Building My PC 9 - The Build!

Step 1: Prep

To finish preparing I continued to read the articles and watch the videos I mentioned in an earlier post. I coupled that with the instructions that came with the parts and I had a rough idea of what I would have to do. It's like having instructions that say "right, left, left, right" and "left, right, right, left". Either way you end up going forward again, but hopefully you choose the path with the least number of potholes.

I also enlisted the help of my younger sister-in-law with the build. She'll soon be an engineer of the mechanical persuasion (hey, nobody's perfect), but that's sufficiently geeky to assist. Plus having a set of small hands greatly help plug in the small wires my meaty paws could not.

Step 2: Motherboard and Processor

After unpacking the gear, Trisha and I started with the motherboard and processor. Thanks to a great tip for an experienced PC builder at work, I did this BEFORE putting the motherboard in the case. That's a good thing, too, because while the processor went in easy, the cooler proved more challenging.



Step 3: Inside the Case

The motherboard went into the case, and even with me using the wrong screws it secured nicely! We diligently followed the manuals to install the memory and the video card. For those of you keeping score, my choice of motherboard paid off since the cooler does not interfere with the memory slots.



Step 4: The Test Boot

Per Loyd Case's suggestions we decided to fire up the machine before adding any more parts. How'd it go? Well, press play below and find out!



Step 5: Finished Up

With the renewed gusto resultant of a successful test boot we finished all the pieces and started installing Vista. The rest of the weekend involved me transferring and backing up files from the old PC, watching more progress bars than I ever want to, and a couple other events I'll save for the wrap up.