

Next take the processor in your fingers.

Look carefully at the processor and you will see that it has an orientation arrow on one corner. as shown in picture 4

This locates to the same point as marked on the processor socket on the motherboard itself. Locate the Processor retaining lever and unlock it and hinge upwards. Once you have decided the correct fitting direction, carefully enter the processor into the socket. Put the processor into the socket with a vertical motion only, not down one side then the other. 4

Bottom view Top view

( note pictures show an AMD cpu, but the principle is the same)

↑ ↑

The 478 ZIF socket ( ZIF = Zero insertion force)

Retaining Lever

←

Take care that you do not touch the gold pins as there is a danger of bending them. If these pins get bent you will not be able to locate the processor into the socket on the motherboard. Once inserted, lock down the processor with the locking lever and secure into the securing catch.

Next, take the cooling fan, remove the plastic protective cup from the base of the “heat sink” taking care not to put your fingers on the silver/white paste on the heat sink surface. Familiarize yourself with the correct way round to fit this fan. The securing catches are the “ears” that stick out on either side of the socket.

Carefully locate the cooling fan into the square aperture making sure it is located correctly and squarely down. Then locate the retaining clips on either side of the fan assembly into the “ears” and using the spring-loaded catch hinge this up and over until it locks into place on it’s own frame. Plug the power cable onto the motherboard fan connector marked on the motherboard as “Cpu Fan”

Make some final checks of the work you have just done.

Locate the front panel connector terminals, the USB connectors, the IDE connectors, the Floppy Drive connector. Help in finding these items can be seen from the handbook itself, descriptive pages with show the motherboard in “ground plan” format.

Next you are ready to fit motherboard. There are nine screws that secure the motherboard to the chassis. Before you put the motherboard in, locate these screw fittings and their “upstands” These are fitted in such a way as to prevent “grounding” of the printed circuit board underside coming into contact with the chassis. These upstands can be unscrewed and repositioned if required.

Once you are happy with positions, you can then offer the motherboard into the chassis. Make sure that there are no obstructions to get trapped under the motherboard, e.g. cable, or any other connectors. Lower the motherboard into the chassis by entering at an angle, the side (See pic 5 ) where the back panel connectors protrude through the rear panel. Locate the back panel connectors into the back panel itself so that all the items protrude through their respective apertures. Once you have located the motherboard, check for any trapped items before screwing the motherboard down. Screw down the corner closest to the back panel connectors first loosley, followed by the opposite corners, then the middle areas. Once all the screws are “started” in their threads tighten them down securely but do not overtighten as you may crack the bakerlite motherboard material.

Next, plug in the 20 pin power cable, ( pic 6 ) it will only go in one way round. Next plug in the four pin square power cable ( 2 x black/2 yellow) into the plug beside the processor socket. ( Pic 7) Without this connector the processor will not power up.

6 7

Next plug in the front panel connectors according to the handbook. Pic 8 These will consist if small black ( usually) plastic spades, marked Hdd, Rst, PwrLed, PwrSw. At this stage don’t worry if they may be connected the wrong way round ( i.e. +/- or -/+ ) they can be easily unplugged later and turned round if you find that the light that is supposed to be illuminated isn’t, no harm can be done to the motherboard.

Note Example only check your motherboard manual for correct configuration.

Next, plug in the IDE ribbon cables, the floppy disk drive cable and all power cables to the hard drives, floppy drive, and cd drives.

Refit all add-on cards and secure in place such as graphics cards etc.

Make final checks and you are now in a position to power up your computer.

Caution: when powering up for the first time, watch the processor cooling fan to make sure it starts to run as soon as you power up the pc. The pc should commence to boot by changing the screen standby light to solid green.

At this point press the DEL key (bottom right corner of keyboard ) to enter setup. You will need to set up your user preferences here. Consult you motherboard handbook for this process.

When you have changed the settings press the escape key and then save and exit to come out of CMOS set up.

Your pc should now boot to a desktop, at which point you will need to put the motherboard drivers through the cdrom drive to correct items such as chipset drivers,usb,sound,lan drivers. You will also need to have your graphics card driver disk handy as this will also be needed. The motherboard drivers setup program will self run when you put the disk into the cd-rom drive. Follow the onscreen prompts to complete the software installations. At the completion you will need to reboot for the changes to take effect.

Need help, ring me on 07926-106150

Chris