Introduction Chapter 1 Understanding Component Specifications 1.1 The Central Processing Unit (CPU) ............... P.06 1.2 What is on Your Motherboard?....................... P.12 1.3 Graphics Card.................................................. P.24 1.4 Memory ............................................................ P.32 1.5 Storage Devices .............................................. P.35 1.6 What to Look for in Chassis, Power and Cooler. P.41 1.7 Displays............................................................ P.48 1.8 Keyboard and Mouse...................................... P.49 Chapter 2 Before You Start Installation Tools .............................................. P.50 Chapter 3 Hands-on Installation 3.1 Installing the Power Supply in the Chassis.... P.52 3.2 Installation of Components on the Motherboard..................................................... P.54 3.3 Installing the Motherboard............................... P.58 3.4 Storage Device Installation ............................. P.61 3.5 Installing Peripherals ....................................... P.66 3.6 Connecting Peripherals................................... P.67 Chapter 4 Start up and BIOS Settings 4.1 Startup Screen................................................. P.70 4.2 BIOS Settings .................................................. P.72 4.3 Windows® 7...................................................... P.74 Chapter 5 Unique GIGABYTE Features 5.1 The Power of “333” Onboard Acceleration .... P.77 5.2 24 Phase Power VRM Design........................ P.79 5.3 Smart TPM....................................................... P.81 5.4 AutoGreen........................................................ P.81 5.5 Smart Dual LAN............................................... P.82 5.6 eSATA/USB Combo Ports .............................. P.82 5.7 GIGABYTE Smart 6™ .................................... P.83 5.8 DES 2............................................................... P.86 Published by GIGABYTE TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD. 5.9 Ultra Durable™ 3............................................. P.86 Address No.6, Bau Chiang Road, 5.10 2 oz PCB.......................................................... P.87 Hsin-Tien, Taipei 231, Taiwan Telephone (02) 8912-4000 5.11 Upgrading the BIOS........................................ P.88 Website www.gigabyte.com.tw 5.12 EasyTune™ 6.................................................. P.90 Publication date November 2009 5.13 Xpress Recovery2........................................... P.92 Special Notice y All registered trademarks mentioned in this book Chapter 6 Introduction to the Latest Technologies are owned by their respective holders. y GIGABYTE owns the copyright of the contents in 6.1 Intel XMP.......................................................... P.94 this book. No copy or reproduction of any form is allowed. 6.2 Intel Matrix Storage.......................................... P.95 2 Introduction Congratulations, by picking up “Build your own PC in 30 minutes” you’ve just taken the first step towards building your own PC. At first, building your own PC might seem like something that is complicated and slightly daunting, but fret not, as GIGABYTE is here to help you on the way. If you find the technical terms to be confusing or if think you lack some of the knowledge needed to assemble your own system, then this guidebook is just what you’ve been waiting for. It will not only teach you how to put together your own computer, but it will also teach you about the latest technology and jargon, to make it easy for you to select the components you need. First and foremost, it’s a lot easier to build your own PC than you might think and it doesn’t require a lot of technical knowhow. This guide book contains easy to follow steps on how to assemble a computer and if you follow them, you should be able to put together a complete system in no more than 30 minutes. Considering how affordable PC components are these days, a basic system won’t cost a lot and you can have fun while learning something new at the same. With components from GIGABYTE you also get the best products on the market, both in terms of quality, performance and reliability. As a leading motherboard manufacturer, GIGABYTE is committed to delivering a complete IT solution by supplying a wide range of PC components, including graphics cards, optical drives, networking and communication devices, power supplies, cases, coolers and peripherals. To fulfill this goal, GIGABYTE’s annual publication of “Build Your Own PC in 30 Minutes” provides the latest information you need to know. With its clear and straightforward instructions, this guidebook can help you get your PC up and running in record time. Shall we get started? GIGABYTE’s motherboard, graphics accelerator, and peripherals offer consumers not only a variety of products to choose from, but also have a reputation of outstanding quality and performance. S A collection of computer components from GIGABYTE 3 What is a Computer? Computers have been around for a long time, much longer than you’d think, although in the early days, computers were advanced mechanical calculators, unlike the advanced electronic machines we use today. Early electronic computers were huge and took up a whole room if not more. A modern pocket calculator has more computational power than many of the early computers. What we today refer to as a PC or a Personal Computer had its breakthrough in the 1970’s, but it took another decade before the PC as we know it today took shape. IBM was the company behind what we today call a PC, although it has evolved way beyond being a personal office computer which was the goal for IBM at the time. There are two key parts to a computer, hardware and software. Hardware is the “box” itself, or more precise, the components inside it. The software is what allows you to “talk” to the hardware, although software has also evolved over the years and has largely become a lot easier to use. The two work in tandem, so having slow or inadequate hardware means that your software will run slow. The main piece of software every computer needs is an operating system, also known as the OS. Without an operating system you can’t use your computer, as it’s the base platform in which you run your applications. There are many operating systems to choose from, although the most popular one is Microsoft Windows, of which there are a wide variety of versions, although the most commonly used today are Windows XP, Windows Vista and the recently launched Windows 7. Linux is also an operating system that is slowly gaining more popularity and is in general free to download and install. There are too many different versions of Linux for us to summarize them here, but a few popular “distributions” are Ubuntu, RedHat and SuSE. Once you’ve installed your operating system you also need to install drivers, as without drivers your operating system can’t detect any peripherals that you’ve installed. Some drivers are in general built into the operating system, although at times you need to install them while installing the operating system. This has also become easier over the years, but remains as one of the trickiest parts when you’re building a PC. However, in general, you shouldn’t end up having to do this. Once the drivers are installed, you’re ready to add applications to your operating system. Again, most operating systems come with a selection of pre-installed applications, although these tend to offer fairly basic functionality. Common applications includes office suites, web browsers, image, audio and video editing and manipulation software, games and much more. However, this book will focus on hardware, as if we were to cover all the software aspects, we’d have to double the page count. However, later chapters will explain how you install drivers and some GIGABYTE specific applications on your computer once you’ve finished building it. Many people confuse the various bits of a computer, although the key parts are inside the computer case. If you already own a PC, it can be hard to determine what’s inside it without opening it up, although there are some advanced software utilities that can detect and report what components S A wide range of external peripherals can be attached your PC is made up of. to a computer, although some aren’t optional. 4 The main parts inside the computer case consist of the CPU or Central Processing Unit, the motherboard which houses the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) and all the expansion slots, the RAM (Random Access Memory), the graphics card, the hard disk drive, the optical drive and a power supply. These are the key components, but you also need to add some coolers and fans to make it all work without overheating. There are different ways of adding peripherals to your PC and the easiest way is by using the USB ports. However, the USB ports are mostly used for devices such as the mouse and keyboard, printers, web cameras and other fairly basic input devices. External storage drives such as USB flash drives and external hard disk drives can also be connected to the USB ports. The various components that has to be installed and connected to the motherboard, but don’t let it put you off building your own PC, as it’s not as hard as it looks. However, to add certain peripherals you need to open up the side of your PC to gain access to the expansion slots. Today there are two main types of expansion slots, PCI Express and PCI. There are also memory slots which allow you to upgrade your memory. However, we’ll cover all of this in more detail in later chapters and explain how to add and remove add-on cards to them. Examples of common internal add-on cards includes graphics cards, network cards (wired or wireless), TV-tuners and sound cards. Why would you want to build your own PC? Building your own PC is not only fun, but it’s also a great learning experience to understand how a computer works and why it doesn’t always work the way you want it to. It also gives you control over what goes in to your PC, as when you buy a ready built system, you have little control over which components are being used.