Installing the rest of the components

First thing on our list are the floppy drive (yes, it might be deprecated, but it can’t hurt to show how to install one) and two optical drives. Installing the floppy drive is as easy as putting it into the system and screwing it in. Using two optical drives is another thing though. If you’ll be using only one optical drive or if your two drives are SATA drives (check the box) you can skip the following paragraph.

As you might recall from the beginning on this guide the motherboard has two IDE connectors. Each of these connectors can be used to connect two IDE devices. When two devices are connected to the same connector (IDE channel) it is imperative that the computer knows which device is the master-drive and which the slave-drive. To make sure the PC has no trouble figuring out which is which two things need to be done. One is connecting the IDE cable correctly (we’ll cover this in a bit). The other is setting one of the drives to master and the other to slave via jumpers. This might sound hard, but it’s just a matter of deciding which will be which and setting the jumpers to mimic the diagram that is usually seen on top of the drive. This principle applies to IDE hard drives as well as optical drives, though you’ll probably be installing a SATA hard drive.

Installing the optical drives isn’t rocket science, so you should have no problems figuring this out on your own (use the above pictures for reference). There is one thing you should keep in mind though. Remember how we set one optical drive to master and one to slave earlier? Well, to make connecting cables easier later on you should install the slave device below the master one.

We’ve mentioned SATA drives several times now, so it’s time to actually have a look at one. The first picture shows how SATA connectors look like (the pictured device is a hard drive, but optical drives look almost exactly the same). Installing a hard drive is pretty much the same as installing an optical drive, but you’ll probably have to insert the drive from the inside of the case rather than from the outside (the hard drive trays are located directly below the optical trays). Some cases use a different method, so you should read the case’s manual in that case.

Most if not all current motherboards support dual-channel memory. The trick is that two identical (at least in size and speed) memory sticks have to be used. It doesn’t end there though. For dual channel to work you have to install the two sticks in the correct slots. You should check the motherboard manual for details, but usually it is enough to put the modules into slots of the same color.

When installing the memory module you should apply even force on both ends of the module, so that both clips snap into place simultaneously. One thing you should never do is try to force a memory module into place. If you can’t push the module into place there are two possible reasons – you forgot to retract the retainer clips or the module is facing the wrong way (see picture).