How-To: Building a PC in the ATCS 840 (Part 3)
A note from txtmstrjoe: This CMHD.tv Blog miniseries is respectfully dedicated to my OCN brother, Syrillian. Syrillian, a saint of a man, left this world far too early. He leaves his family, friends, and OCN family. He is sorely missed.
For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been on a journey building a custom PC in my all-time favorite Cooler Master case, the ATCS 840. In Part 1, we installed the motherboard; in Part 2, we installed the hard drives, optical drives, and a solid state drive (SSD) which will host our operating system. Our journey continues this week.
In Part 3 of this miniseries, we’ll install the central processing unit (CPU), its cooler (also known as a heat sink), and the RAM. By the end of this week’s post, we’ll be one more step closer to finishing our custom PC housed in the ATCS 840.
Before digging into the meat and potatoes of this week’s post, I would like to say that although this project seems specific to just the hardware I’m writing about, the techniques, philosophies, and insights are actually more universally-applicable. Though some details might describe specifically just the ATCS 840′s features (such as the case’s tool-free drive installation mechanism, as seen last week), you can apply the ideas you glean from this miniseries to almost any piece of PC hardware. So, although the ATCS 840 is hard to find these days, you can still use this miniseries as a guide to assembling your PC in any of Cooler Master’s cases (or, if should you so choose, other companies’ products as well).
Now, let’s have a look at our outline for this post:
Table of Contents
Do you worry about static electricity messing up delicate electronics? Seems like there’s a range of opinion from always wearing a static bracelet to ‘just touch your case every so often’ to ‘doesn’t matter, wear wool socks on carpet’. Just wondering what your opinion is.
Hi Tom,
To be honest, not since I first started building PCs have I been concerned with ESD (static electricity). I used to wear an anti-static bracelet whenever I worked on my machine; if I didn’t have a bracelet handy, I always reminded myself to touch an unpainted metal part of my case.
In recent years, though, I’ve not bothered with making a conscious effort (wearing the anti-static bracelet)to discharge ESD. I don’t know this for sure, but maybe I’ve just developed the unconscious habit (touching the case) of discharging any possible static electricity build-up automatically.
The strange truth is, I have NEVER (and I mean NEVER) ever had a component get damaged by static electricity. Maybe I have been practicing good anti-static habits without thought. Or maybe I’ve just been incredibly lucky, especially considering I have been living in a carpeted apartment for more than a decade and a half now.
But you HAVE brought up an excellent point, and one I’ve been quite remiss since I never mentioned it in my build guide thus far. I’ll have to give you credit for that soon.
Thanks for the comment!
i have a question, today we update my friend computer we remove the old mobo and the old Pentium 4 and we replace with a amd phenom 2 and we use all the old components and old hard drive, but we had a fail on the butting and only shows the windows on safe mode but didn’t enter cuz cancel the mouse and the keyboard at the time the me was about to select the user on the windows, the i have to install windows again or i have to do something with the bios
TRUCHONIC,
You’ll need to reinstall Windows when you change to a new motherboard that is not of an identical model as your old one. Even if you’re able to boot into Windows, nothing will work properly, and your system will be horrendously unstable since none of the drivers and software will be tied to your new hardware (i.e., your new motherboard).
Hope this helps, and thanks for commenting.
If anyone is looking to build a computer, this is the definitive guide. Primo blog post!
Thank you so much for the compliment, bookmagnet! I certainly do put a lot of effort into my writing, and it’s always great to see feedback, especially when it’s positive.
look at all those mashed pins in that x58 socket! seems like every time i remove/replace a chip on an x58 i have to hunt down the mashed pin thats not making contact with the chip to make all the ram usable. if you ever see in your system info under “Installed memory(RAM)” something like 6.00 GB (3.99 usable) 99.9% of the time it’s from a heat sink that was installed too tight or something mashed a pin out of contact. I have found it a common occurrence while fixing computers for people.
Mashed pins? They don’t look mashed to me. :thinking:
Good tip on the RAM error, though. That’s one I’ve not seen myself, but hopefully it’ll be helpful to someone who has.
Thanks for the comment!
Where was this guide when I first installed my Opteron 146 LOL. I put a thin layer of AS5 across the IHS. Boy was that a mistake
Nice write up!
Thanks for the compliment, thlnk3r!