Continuing from the previous article series on “Building Your Own Computer” Part 1 and Part 2:
Step 7
Take out your power supply and slide it into the space at the top of your case. Screw this in. ‘O’ means off and ‘I’ means on. Take the largest wire coming out of the power socket and plug that into the motherboard – the largest pin on the motherboard closest to the power supply. REMEMBER: Do NOT plug the power supply into an outlet!
Step 8
Take out the metal PCI slot in front of the PCI-Express or AGP slot on your motherboard. Depending on the type of GPU you have, you may need to take out the one next to it as well. Take out your graphics and you should see a hook at the end of one side. Sliding the hook into place first, lower your graphics card into the PCI/AGP slot. You should be able to see the end of your graphics card sticking out the back of your computer and you may need to press the card in until you hear a click to make sure that it is secure.
Step 9
Take out your hard drive. Depending on the case you bought, slide the drive into one of the HD slots. These slots should not be sticking out in front of your computer. It will most likely be near the bottom of the case. Take the read wire that came with the drive and plug one side into the hard drive and
the other into a purple slot on the motherboard. Take one of the cables coming out of the power supply and plug the one of best fit into the hard drive.
Step 10
Take out your read/write drive and push one of the slot cover the drive port out the front of your computer – this makes the front of the read/write drive visible (where you put your discs in) from the front of the computer. Slide the drive into the slot. Now take out the flat grey wire that came with the motherboard. Plug one end into the Read/Write drive and another into a long plug usually located on the right of the RAM slots. Take another cable from the power supply and plug this into your read/write drive.
Step 11
Now you will need to plug in the remaining wires that come out of your case. Since every motherboard and case is different, it would be best to consult your motherboard manual for this part. In general, the wires coming out from the front of your case and leading towards the motherboard are the LED, Power switch, Reset switch, and a couple others. They must all be plugged into the sockets located towards the bottom of your motherboard. You may have to plug individual wires in one by one. On the wire itself, there is usually a label on the end of it that corresponds to one on the motherboard. Remember that whenever you are in doubt you should consult the motherboard manual.
Step 12
Close up your computer and plug the mouse, keyboard, and screen in. When you turn on your computer you should hear a beep. This means that the motherboard has detected your hard drive. Install an operating system, and congratulate yourself. You just built a computer!
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