Rebuilding My PC [3]

Now that we have the board completed, the next task is to install it into the chassis. Your existing chassis should already have spacers installed, the board sits on these spacers to hold it up clear of the chassis. Check that the spacers are in the same number and positions as the board needs, if not you will need to remove or install spacers to suit. Carefully slide the board into position getting the rear panel connectors in place, you may have to bend tabs on the I/O shield to make it easy. Just slide the board around carefully to get the spacers to line up with the mounting holes. Then use a magnetic screwdriver and take it really easy and get the screws into the holes and carefully tightened. Don’t use a power screwdriver and don’t overtighten the screws. If your screwdriver slips and hits the board the chances are very high that the board will be fatally damaged. So take it real slow and careful here. Once you have the board fastened down, connect the power supply connectors. The usual requirement is the 2x10 or 2x12 for the main power connector and a separate 4 pin connector for extra CPU power (this is NOT optional, even though the connector looks the same as the extra 2x2 that gets tacked onto the end of the old 2x10 power connector). Modern PSUs typically have a 2x10 and 2x2 connectors that clip together for the main connector, as well as a separate 2x2 for the CPU connector. As sometimes modern supplies have replaced the 2x2 with a pair of 2x2s that clip together, you may find as I did with the Enermax that the pair of 2x2s will need to be separated so that one of them can be plugged into the CPU power connector on the board. Getting the main power connector in can be a little tricky, especially with this board where there isn’t adequate support under the connector, so you want to take it carefully to avoid bending the board too much.

The next bit of fun is to connect the front panel cables to the board. Typically there will be front panel USB and audio connectors, perhaps these days firewire or eSata could be installed, and there are also power and HDD lights, power switch and perhaps a reset button. The switches and lights will usually be on one set of combined headers, while USB and audio each have their own set. In this case the Foxconn TS001 shines out with the clear labelling of the various connectors. As it happened most of them seem to work so far although I haven’t tested out the audio jacks. I also put in an old DVD drive from my old PC and it had to be plugged into the IDE port.

Now for the moment of truth. Connect VGA, Keyboard, Mouse, turn the thing on and see if it comes up to the Bios screen. Then select the Bios settings and go into Hardware Monitor to read out the temps and fan speeds. I started off reading around 60 degrees C for the CPU which is probably in an acceptable range. If this all works out then install an OS and some kind of test and monitoring software (for example burn in software such as Burn In Test, temperature monitor software such as SpeedFan). Run the software for a reasonable time frame to give an acceptable burnin test period. This is an optional step, just one you might want to try to see that everything is working OK, especially that the heatsink and fan are doing their job properly and keeping that CPU nice and cool.

Finally, before you get the thing into use, tidy up inside the case. Typically you will need to reroute cables so that they have no chance of getting caught up in fans or other moving parts, and make everything look really neat and tidy inside. 

This is my first blog post from the newly rebuilt PC, I’ll explain that further in the next post.

Rebuilding My PC [2]

After the power supply, the next thing to do is to assemble and install the main system board. The board comes with an I/O shield which fits into a space on the back of the chassis and this has the cutouts in it for the onboard connectors. Which in this case are PS/2 mouse and keyboard, VGA, four USB ports, RJ45, and three sound minijacks. Uggh, I just noticed there is no serial connector, which means the GPS won’t be able to connect to it. The board has a serial header, but you need to get a slot bracket with the connector and cable mounted on it, or a USB to serial adapter. I have to think about this one; I don’t use the GPS much, but I will have to make arrangements for it one way or the other. I hadn’t thought much about it because hardly anything these days is dependent on the old parallel or serial interface connectors, but Garmin has a backward attitude and even a 2 year old GPS still only comes with a bog standard DE-9 serial port interface. I think I can find an old slot serial connector at work somewhere (we have a small number of very old towers lying around), or I could look at getting an external adapter as they are very cheap nowadays. Four USBs isn’t much these days. The board has headers for another four, of which the two built into the front of the chassis and the card reader’s one will give me three at the front for seven total, one more than the old PC. Intel does make some boards that have more USBs on the rear; this board is a budget model.

