Building a PC

Welcome my computer build tutorial. This will be a complete guide on how to build a PC from select components. Why build a PC? There is many reasons. One is that building your own PC is cheaper than buying a pre-built or having someone else build it for you.

The specs of the PC I built are as follows:

Case: ATX Ultra-brand case

Power Supply: Orion power supply

CPU: AMD A8-7400k

Heat Sink: Thermaltake heat sink

Motherboard: Gigabyte motherboard

Ram: PNY 4 GB 1600 MHz

Graphics Card: nVIDIA GT GeForce 610

Hard Drive: Western Digital Blue 1 TB

Optical Drive: Misc. optical drive

Case Fans: 2 Cooler Master 120mm fans

Also needed: Thermal paste

1. Unscrew the side panel on the case and remove it

1. Insert the standoffs into the holes that match up with the motherboard's holes

2. Place the motherboard onto the standoffs and screw in the screws so the motherboard is sercured

Another thing to note is to know the form factor of your motherboard. There is different holes for the standoffs for different form factors.

1. Locate the CPU socket on your motherboard

2. Lift the arm on the side of the socket

3. Align the golden triangle with the triangle on the socket

4. Carefully lower the CPU into the socket using ZIF (Zero Insertion Force)

5. Lower the retention arm to lock the CPU in its socket

1. Place a pea sized amount of thermal paste to the top of the CPU

2. Make sure the metal hooks on the side of the heat sink are lined up with the plastic hooks on the CPU bracket

3. When they are attached pull the lever on the side of the heat sink

4. Attach the cord coming out of the heat sink/fan to the CPU fan plug

1. Locate the RAM slots on the motherboard

2. Line up the notches on the RAM slot and the notches on the RAM stick

3. Make sure the tabs on the side of the RAM slots are flipped down

4. Firmly press down on the stick of RAM. When the RAM is correctly installed the tabs will automatically flip back up

1. Locate the PCI express slot on your motherboard (its the long one)

2. Align the indent on the graphics card with the slot just like the RAM

3. Also like the RAM you might have to firmly push down on the graphics card to make sure its inserted right

1. Grab your power supply and find the 4 pin plug and the 24 pin plug

2. Plug them into their respective slots on the motherboard

3. Insert the powers supply into the back of the case and screw it in

4. Make sure the red switch on the back of the power supply is set to 115V

1. If you hear one beep when the computer turns on that means the computer detects the RAM, which is good

2. After the computer beeps it will start POST (Power On Self Test)

3. The purpose of POST is to make sure all of your hardware is working right

1. Insert the hard drives into the trays and screw them in so they don't rattle around in the case

2. Plug the SATA cable into the motherboard and then plug the cable into the back of the hard drive

1. Screw in the case fan into the back of the case

2. The cord coming out of the fan plugs into a similar slot as the CPU fan

1. After all of the steps above are finished you should move your cables around so they look neat and don't get in the way of fans or reduce air flow

2. Screw the side panel back on

The computer build is finished! All that is left to do is to boot up