Well, you have gotten this far. Congratulations! You have now completed the hardware portion of putting together your PC.
Admittedly, if you are following this tutorial to the letter, your PC is rather bare-boned at this point. It is highly likely you will be installing some additional hardware such as a network interface card (NIC), a sound card, maybe a dial-up modem or other hardware. Some people like to install everything right away. Usually when I build a PC, I like to start with the basics. The reason is that it makes the installation process of your operating system easier. Once you have your operating system installed, you can then go in and install your additional hardware and get those items working one at a time. It can be a little daunting to try to get everything working at the same time, especially simultaneously to installing the operating system itself.
Now, you are about ready to turn your new PC on for the first time. But before we do so we need to give everything the once over and make sure we didn’t miss something. So, with a flashlight, check all of your work. It is better to “waste” the time than to engage in wasted time trying to track down why the system will not boot.
Review all your connections and installations as completed in prior steps. Here is a bulleted list of highlights to guide you:
- Drives properly connected to the power supply
- CPU fan attached to the power supply or to the power connector on the motherboard
- If this is an older AT machine, ensure the P8 and P9 main power connectors are installed properly, with black wires in middle.
- The 110/220 volt switch on the back of the power supply is configured properly for your area
- Ribbon cables attached correctly and securely. If using rounded cables, the arrow on the connectors indicating Pin 1 should be aligned with Pin 1 on all drive connections. On gray cables, ensure the red edge is aligned with Pin 1.
- All connections tight, no connectors off by one set of pins
- If there are any key motherboard settings which are jumper-controlled, ensure these settings are correct
- No wires or ribbon cables protruding into fan blades
- Power switch connector on ATX machines properly connected to the PWR_SW pins on the motherboard. If this is not properly done, the machine may not even turn on when the switch is pressed.
thank you so much i really enjoyed your teaching. when i wwent through the lecture i found it so interesting to the extend to leave it for a moment is very difficult for me. i really appreciate your lecture.keep it up. i must confess it really worked for me.
I’m startng with an old computer with a 3.5″ floppy drive. I inadvertently pulled the ribbon cables out without making notes! How bad!!! The cable to the floppy drive is smaller than the other two cables, and has a twist in a segment of the ribbon on one connector. Does that twisted end attach to the floppy drive? The other two cables, larger, connect to two sockets in the mother board, one blue, one black. I assume one of these goes to the hard drive, don’t know which. And the other goes to all other devices? CD drive for example?
Thanks for your help!
The ribbon cable has one wire coded with another color that is the number 1 pin. line it up with the number one pin on the motherboard and do the same with the floppy
question? ok my whole computer is put together now. when i turned it on, the screen wouldnt pick up a signal. keep in mind that this was the first time i got to turn it on and it did this. we went back and re checked our wires and even played with it a little but no resolution. plz help
What actually happened? Did you see fans working? Power LED was on? Was HDD LED blinking? Is your PC connected straight to a power socket?
Hi, I spent yestarday and a good deal of today building a computer. Everything went fairly smoothly, and I thought I did a pretty good job, but the computer won’t run properly.
I connected the PSU to a wall socket and flipped the power switch. The motherboard LEDs light up, and when I press the power button, everything comes to life, but only for an instant.
I double checked that both the 24pin and 12V power cables are connected to the motherboard, and the CPU fan is also hooked into the motherboard port labeled CPU_FAN. I’m really not sure what’s up.
Here are my vital specs:
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P
Memory: 4GB DDR3 Corsair Dominator 1600mhz
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 750GB
Drive: Can’t remember, but it’s a DVD burner
CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 955 3.2Ghz
GPU: Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon HD 4870
PSU: Corsair 850 Watt power supply
I would open the bios and set everything to default.If everything is right it should work.If it doesnt change then its all about troubleshooting which can be a royal pain in the butt.Your parts are very good.And you didnt skimp on your power supply which alot of people do.Thats a smart thing to do.
hey.
I assembled my new computer yesterday. It wouldnt start so i had to read this guide. When i finally got it on, i saw SMOKE coming out. Yes, thats right, SMOKE.I dont have a case yet, so the motherboard is currently on the packet it came with. I was wondering if i did anything wrong. I tried to press off the power supply and then restard, but it only produced more smoke. It now automatically goes off after a few seconds.
Help anyone?
The smoke seemed to be coming from somewhere around the graphics card.
To Mister Man
If you don’t have a case you probably don’t have any connection to “ground” or “common”. Probably fried some components. You may be back to zero. Why would you assemble a computer’s costly components on a table top?
The motherboard is usually shipped in a static-proof (i.e. electrically conducting) package. If that is what you have it on, you might be short one motherboard.
I usually assemble my computer components on a book, a large thin book.
Required components: mb, cpu, cpu fan, memory, power supply, and a video card connected to your monitor. The reason for the book is that the video card sticks down below the level of the mb.
The book is not electrically conductive so will not short out any mb components.
That will allow you to get into the BIOS.
I forgot to mention that you will need a power switch, or you can short the power on the front panel connector. If your case is nearby, you can connect the power and reset switches (make sure the case does not touch the mb.)