Putting the board together is pretty straightforward but you just need to take it slowly and carefully as there are plenty of bits on it that can get broken and can’t be repaired. The key task you need to do before you put it into the chassis is to install the CPU and fan. On older style boards (here I’m thinking really old, like Socket 370) it was possible to install the fan with the board in the chassis, though risky; the fan was held on with a metal spring clip that took a lot of physical force to hook/unhook, and I have vague memories that I may have killed a board once trying to get the clip hooked on, because I missed hooking it over the retaining lug on the socket and gouged the board instead. The LGA775 boards use a heatsink/fan assembly that has four posts that lock into holes in the board, and believe me, it is nearly impossible to lock these into place with the board in the chassis. So put the CPU and fan in before you put the board in. And buy the model of CPU that comes with a heatsink and fan in the package (unless you are an overclocker of course). Have a good look at the locking posts on the fan to see how they go down and lock in position, because I found the arrows on them were anything but helpful. Basically you need to start by turning the posts in the direction of the arrows, put the post in, push the top part firmly down and then turn it in the opposite direction to the arrow. When you push it down, it’s best to put your finger under the board so you don’t bend the board too much. Check all the posts are properly locked so the heatsink-fan isn’t going to fall off. Then run the power cable around the posts to the onboard connector so the wires don’t get caught in the fan. Of course you should orient the fan in the first place so there isn’t any excess wire to float around and get caught in the fan.

The not-so-flat board with the heatsink-fan assembly locked into place on top of the CPU. This appears to be absolutely normal with these boards, although you’d think they could have extra support under that part.

The assembled board with, in this case, the RAM in place as well. Although, that is easy to install later. The heatsink in the middle is the northbridge which needs it because of the onboard GPU. Fortunately the board comes with this heatsink already installed. This is a microATX board so it is quite compact.

Earlier picture showing the board without the CPU installed, this was when I thought I could put the fan on in the chassis, I was sorely mistaken and had to take the board out again to get the fan in.

This picture shows the CPU being installed, the load plate still has to be lowered.

Rebuilding My PC [1]

Well, of course, we all know that PCs don’t last forever, and I am not interested in the extremist brigade that say you should try to get 8-10 years of life out of a PC. The way I see it is, a PC is obsolete after about five years and while it will still do some things, it is getting pretty slow and the parts are wearing out.

However, depending on how much PC standards have changed in that timeframe, it is possible to rebuild a PC into virtually as-new specification. There are some important considerations of course:

1. Whether the PC supports standard design components. Forget this idea if your PC was made by Dell, HP or IBM, etc. These manufacturers prefer to use proprietary case and board designs that usually can’t be upgraded. No, this series of articles is strictly for those who have purchased a locally manufactured PC using generic off-the-shelf components. My host system was built by Cyclone Computers. The chassis is a Foxconn TS001, the motherboard was also made by Foxconn (Intel brand) and the power supply was made by Enermax. All of these items are ATX standard and can easily be replaced or reused.
2. Whether the chassis and power supply in particular meet modern specs. These days the power supply requirement is ATX12V version 1.x as a minimum for the average type of board, although new PSUs are v2.x. The chassis of course should be ATX spec. Baby AT just isn’t going to cut it. If you are reusing a power supply check that the board you are planning to use matches the connectors available from the power supply. It’s also important to have SATA HDDs / DVD drives, although most new boards still have one PATA connector able to connect up to 2 drives, and even new PSUs still have Molex 4 pin power connectors.
3. If you use Windows, MS says you need to buy a new license sticker when you change the motherboard, because effectively this is a new PC. Of course this won’t be an issue with a free operating system.

In my case, this PC is 5 years old and the power supply spec happened to be ATX12V 1.x with the right connectors available. However I chose to replace the power supply with a new Enermax Tomahawk 400W supply, a bit of an overkill but pretty good value with the deal I got.

Assuming you need to install a new motherboard, the minimum number of parts you are likely to need is the new board, new CPU and new RAM, because the two latter components are often matched tightly to the board and as specs change so often, it is unlikely you could reuse an older CPU and RAM. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the 5 year old board (Intel D915GAVL) is still LGA775, the same as the new board (Intel DG41RQ) meaning the CPUs might fit each other’s board though whether they would work is another question. The new CPU is a Celeron E3300, a dual core with Intel VT hardware virtualisation and some other features supported.  I bought 2 GB of DDR2-800 memory as well.

The first job was to remove all the bits from the old chassis, after which I put in the new power supply, just a simple job of doing up the screws.

Here is the new power supply in the chassis. Well, you can see in the picture that this photo was taken on the 23rd of March, which is just over 6 months ago. That was when I first started on this project, and there have been a few glitches and holdups since then. But now as I am writing this the task is nearly finished; the new PC is sitting next to me as I type this on the old PC at home, and as soon as I have finished testing and assembling the new PC and migrating the Windows 7 installation to it then it will be ready to go and to replace the old one (which incidentally uses the same chassis type as seen above, but it is a year older with a D915GAGL board inside).