It’s show time! Get yourself fully prepared to install a motherboard to your computer case. This particular procedure is among the most time-consuming in the whole PC assembly process, so just take things comfortably at your own pace. (15 minutes can easily turn into thirty minutes while installing the motherboard.
- Cover the work surface with a clean towel and lay the open case down on the towel. You can clearly see the plastic spacer guides and the screw holes where your motherboard will sit. Read the case documentation for any specific instructions.
- Protect the new motherboard from the harmful static electricity that can be picked up from touching many things, like silk, a cat or lava lamp. Touch any grounded metal surfaces for a few seconds beforehand.
- Hold your motherboard by the edges; then lay it down inside your case to align it. Any electrical components (like the CPU socket, RAM sockets, and adapter slot) have to be on top; the bottom of the motherboard usually has no components. You can align the case, by lining up the adapter card slots with the slots that are cut into the back of your case.
- Write down on a piece of paper, which screw hole in the case lines up with which screw hole in the motherboard. Most computer cases use only 2 to 4 screws to hold the motherboard, and the rest of the motherboard is supported and held in place firmly by plastic spacers. Those spacers usually slide under a metal guide or a metal tab, which serve to keep your board away from any possible harmful contact with the metal of the computer case. You might find supplemental help in the motherboard manual on finding these holes.
- Remove the board from the case and insert the plastic spacers into the holes (in the motherboard), those spacers should snap nicely into place.
- Before you put in the motherboard, take a couple of minutes to check for any jumpers or switches that might need to be adjusted. Most motherboards are delivered with default settings that work perfectly although it pays to check those settings anyway. That’s right – you need to crack open the motherboard manual to do a little light reading. A few motherboards have DIP (dual inline packaging) switches (little banks of rocker or slide switches) and jumpers, they are basically pins that you can connect with a little plastic-and-metal collar. (Nearly all motherboards are designed for folks like you and me who hate moving and poking tiny things, so they quite rarely need any additional configuration.) If you have to set a dual inline packaging switch, use a pen or a tweezer to push those plastic sliders into the right order. The switch edges are usually marked clearly with On and Off. If you want to set a jumper (with your EIDE hard drive, for example), use a set of tweezers or your fingers to lift the plastic jumpers and seat it into the right position, as outlined in the computer component manual.
- Hold your board by the edges and slide it firmly into place, making sure that each plastic spacer is correctly positioned. Don’t have to be upset if it takes a couple of tries, and don’t force or bend anything. Even those computer gurus never installed the motherboard correctly on their first attempt. Once again, make sure that the adapter slots line up perfectly with the slots in the computer case. After the board is in, gently examine each corner of the motherboard to make sure that it’s properly seated and does not wobble.
- Now, you can lock it down. Insert the screws to a snug fit, however don’t over-tighten them – most circuit boards may crack if subjected to excessive forces. Some board manufacturers provide thin, nonconductive washers as a protective layer between the screws and the motherboard, so don’t forget to add them when you insert the screws. That’s it! Congrats! See, that wasn’t too hard, was it?
