Building A System from Scratch, Part 2 - Drives and cabling
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Now is the time for your drives. You need to think at this stage how your drives will be connected, as they will have jumpers on them which set them as primarily either masters or slaves. These jumpers will be almost impossible to set once the drives are fitted, so set them prior to this (see below).
Begin with the CD and DVD drives, and work downwards through the case, ending with the hard drive. Usually, the CD/DVD and floppy drives will slot into the case from the front, external face of the case, and the metal blanking plates on the case will need to be carefully removed first, by levering them back and forth until the thin metal connecting points rupture. Hard drives will typically be inserted into their appropriate place from within the case. Modern cases will very often feature rails which can be screwed onto the edges of the hard drive. The hard drive can then simply be slotted into place, making the process of inserting or removing them extremely quick and easy.
Once everything is in place within the case, it is time to think about cabling. The CD and DVD drives will need to be connected to the motherboards with IDE interface cables. Motherboards will usually have at least two main IDE connectors, the primary and secondary channels. If you’re using an IDE hard drive, this should be connected as the primary master, and will connect to the port marked 0. The CD and DVD drives can then be placed as the secondary master and slave drives. If you’re using a SATA hard drive, you can put the CD and DVD drives in as primary and secondary master to maximize each of the component's efficiency.
The floppy drive will connect on its own to a port similar to but smaller than the IDE channels. The power supply connector will also be smaller on a floppy disc drive.
The drives should be connected first as they feature the most cumbersome cables, and when the cables are connected at both ends, try to make use of a spare drive bay to fold these cables into. You’ll be glad of this when you decide that you need more power and upgrade, which, after building your own PC, you will definitely want to do.
Next, connect up the power supply cables. Each of the drives will need to be powered, as will the motherboard itself and possibly the graphics card, the case fans, and any internal neon lights you feel are necessary. A decent power supply unit will have more than enough connectors, and decent fans will have a spare power connector attached to them. Components that take up a power cable, without forming part of a daisy chain of components, I call "dead end" components.
If your case has a front USB/firewire panel on it, this will need to be wired in at this stage, as will the power and reset buttons, and the HDD activity and power LEDs. Unfortunately, motherboard manufacturers rarely feel the need to label these connections on the board in a meaningful way, so it will be a combination of close scrutiny of the motherboard manual and/or trial and error that wins here.
As with the IDE cables, the power cables should try to be kept out of the way, so if the cables are too long, try to wind them around a thin section of the internal chassis a couple of time to take up any slack. You should aim to keep the inside of the case as tidy as possible for the ease of any future forays into the internal space of your PC.
Any connectivity plates fixed to the rear of the case should also be connected at this point, and will usually screw into slots at the back of the case below the PCI card sockets. Again, the motherboard manual will be invaluable to the success of this task. The audio expansion panel will normally fit into two identical sockets, usually near the PCI slots on the motherboard.
Next: Finishing up >>
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