ASSEMBLE YOUR MATERIALS:

• Selecting the processor, motherboard, and memory
• Selecting a case
• Selecting a hard disk
• Extra drives, aka "should I bother with a floppy?"
• Video cards
• Audio cards
• Networking
• Monitors, printers, and all that extra stuff

PUT IT ALL TOGETHER:

• Tools and precautions
• Inspection and preparation
• Pre-assemble the motherboard
• Install the motherboard and expansion cards
• Install the drives and power supply
• The MAGIC SMOKE test...

Selecting a case can be difficult

A case is more than just a box to put PC parts in. In addition to the requisite compatibility considerations (number of drive bays, what form factor, etc.), the case can be seen as an extension of the rigbuilder's personality, just as a muscle car or a website is an extension of the owner's personality. There is an immense variety of case styles and configurations, so you should have no trouble finding a look that suits you, especially since the aesthetics of your case can only be decided by you, the rigbuilder.

The key factors to consider are:

• Form Factor
• Case Size
• Power Supply
• Front-Side Ports
• Drive Bays
• Why get clear sides?
• Fans and Case Cooling

Form Factor

The Form Factor refers primarily to the size and shape of your motherboard, and the locations of the mounting screws.

The most common form factors are:

• Micro-ATX or µATX (most common), 244mm×244mm
• Mini-ATX, 285mm×208mm
• FlexATX, 229mm×191mm
• Mini-ITX (increasingly common), 170mm×170mm
• ATX (increasingly rare), 305mm×244mm

Of course there are any number of other form factors available, but these are the most common for home PCs. You may also come across AT, Nano-ITX, Pico-ITX, Baby-AT (rare since mid-90s), BTX, DTX (coming soon), Mini-DTX, ETX, LPX, NLX, or WTX (mostly in servers). Depending on your application, any of these could potentially be used to build a perfectly serviceable PC, but you'll find that by sticking with the list above, you'll find the greatest flexibility and compatibility.

The form factor is actually chosen when selecting the motherboard, but it's very important to remember your board's form factor because not all cases are compatible with all motherboards. The form factor dictates the locations of the mounting screws, so a case that only supports ATX boards will not necessarily be able to accommodate a Mini-ITX without some drill work. There is some cross-compatibility in the form factor designations; for example, a µATX board will usually fit into an ATX case, but it's best to make sure. If the form factor you need is not specifically stated at the retailer (online or in-store), make sure to ask, and whenever possible get it in writing.

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Case Size

This goes hand-in-hand with the Form Factor, with a couple of extra considerations. A standard-sized case that you might find in a school or office is most likely a "Mid-Tower" size. There is no hard standard for this, just a generally accepted size that most manufacturers and retailers will follow.

In addition to the Mid-Tower size, there are also Full Tower, MiniTower, MicroTower, and a host of related sizes. It's far less important to look at the name of any particular size than it is to confirm that the case meets all of your other requirements: Is the motherboard form factor correct? Does it have enough drive bays and front-side ports? Does it come with a power supply, and if so, what wattage is it? How many fans can I fit in it? Does it come with any? If the case you want meets all of these needs satisfactorily, then you need worry about the size no further.

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Power Supply

There is no such thing as a "400W Case." Many retailers will advertise a case as such when in fact all it means is that the case includes a 400W power supply, or that it can simply hold a 400W power supply. This is absolute chicanery; any ATX case can hold any ATX power supply, regardless of the power rating. Advertising a case as being a particular wattage is only ethical when it comes with a power supply of the specified rating; in any other circumstance, the vendor is committing blatant rascalism and should absolutely not be patronized.

It is very important to match the power supply's wattage to the power needs of your system. The motherboard and processor should have power requirements listed in their specifications, as should all of the drives and sometimes the video card. Add up all of the power requirements and add 10-25% to determine which power supply you need. If you cannot find the power requirements, here are some typical power ratings that can be used to estimate your need—if you go by this list alone, add in the full 25% contingency factor just in case:

One of the newer innovations to hit the power supply market is the modular power lead. With a standard power supply, there will almost always be some power plugs left over after everything's plugged in, which can look bad (especially if your case has clear acrylic sides) and more importantly, can interfere with good air flow. With a modular power supply, you only plug in the power leads you need. They cost about double, but the convenience, aesthetic appeal, and air flow improvement may well be worth it. Frankly, I would not recommend one for a first PC, but definitely for a second or as an add-on to an existing PC project.

The newest motherboards include a separate four-pin power input, usually (but not always) located somewhere away from the primary power connection. For these boards, it is important to use a power supply with the separate four-pin power lead. In early models, the four-pin input was used mostly as semi-auxiliary power, but now in many boards the drive power or cooling power is separate from the primary power and will use this input for a dedicated power supply.

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Front-Side USB, Audio, and Other Ports

Front-side USB and audio ports have been around for several years now, but many first-time rigbuilders fail to consider these when planning out their system. The convenience is easily worth the few extra sheckles it will cost to get a motherboard with "on-chip USB," although nowadays it's becoming harder to find a board that doesn't have a USB and audio header on the board. There are other options for front ports as well, including FireWire (IEEE 1394), MIDI, memory card readers, and just about anything else you can think of. Be sensible. If a case manufacturer is asking a $40 premium for a front-side port you'll likely never use, is it really worth it just to say you have a cool toy?

Author's note: For the truly dedicated rigbuilder, the answer to that question is a resounding "yes."

The only important considerations with front-side ports are that the USB port is USB 2.0 or later (some current motherboards still only use USB 1.0 on the board headers, even if the back ports are 2.0); and the audio matches your audio needs—most people use headphones in the front ports, so all you need is a standard headphone jack. If you do video editing though, you might want audio/video jacks ("RCA jacks") or a FireWire port.

