New PC

We built two new computers at work two days ago. I built one and another employee (Nick) built the other. Mine was a gaming PC and his was for a general user. I've watched Nick put together a couple computers and have learned from a few of his complaints and mistakes. I also learned from him that Dave is a stickler for putting the hard drive SATA cable in the SATA 1 port on the motherboard.

I started construction by installing the motherboard first, then installed the CPU and heatsink, followed by the RAM and the video card. I then installed the power supply and feed the 24 pin and 4 pin wires to the motherboard. The hard drive and disc drive, which was PATA (ARGH!) were installed next. The owner supplied their own disc drive and cable (which was actually very nice looking, just very long). Next, everything was plugged into the power supply, the hard drive had its own power cable to itself, the fans (all four of them, see Antec 900), the disc drive, and the extra lights. After it was done, the wires looked like a tree growing out from the bottom.

We have another employee named Glenn who always redoes the wiring jobs we do for client computers. He was coming in the next day and I knew I could glean much knowledge from him, and I did. Following his advice, the computer was totally rewired taking the wires through an empty space between the case inner hull, and the outer shell. It took an enormous amount of patience to get the case cover back on where the wire side was, but the inside looked much better. I also left the 6 pin connector available inside if they ever decide to upgrade to an 8800 series video card. When I was done, Glenn came over and looked at it, and I asked him how it looked. He responded with, "I don't like it, but there's nothing you or I can do, and that's due to case design." Then he smiled and said "Good job."

The computer had Windows installed and updated, hardware drivers ready and all the fans a lights worked. The computer was done.