A to Z in Computers

How to build your own computer            Page3

The picture to your right shows a standard 4 pin power connector normally used to supply power to your hard drive and cd-rom drives. It has rounded edges on one side and your drive connectors also are rounded on one side so the power will only plug in one way. The higher end video cards also have a 4 or 6 pin power connector which will need to be plugged in. There is a smaller 4 pin connector for your floppy drive the smallest power connector on your power supply. Plug this into your floppy drive. It also only plugs in one way, so you can't plug it in wrong. Just remember one thing, when connecting anything on a computer. If you have to force something in, then your most likely plugging it in the wrong way.

Okay, now they we got that out of the way, next is to plug in the power switch, reset switch, and led light connectors from the computer case to the motherboard. Most motherboard manuals are pretty good with pictures, and show the location of the pin connections. Some cases are not so good at showing what wires are for what connectors. Generally the connectors are two pin or three pin, and the white wire for each connector is the negative. Each of the case connectors are usually marked with what connector they are. On most cases the green and white is the power light, the red and white is the hard drive light, blue and white is the reset switch, and orange and white is the power switch. Color's may vary but these connectors should be marked. If your case has front USB and sound, these can also be connected if your motherboard has usb and sound panel headers on the motherboard. Your motherboard book will show these connectors, and all wires on the case are marked accordingly. Make these connections then we'll connect your data cables.

You'll see to the right, pictures of the IDE connectors on the motherboard and the back view of a cd-rom and hard drive. Note that the IDE connectors have a notch in them and the floppy ( not shown ) has a notch also, but the connector is a little smaller. The data cables also have a notch in them, so you just have to line the connector up and plug it in. Plug your hard drive in using IDE 1, the blue connector ( sometimes red or yellow ) and plug your cd-rom into the white connector. If you look at the cd-rom picture to your right, you'll see the IDE cable plugged in with the red line towards the power connector. The data cables, either IDE or floppy have a red line on one side, which designates pin one. Pin one always faces towards the power connectors on cd-rom and hard drives. If your cables or connector are not notch, just remember the red line is pin one and goes to pin one on the motherboard or drives which are marked and the motherboard manual will display where that is also. Note in the picture on the right there are four smaller oval shaped connectors, two red and two black. These are the new serial ATA hard drive connectors. They have an L shape in the center of them. The Sata cables will have the same shape. Just match the cable up and plug it in, if your using Serial ATA drives. Most OEM Sata hard drives have the standard 4 pin molex power connector, and also have the new sata power connector. If your drive does not have the 4 pin connector, you'll need a power supply that does have the new serial ata power connectors.

Well the only thing left to do is to plug in your keyboard , mouse, monitor, and speakers. Then turn on your machine, setup your bios, and install your operating system. Some motherboards, mostly the older ones, have either jumpers, or dip switches, sometimes combined with your bios setting to setup the processor speed and memory speed. Most of the newer motherboards are pretty much plug and play and may have a dip switch for bus speed, and have your clock speeds for Front side bus ( cpu ) and memory frequency speed setup. These switches and jumpers are usually used to manually set your cpu and or memory speed, and are defaulted to plug and play setup. Your motherboard manual should explain these to you. Most your newer motherboards default to the slowest clock speeds at boot up, so you don't over clock and damage your cpu.  Memory speeds and cpu speeds usually are multiplied. For example PC2100 is 266Mhz which is 133 x 2, PC2700 is 333Mhz which is 166Mhz x2, and PC3200 is 200Mhz x 2. Its automatically multiplied by the bios on the motherboard, you just set it at 133, 166, or 200Mhz, but most of them will auto detect the correct setting. You will need to read the manual for your motherboard because they do vary between manufacturers. To install your operating system, setup in your bios for your boot sequence to boot to your cd-rom first, so it will boot to your operating system cd to install windows. That is pretty much it. Just follow the on screen instructions and install your OS, then when done, put in your motherboard CD, install its drivers, and then your video card drivers, modem, etc ,until you've installed all your drivers. You should reboot your machine in between each driver install. There are tweaks you can do, and we are not going to get into that in this article. Happy computing!

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