Now modern CPU’s generate a lot of heat (not as much as they used to, the emphasis these days is to be efficient & powerful at the same time) so it needs to be cooled. by far the most popular way of cooling is using a heatsink & a fan. If you buy a retail version of a CPU, a cooler is usually supplied, but they only provide an average level of cooling & are not very quiet. I needed the cooling to be quiet yet effective, so I chose to buy one of the many 3rd party CPU coolers available. The model below is a Scythe Mini Ninja CPU cooler, it’s not one of the best CPU coolers available, but its one of the best  low height CPU’s available for fitting into the case I’ve used, as it will not take a full height CPU cooler. A review of this cooler is in the link below.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article754-page1.html

For the CPU cooler to be effective, there should be a good conductor of heat between the CPU & the cooler. A number of manufacturers make such a good conductor of heat for the task, its known as thermal paste. I used a thermal paste called Artic silver 5, which is widely regarded as the best thermal paste on the market. You only need a small amount ( about the size of a grain of rice). you need to spread it thinly in a line across the CPU itself (this is recommended by the thermal paste maker) as shown below.

After applying the thermal paste, fit the CPU cooler. Most Intel CPU coolers use a ‘push pin’ installation method. 1st, check to see if the pins are aligned correctly (twist each pin in the opposite direction of the arrow until you cannot move any further) There are 4 holes in each corner of the CPU socket, the pins fit in each hole. Place the cooler onto the CPU socket (preferably with the CPU fan blowing air to the back of the case when the motherboard finally goes in the case)  

The next step is to fit the memory. For this PC build, I chose 2 x 1GB of Crucial Ballistix PC6400 DDR2 ram (Random Access Memory). (I bought it when it was on offer) DDR2 ram prices in 2007/2008 were so low, it was foolish not to buy less or a lower speed ram. Crucial memory themselves offer a lifetime guarantee on most of their products as well, so it seemed a sensible buy (& a bargain too!) Sticks of ram is best bought in pairs to ensure compatibility. Windows 7 seems to work very well with 2GB. For most versions of Microsoft Windows, it is widely regarded 2GB of ram is the Recommended requirement for it to work as expected.

The ram in this instance goes in the red or yellow slots on the motherboard (When fitting 2 sticks of ram, fit them in the same colour slot.). You need to push back the tabs on each side of the slots before fitting the ram, the ram also fits in one way round. Push down the ram stick firmly until it clicks into place & the tabs fit in the side slots on each end on the stick. The photos are from my gaming rig build as fitting ram in PC’s is the same regardless of its type & make.

There is no need to fit a separate graphics card for this build as I wanted it to be ‘energy efficient’ so I’ll show you how I installed the graphics card into my gaming rig.

For the Gaming rig build, I chose a Powercolor ATi HD3850 graphics card. (I have since upgraded the Graphics card to a HD4850 card, which is almost twice as powerful as its predecessor the HD3850) Normally I fit Nvidia graphics cards into my PC builds, in this instance I chose ATi over Nvidia because this ATi card (at the time) was better suited for this PC’s requirements (it decodes HD-DVD & Blu-ray without putting strain on the CPU. Modern ATi graphics cards also output sound through the card itself with the use of a special adapter, something Nvidia did not do at the time) This is also the first generation of Graphics card that uses DX10.1, a feature of Windows Vista Service pack 1. However, I don’t play games much (only when my nephews come to visit) & I wanted a graphics card that was more powerful than my last graphics card purchase (An Nvidia 7900GTO) without breaking the bank, This seemed to fit the bill. The only thing I do not like about this Graphics card is the cooler, due to a bug in the graphics card bios, the fan does not spin fast enough when the card is under load & the PC has to be turned off when it overheats. The solution is to fit a 3rd party cooler as shown on part 4.)  

[My PC Build.] [PC build Part 1.] [Part 2.] [Part 4.] [Bungee Mod.] [Finished!]