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The 1st thing to do is get the case ready. I wanted the case to be similar to the last case I had but not so complicated. I wanted it to be quiet & be capable of taking any upgrades that I have planned at any point in the future. So I chose another Silverstone desktop case, the lascala LC17, which is widely regarded as one of the best value for money Home Theatre PC cases on the market. It is also capable of taking full size ATX motherboards as well.
This is the inside of the case, plenty of room for a full size motherboard.
After removing the case lid the 1st thing to do is to install the brass motherboard standoffs. With this particular case there are a lot of holes for various sizes of motherboards, so what I did was to cut a piece of paper the same size as the motherboard used, put it beneath the motherboard & use a sharp pencil to pierce holes in the paper through the screw holes. When I got the right holes I screw the standoffs into the tray.
The next thing to do is install the motherboard case backplate included with the motherboard, I’ve forgotten to do this loads of times, so now is the right time. On this case it clips in behind the fan in the inside of the case. make sure it goes in the right way round & the right way up, match it up with the motherboard outputs beforehand. This photo is for installing the case backplate for my gaming rig, but the principle is the same for all PC builds.
Once you have installed the above, its time to install the case fans. This case had 2 quiet case fans installed already but I wanted to improve the airflow within the case. So I used 2 extra quiet 92mm nexus case fans (1 is pictured on the left.) I bought a 3rd 92mm Case fan for the CPU cooler. The other 2 80mm fans I bought to replace the original case fans but it turned out that they were noisier than the originals, So I’ve kept them as spares. In this case the 92mm fans were used to suck air into the case & have been installed inside at the front.
now that the case is ready to take the motherboard, the best way to build a PC is to fit the main pieces of a PC together before putting it inside the case. For this build, I’ve used a gigabyte board (GA-G33M-DS2R) which I bought back in 2007. I chose this motherboard for its size, its good reviews & it also has a small amount of future proofing too, it will take the 1st generation of 45nm intel processors which will be available for some of 2008 & probably all of 2009. It will also be able to be used for future upgrades for the lifetime of the board & finally, it was cheap!
Whenever you touch any electronic part of a PC, it is important to earth yourself 1st as these parts are sensitive to static electricity. The best thing to do is to buy an anti-static wriststrap like this one below. (about £5-). The wrist-strap must be a reasonably tight fit to the wrist and the cable must be connected to a suitable ground point. Now to begin building the PC, which is on part 2.
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