Okay, I'm trying to write one blog entry per installation task. So far, that has been easy, but it is about to blow up in my face. I wanted to consider connecting the power to the motherboard. Right off the bat I noticed that the connectors had some black caps on them:

They can pop right off, but when I did a cable run, I noticed that one would go right across the PCI slots and any added cards:

Okay, not fun. The placement of the CPU cooler might also impact the run. So instead of running the power cables, I decided to add the CPU and the cooler. The first thing to do is to pop open the CPU socket:

Now I have to admit, I can't find my grounding strap and it is freezing outside. I think conditions are actually condusive for static electricty. I can hem and haw all I want, but I decided to risk it. I kept touching the frame and I tried to only touch the green circuit board on the chip. Here is the chip on my static mat:

You can see the green spaces which are used to line up the chip on the socket. You align the triangle marking with the socket and insert it. I'm always too cautious here - in the past I've actually engaged the lock and not had the CPU seated correctly on the socket. Make sure you have it aligned up correctly and wiggle it down. Here I am ready to lock the socket:

Okay, now I have to prep the Scythe. I get it over and remember that it has a plastic film coating the dock:

That needs to be pulled off. Look at the contrast between the film and the copper. Scythe is trying to get a good reputation on that dock!

Once that is done, it is time to add the clamping device to the cooler. They ship 3 different ones such that you can use this cooler with multiple socket forms. One of the reviewers at NewEgg mentioned that once you engage the plastic clamps, they are that way for life. They had one shipped engaged. I think that must be the LGA 775 clamp. As you can see, the AM2 clamp has no plastic:

We put it on, remember my lecture about how to add the screws:

Time to add the thermal paste. You can see here that I've never used the Artic Silver compound - I still have the cap on:

Take it off and apply a dollop to the CPU. I don't know exactly how much to add. You don't want it to squish out and you don't want it to not spread. I've read to put on a pea sized lump.

Now it is time to add the Scythe:

Here I have it sitting loose on the CPU. Note that it easily fits in the Antec P180b. Now we need to clamp it on. We should have actually started with attaching the clamp nearest the case. And then we finish with the one facing inside.

Note that I didn't reall have a problem adding the cooler. I had to push a bit more than I liked to get the second connection, but that may have been just me. At no point did I wish I had added it before I put the motherboard in the case. Note, you can easily screw in the motherboard even with the cooler attached.

With these fins, you have to be gentle or you will bend them. If you do so:

Just be patient and you can work them back into shape. Besides, we haven't really started to stress them yet. We'll do that when we add the fan:

I hate those connectors. They are too small for the fan - it was the worst part about adding the Scythe to wont last year. Anyway, the manual shows how to tell the airflow, just look at the side with the solid dot in the middle. Is it this one?

Or this one?

If you look closer, the support and wires on the second picture indicate where the airflow exits. So, you want to connect that side to the cooler. Before we do that, we need to check the power cable run:

It is still pretty good. We'll need to add the graphics card to get a good idea how tight it will be.

Okay, the CPU and cooler is in the upper back corner and it looks like the top fan pushes air out (using the hint from Scythe about airflow):

But wait, there is another 120mm fan back there:

That leads two side to attach the fan. Now, you might be asking if we should attach the fan or not. Those case fans should pull the heat out. Well, if you remember, the graphics card does not have a fan. Plus, my son's computer has the same basic setup (CPU cooler fan is a different model) and it is pretty quiet. I've decided to add the fan to the cooler and worry about powering it up later.

So the question is whether I want to pull air from the graphics card over the CPU or do I want to pull air from the drive bay over the CPU? The answer turns out to be simple once you consider the space between the cooler and the grapics card. Time to unbox it to see how much room we have. First, we look at the back of the card:

Again, be gentle with the fins. Then the front:

Okay, I really do not want to add that card in the case just yet. I want to show how the POST card works and the best test is to try to boot the machine without a video card. I.e., that was one of the pain points last year with wont - it didn't like the PCI express card I picked. Anyway, we can hold it in place and see that the fan just will not fit between the two:

Now here is where I almost screw up an expensive card. When I was looking at cards, one of them had a cooler which could rotate upwards. Well, I thought I had ordered that one. I checked the XFX manuals, which showed a card with a fan, just great. No luck, but it looked like the cooler could rotate. I pulled off a restraining clip:

And then decided that the pipes didn't look like they could rotate freely at all. So, I put the clip back on and decided to put the cooler fan facing the drive bay.

I bet you thought at the top of the entry when I said things took a turn, I meant I had to install the cooler rather than the power cables. Nope, the real problem was that I noticed the Scythe was sitting over the first bank of memory:

Okay, I wish I had installed it first, but then I might have had problems attaching the cooler. Out comes the memory, it has to go on before the fan does:

Well, the first stick could not slide right down. The clamps would not engage and you can see it is not seated correctly:

I pushed harder and got it to snap. It actually seemed to go in one end at a time. But it went in:

The other stick just popped in easily. Look at how snug it fitted right away:

Now the hard part was upon me. I could easily get the fan attached on one end:

By the way, Scythe had a diagram for a fan other than what they shipped. No biggie though. I could even get a third connection going:

It even looks like I am done:

But you can clearly see that second wire connector does not want to go on.

I finally pulled out a 20 year old tool from my wire wrapping days to push the thing in. You can see the finished result here:

And you can also see that the fan blocks the second bank of memory. Sigh. Well, I also haven't connected the fan to power. I'll do that later.

I'm going to preface this with the fact that this was the easiest time I've ever had adding the front panel connectors. The reset switch and associates are still not standard, but both Antec and Gigabyte did a great job with their documentation in their manuals. You need to have both open at once and you need to look at the motherboard diagram to figure out which jumper connectors you will be using.

