A Short Guide to Building Your Own PC

Rajeev Vagdia MIIE 
 

 

 

First Published 10^th February 2006

© Rajeev Vagdia 2006

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form without the written permission of the copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Errors & Ommisions expected. Author does not take any responsibility for the consequence of users following this guide. Please do so at your own risk!!

Contents

1. Requirements for Building a New PC from Scratch

2. Procedure

3. Software Requirements

4. Sequence of Installing Software

5. What to do before Re-formatting

6. Appendix A – Network Setup

Chapter 1: Requirements for Building a New Pc from Scratch

 

1. Money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2. Undisturbed Abundant Time
3. Appropriate Tools, specially an anti-static wrist band
4. Case
5. Case Fans
6. Motherboard
7. CPU
8. Heatsink + Fan for CPU
9. Memory
10. Graphics Card
11. Hard Disk
12. Floppy Drive
13. CD-RW Drive
14. DVD-ROM/RW Drive (Optional)
15. Monitor (Display)
16. Keyboard
17. Mouse
18. Speakers

Chapter 2: Procedure

 

1. Before doing anything READ the motherboard manual and any other manuals you may have received.
2. Ensure that all the contents of the packages are present.
3. Fit the Case fans, preferably two in the front and two at the back, positioning the air flow such that the front sucks in cool air and the back exhausts out the hot air.
4. During the rest of this procedure, ALWAYS have the anti-static band on your wrist to avoid damaging any components. Ground yourself by touching the metal chassis of the case before you begin.
5. Lay the case down on its side so that the open end is facing you and the end where the motherboard will rest is on the bottom.
6. Lay the motherboard inside the case and confirm that it fits and all the screw positions are matched. DO NOT fix it.
7. Remove the motherboard and lay it down on the anti-static bag it came in.
8. From the manuals establish which way the CPU fits on the motherboard, and only then carefully install the CPU into its socket. This should NOT require excessive force.
9. Apply a little thermal paste on the centre of the CPU and then place the CPU Heatsink + Fan on it. Clip it in place. Once again, this should NOT require excessive force.
10. Install the memory modules taking care that they are the right way round. Match the notches on the modules to the motherboard memory sockets. These should click into place by applying a little pressure evenly.
11. Now install the motherboard into the case and fix it down using appropriate screws.
12. You can now install the Graphics card in its appropriate slot (usually the AGP slot – This looks different from the rest of the PCI slots).
13. At this stage if you wish you can plug the power cables and the monitor in, power up and test the system. If all is well the PC will boot and the BIOS will recognise your CPU and memory and after its initial power-up test, say something like ‘No Operating System Found’.
14. Switch off, remove all the cables and ground the chassis again to discharge any static electricity.
15. Now install the rest of the components i.e. the hard drive, the floppy drive, the CD-RW drives and the DVD drives into the appropriate bays of the Case.
16. Connect all the internal cables as required by the motherboard manuals. Set any jumpers as required.
17. Close the case and connect all the peripherals in the appropriate connectors.
18. Your PC is now ready for an Operating System and any other software that you may wish to install.

Chapter 3: Software Requirements

 

1. Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2.
2. Motherboard bundled software that may have more updated drivers than the OS.
3. Graphics card bundled software that may have more updated drivers than the OS.
4. Printer bundled software suite that may have more updated drivers than the OS
5. Microsoft Office 2003 Professional
6. Ahead Nero Powerpack 6.3
7. Internet Security Suite

Chapter 4: Sequence of Installing Software

 

1. Put the CD with the OS in the CD-RW drive and boot up the PC. When asked, choose to boot from CD.
2. The OS installation will inspect your system and ask where to install it.
3. Create 3 partitions on your hard disk: C:\ for your OS and software such as MS Office, Internet Security Suite, Nero, Diskeeper, etc., D:\ for your data i.e. music, videos, documents, pictures, etc and E:\ a small partition to use as the swap/page file.
4. Choose C:\ as the destination for the OS. Format the partition to NTFS.
5. Installation will begin. This can take from 20 to 60 minutes.
6. Once installation is complete, remove the CD and reboot the PC.
7. Format other partitions to NTFS so that they can be used by the OS.
8. Install the drivers provided with the Motherboard.
9. Install the drivers provided with the Graphic card.
10. Install the drivers provided with the Printer.
11. Install and update the Internet Security Suite.
12. Carry out a windows update to apply any critical updates if necessary.
13. Reboot the PC. Scan the whole system with for viruses etc,
14. Enable all real-time protective functions, schedule a regular automated sweep and then reboot the PC again.
15. You may now choose to run Diskeeper to defragment the Hard disk a couple of times to ensure optimum performance.
16. Via control panel, system; change the swap file to use partition E and reboot the PC.
17. Your PC is now ready for use.

Chapter 5: What to do before Re-formatting

 

1. Allow sufficient time to carry out a re-format.
2. Make sure all original bundled CD’s and other software CD’s are at hand.
3. Back up all important data if the data is on the partition to be formatted.
4. In particular back-up Microsoft Outlook Files such as the PST & OST files. These hold your Outlook data such as emails, contacts, appointments, etc. These PST & OST files are normally located at C:\Documents & Settings\User Name\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook so will be lost when formatting. To view these files, in explorer from Tools Menu select folder options and enable ‘show all files’.
5. Only when you are sure that all important data has been backed-up, start formatting by booting from the OS CD and following the procedure of Chapter 2 onwards.