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Drive Bays

These are more important than you would expect, but only because so many people have inadvertently purchased a case with one fewer than they needed. There are two sizes, 3½" and 5¼". You may notice if you take a ruler to the front of your case that your drives do not in fact measure 3½" and 5¼"; the reason for this is that the descriptions are a legacy from the pre-hard-disk days when almost all data storage was on floppy disks. There were two sizes of disks available, and the names specify the drives that were used to run each disk size, not the size of the drives themselves. Currently, there are only a couple of standard uses for each size:

• 3½": hard disks and floppy drives
• 5¼": optical (CD/DVD) drives

Which makes it very simple to figure out how many you need:

• How many hard disks will I be putting in? (+1 internal 3½" bay for each)
• Do I want a floppy drive? (+1 external 3½" bay for each)
• Will I be installing a DVD drive? (+1 5¼" bay)
• Do I also want a CD drive, or a second DVD drive (for copying)? (+1 5¼" bay)
• Do I have any other peripherals or expansion cards that will use a drive bay?

That last item may come as a bit of a surprise, until you see some of the things that audio cards are using nowadays. There are also little PC status consoles and fan controllers that you can buy and slip into an external drive bay as well. Shop around a little before you make your final decision here; if you're like me then you'll want some of the new, nifty little gadgets that are out there.Or, just pick a case with plenty of bays. My current rig has two external 3½", four internal 3½", and four external 5¼".

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Clear Sides

Out of this whole list, this is the only item with no functional aspect whatsoever. Clear sides serve no more purpose than to allow you, the rigbuilder, to gaze in pride upon the beauty of your creation. Specifically, if you've outfitted the guts with UV-reactive cables, drive shields, and other hardware, you can put fluorescent bulbs inside the case, turn off the lights in the room, and ooh and aah at the freaky green glow (or blue, or red, or yellow). One could argue that with clear sides, it's easier to inspect the interior of the case for cleanliness, and I'll have to grant one that. Even that constitutes a tenuous justification at best. I have them though; I think they look cool.

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Fans and Case Cooling

As a good counterpoint to clear case sides, case cooling is possibly the most important item on the list. A case might come with one 80mm fan included or built in. This will absolutely not be enough. Your processor, memory, hard disk, video card, audio card, optical drives, and even your floppy drive will generate heat. If this heat is not suitably dissipated, with the increasingly small size of the circuit traces inside any of these components, it will be very easily to literally burn up your PC. Now, we're not talking about a major conflagration here, but enough to render your processor or memory inoperable. Many motherboards now have a feature that will let them shut down if the board or processor gets too hot, but very few can offer similar protection for your other hardware.

It doesn't take much to prevent this. Just keep a good flow of relatively cool air moving through the case, especially near the important stuff, and you should be fine. A rig with a Pentium II or K6-2 processor (yeah, I know, but bear with me) might be able to get by with a single fan and be okay. A Pentium III, and you'll want to step up to two or three. With a Pentium 4 or Athlon, you'll definitely want to use every fan bay you have. My rig is a little older, it has a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz, 2 GB PC3200 DDR-SDRAM, two SATA-150 300-GB hard disks in a RAID-0 array, an EIDE 150-GB hard disk (data archive), a DVD ReWriter, and kick-ass video and audio cards. There are six built-in fan mounts in the case. I'm using nine.

The standard size for a fan is 80mm. Your case will have at least one place to mount this size. The next common size is 120mm; not all cases have places (or room) for these.

If you feel, as I did, that your case doesn't provide enough fan mounts, you can also use a slot cooler, as long as you have an open card slot. These powerful little fans mount in an empty card slot, suck the air through your case and blow it out the back. Quite efficient, but make sure you don't mount it right under another card; it'll need at least a card's-width of clearance in order to get a decent flow going.

No matter what you do, do not forget about processor cooling. A boxed processor will probably come with a serviceable fan. I recommend upgrading, especially if you play a lot of video-intensive games or do any video editing. A high-end video card may also have a built-in cooling fan. So, in my case I have five 80mm case fans, one 120mm case fan, a processor cooler, a video card heatsink/fan, and a slot cooler, for a total of nine. The next step up from there is a liquid cooler.

Liquid cooling is a concept right out of the space program, or at least out of your car. A liquid cooling system has heatsinks that mount directly to your processor, memory, hard drive, north bridge, south bridge, and/or video card. The heatsinks are connected by tubing that circulates cooling liquid (water or antifreeze, or a mixture). The liquid is pumped through the heatsink network, then out of the case to a little radiator that dissipates the accumulated heat. The most efficient direct cooling you can buy, but it's much more expensive and you will still also want to use a couple of fans—the heatsinks will dissipate heat at the chips, but some will still accumulate in the airspace that you'll want to remove.

You can also mod (translation: customize) your case fans, if you're one to go that route. Fans are available in several sizes, and now in several colors as well. You can get fans made out of UV-reactive plastic that will glow under a blacklight; you can get fans with built-in colored LEDs that make the casing glow; you can even get fans with multicolored LEDs built right on to the fan blades, that change colors as they spin. Very cool effects, and pretty cheap to boot.

When installing the fans, keep in mind that you need to balance the air flow sensibly. Make sure you locate the fans as near as possible to the heat sources, i.e. drives, memory, etc. Do not mount all of your fans pointed in the same direction, into or out of the case; put about half of them blowing in and the other half blowing out. It's generally better to put the in-blowing fans near the front of the case since that's where your drives and memory are more likely to be located. The out-blowing fans can go on the back since most people don't store things behind their PC. If you have side and top fan mounts, use your best judgement.

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Next Step: Selecting a Hard Disk