The first cables I connected were the reset, power led, power switch, and hard drive activity led. As all of these come out of the same cable, you are betting that they will be close together - and they were. I have an additional header on the motherboard for a message/sleep led. I also have a second hard drive led on the case. I might eventually connect them. Anyway, here is what these connections look like:

By the way, Antec was pretty good at explaining which wire was ground. I seem to recall they weren't that way last year.

The next connector is the audio pack. Now, I remember why I had a hard time last year. If you look at it:

You see you can either use a standard connector or you can attach each wire by itself. Well, last year I had to do each one. This year, well, I'm lucky. I could clip the wires, but I'd rather use a rubber band:

And here it is connected to the motherboard:

The next to be connected is the USB cable. It is pretty easy:

Before I connect the firewire cable, you should note that with these headers, one pin is blocked. This was also true for the audio and usb. They don't want you plugging in something backwards and asking for a RMA!

The firewire is connected and you can see that extra hard drive led cable floating free:

And finally, we draw back to get the big picture of all of the front panel cables being connected:

I really do not know why I was worried about this part.

Okay, I've been taking the pictures, reading them into adept, renaming them, using HP Document Viewer to change them to 640x480, and then cutting and pasting html code in the blog editor. I'm not going to find a command line process to resize the files. I want to keep that constant.

But the cut and paste is getting old. Alright, we can use sed to help us out. First I dump the list of pictures in a file called list.txt. Then I dump the raw html for the image into a file called pics.txt. Then I change the picture name to be FOOP. Okay, the following will generate the 36 image tags for the next blog entry:

[tdh@adept ~/tmp]> touch x.html
[tdh@adept ~/tmp]> foreach i ( `cat list.txt` )
foreach? cat pics.txt | sed "s/\(.*\)\(FOOP\)\(.*\)/\1$i\3/" >> x.html
foreach? end

Now next time I do a project, I will dump all of the GUI-ish button pushing nonsense in order to do it all on the command line. But for this project, time to forge on.

Okay, time to add the motherboard to the case. The first step is to get the motherboard onto a static mat:

Then we lay the case down on its side. Note that we have fan cables in the way:

By the way, you can see I've pulled the power cables in between the two chambers here:

So we tuck the cables out of the way:

Okay, I get the motherboard in and realize that I forgot to change out the I/O plate:

You can see things won't line up right. Anyway, I push the plate back into the case, releasing it. You can see where it had been in the case:

You can also see the difference between it (bottom) and the plate supplied by Gigabyte (top).

You can't see it very well, but one of the RJ-45 slots has a plate (I've pushed it up) in the way. I never know if they stay or go. In this situation, I took it off. I then used the ones on the PS/2 connector and above the sound as tension on the top of the motherboard I/O connectors (no picture). You can see here that I have the new plate in place:

Now I put the motherboard back in. You don't want to scrape it over the brass connectors and when you push, you don't want to push on components. I've got it resting on them and the holes are not aligned up.

You can also clearly see the grey cords - these carry things from the front of the case to the motherboard. They were a real pain to get out of the way - I almost needed a 3rd hand.

I also haven't worried too much about the I/O plate.

Now I work the motherboard such that the I/O block is in place. This is when I use the tabs on the plate to get some tension. You can see that the block is more aligned:

I've used the alignment of the I/O block to get the motherboard aligned with the brass connectors. Now I lightly screw into one of them. Again, I do not want to tighten it down yet. I want the play to get all of the holes properly aligned.

I then insert the remaining screws and then tighten them all:

I worry about screws getting lose. I had a Shuttle die from that. I would take it with me on airplanes when going to Connectathon or Bakeathons. I would also ship them if my luggage was full. Anyway, the vibrations from traveling would work some of the hard drive screws loose. I would find them under the CPU. Don't ask me how they got there. I remember once standing outside sr's office trying to find where the screw was hiding. We would turn the shuttle over, trying to track the rattle. Well, eventually the system would randomly reboot. I figure either something got scratched or shorted at some point.

The next task will be to connect the front I/O connections to the motherboard. I'm hoping to be mistaken, but this seems to be the last area that manufacturers have to standardize on. When I put wont together a year ago, this was a major pain. Not as bad as finding a working graphics card, but still a bad time was had by all.

The next thing I will add is the motherboard. But before I do that, I have to decide whether I am going to add the CPU and then the Scythe cooler before I put the motherboard in. The reviewers stated that you need to add the Scythe first.

Well, I ordered the wrong Scythe. I thought I was getting one which put the fan in the middle of the heat sinks. Looks like I thought I was ordering the Scythe SCMN-1100 100mm Sleeve CPU Cooler - Retail. My cart got cleared at one point and I picked up a different cooler. I actually don't mind at all - the one I got is almost exactly like the one I've already installed in a system. The big difference is that it is already AM2 ready:

Now when I installed the one on wont, I was not about to remove the motherboard. So I know this is pretty manageable. Also, with that huge heatsink on, the board will be difficult to position. The hardest part for me was adding the fan - getting those clips to attach took some help from my wife. As a matter of fact, the Scythe SCNJ-1000 CPU Cooling Heatsink - Retail didn't come with a fan, while this model did have one included.

The other big difference I noted was that there is a protective film over the heatsink base. When I pulled it out, there was some lint on it. I was dismayed, the SCNJ-1000 had been knocked about not having a smooth base. I thought this was already marred and even though I got the lint off, it wasn't going to be optimal. I then saw the film. I must remember to take it off.

Anyway, I also opened the motherboard up to check it out:

Looks like the SATA cables will lock on. I also like how the cables were packed together.

I took the pictures last night and I'm blogging as I'm bringing over a new workspace. I really want to get started on putting in the motherboard, but it is going to have to wait.