Grab a Wrench

By James Gaskin, NetworkWorld.com, 11/05/04

Time to play with the new computer parts. I let them marinate for a few days, working up nerve, then finally spread everything across the dining room table while my wife wasn't looking.

Onsite help was harder to find than I expected. My favorite site was by Rob Williams and called MySuperPc. Lots of pictures, once you get past his favorite parts to use. Some sites out there have gotten a bit out of date, but this one remains current.

No instructions came with the case, but the book with the motherboard answered all my questions. The case did include many more screws and standoffs than I needed, but better too many than not enough. It seems there are eight standoffs used with this motherboard to provide a half-inch or so of space between the back of the motherboard and the metal case.

The standoffs are small and brass, and once in place I aligned the motherboard on top of the holes, then screwed the motherboard down. I referred back and forth between the book, the poster-sized picture of the motherboard, and the hardware help sites I found earlier.

I worried mostly about installing the CPU. There are 478 pins on the Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz system I bought, and any pin out of place meant I had a very expensive piece of modern art.

Luckily, however, dropping the CPU chip down into the holder and latching it down was the easiest installation of the entire process. Even the fan assembly clicked into place on top of the CPU chip and latched easily onto the motherboard.

The CPU box was about the size of a dictionary, but the CPU itself isn't much bigger than a decorative stamp. If the pins weren't included, it would be thin enough to stick on an envelope, or almost.

Heat dissipation today means a huge assembly, about the size of a baseball. Aluminum fins and a fast fan, stuck together by Intel, are heavy. The motherboard includes a special power plug connector right by the CPU to power the fan.

Old eyes and dim lights and dark motherboards with faint writing made a big magnifying glass my most relied upon tool. Strange how the modern tech often demands help from the oldest tech, or perhaps I just need stronger reading glasses.

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