Upgrading your Mass-Market System, Part 1 - Looking Into Things
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The Tools
You’re going to need a Philips head screwdriver, an anti-static bracelet, a straight edge razor or a clean credit card, a Windows XP disc, and some common sense.
Looking Inside
Once your parts are delivered your first task will be to remove the right side/cover of your case. *(Actually, your first task should be saving any important files elsewhere such as a CDR or a floppy disk because you will want to format your hard drive when you're done with all this upgrading).
On this HP case the side comes off by itself, but on some computers, such as my old Compaq, both sides and the top are all one piece. To remove it all you have to do is remove the outermost screws. HP was even nice enough to include thumbscrews on this particular computer. Don’t expect your case to be the same--most manufacturers would rather make it as difficult as possible for you to do your own upgrading.
Once we had the side off we were greeted with this sight…
The large white thing on the left is simply a vent to pull air from the outside towards the CPU location on the motherboard. By pushing the two tabs indicated on the side this came off quite easily. Also note in the picture above the shiny thing sitting on top of the case in the back.
This is a handy little trick: just get a nice big piece of tape and fold it so it is sticky on both sides. Stick it to the case or somewhere convenient and stick all subsequent screws on the other side. You’ll appreciate it later when you don’t get a headache looking for easily misplaced screws.
First thing that I noticed while taking off the vent was the lack of a fan either sucking air in or blowing it out. With a case this small and with as little ventilation as it has there really needs to be a fan, so I pulled one out of my parts bin. You can find extra fans on the Internet or at your local computer store, just be sure that it fits where you need it to fit.
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