BB wrote this to help others and posted it on his WB BB and later posted it on our own AH bb. I thought it was a very good piece and hope he doesn't mind me pasting it here where maybe more people in need of the info might be able to find it.
I myself could have really used it before I tried building my own but ran into a problem that maybe one of you may be able to help me with. I will post it after leaving these easy to follow instructions he wrote for us.
The case (
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewprodu...tion=11-150-017) has rolled edges for 90% of the exposed edges. The only sharp places are at the drive cutouts at the front of the case and at the backplane cutouts where the motherboard perihperal connectors go through.
1) put motherboard in removable motherboard tray - it has 6 standoffs that are in the correct spots for standard ATX Mobo, and has additional support clips to fit under other locations if you need them.
2) install processor and heatsink (flip up lever on ZIF socket - match CPU pattern to socket patter, drop in, flip ZIF lever down. Clip heatsink into retention clip, then flip the latches to lock it down - try to do both latches at once to avoid asymmetrical loading on the processor) Plug fan power into motherboard fan header near the CPU socket.
3) install RAM - open up the levers, push the stick into the slot, click into place such that the levers snap shut. The RAM is keyed so it can only go in one way. Be sure you have it right, then push firmly.
4) connect case connectors (LED's, switches, etc) to motherboard - do NOT use the slip of paper that comes with the case to make the connections. Follow the Motherboard manual. Note that the little black cylinder with a red wire and a black wire coming from it is the case speaker (for BIOS beeps, etc).
5) Connect front connect USB cable to motherboard USB header - the case connector labels do not exactly match what the motherboard calls them, but it can be figured out. Sort the "1" connectors from the "2" connectors. power to power. "+ to "+" "-" to "-" and ground to ground. (it will be clearer if you're looking at the connectors and the port header diagram while reading this)
7) swap out motherboard passthrough panel for the one that comes in the case. 50/50 they don't match. If they do, you can leave the one that came with the case in the case.
6) insert assembled motherboard tray into the case. Plug in power - primary motherboard power (biggest connector) and PIV power (small four pin connector)
7) install fans into case. (6/7 can be swapped - depending on where you are putting fans and access you want.)
8) install video card into AGP slot. (8/9 can be swapped - depending on room in case. For the Maxtop, there's enough room to do it either way.
9) install drives into drive bays. Be sure that all cabling reaches from the motherboard to the drives before you screw them down. Drives nowadays usually come set to "cable select" ("CS") using jumpers on the back of the drive. I typically override them to force master or slave as appropriate. If HD and CD are sharing an IDE cable, HD is master (MA), CD is slave (SL). If CD and CDRW are sharing an IDE cable, I don't think it matters - just make sure one is master and one is slave.
10) install drive cabling. Everything nowadays is keyed to make it difficult if not impossible to install the cable the wrong way. Also if you have 3-pin fans, attach as many as you can to the fan headers on the motherboard (typically Motherboards have 1 or two additional fan headers for case fans) ANy remaining fans, attach using adapters (if necessary) to 4 pin 12 volt Molex connectors (the biggish ones that connect to drives). Also, hook up the CD sound cable to the CD-in on the motherboard, and if the motherboard has an aux-in jack, plug the CD-RW sound cable into that one
11) double check drive cabling and power leads. connect monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers to the motherboard.
12) start system - it should go directly to BIOS to confirm your processor speed. In BIOS - set BOOT order to CD-ROM first, HD- second. Leave everything else at default, for now. Put WINXP in CD tray, Save and Exit BIOS, which will reboot system.
13) When system boots, it will ask to boot from HD or CD, boot from CD, then if given the choice (i.e. if it doesn't do it automagically), start WinXP setup and install WinXP - when asked, do not use FAT32 - use NTFS file system.
14) after windows installs itself, install motherboard drivers (shipset, sound, LAN) from CD - reboot after each individual install - don't do all three at once. Then install Video Card drivers. There may be an AGP driver for the motherboard - typically you install the AGP driver after you install the video driver. Why, I dunno, but thats the way the last 3 different motherboards I installed did it (SiS based systems).
15) Go online and grab windows updates and DirectX9. Shut case.
16) Install software and controllers and play WB.
Should take just under 4 hours, since this is your first build.
Good luck!
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So, its really not that complicated.
As for price - it depends on what you put in it. YOu can build a competent gaming rig for about 700-800 bucks. And you can build a screaming HOT one for about 1300.
BB
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WBIII interloper
352nd Fightergroup
Last edited by BB Gun on 09-01-2003 at 02:03 AM
