HOW TO BUILD YOUR OWN SUPER7 COMPUTER
Setup the Motherboard
Last updated: 4/8/99

  Observe antistatic procedures.

Ideally, you should wear a grounded anti-static wrist strap when working on computer equipment, especially when handling memory and CPUs.  Also, the use of grounded anti-static mats on the floor and on the workbench is a good practice.  However, these items can be too expensive if you are building just one computer.  As a minimum, my advise is to make sure your body is touching the metal on the computer case when handling the CPU and the memory anytime between the time they are in their anti-static bag or container and installed on the motherboard and any time when directly touching them.  It would also be a good idea to work with bare feet during this critical time.  Try to avoid touching drives, boards, memory, etc. with your clothes.  Clothing can quite often be charged with static electricity, especially during cold, dry Winter days.

Many people don't realize that computer components can be damaged by static electricity and a problem won't appear for months later when a power surge, etc. completes the damage.  With the non-parity memory used in most recent computers, a damaged transistor in a memory chip can start corrupting files and you will not be alerted by an error message and not know about it until you see widespread results much later.

  Remove the motherboard from its box and take it out of the antistatic bag.  There is a thick plastic sheet under the motherboard.  Keep it there for now to protect the bottom of the motherboard.  Place the antistatic bag on the workbench.  Place the motherboard, together with the plastic sheet, on top of the anti-static bag.

  Remove the cardboard packing from the CPU box and put the power cord and the HX45 assembly instructions in the box.

  Raise the lever on lower side of the CPU socket (socket 7) to the fully vertical position.

   Inspect the CPU for bent pins.

If they are badly bent, send the CPU back to from wince it came.  Occasionally I get one with some pins slightly bent.  I use a round, bench-mounted fluorescent light with an adjustable arm and a magnifying glass in the middle of the fixture, to inspect and work on CPU's.  You can look down rows of pins and diagonally from the edge of the CPU at groups of pins to see which pins do not line-up.   I use a small pair of needle nose pliers to very carefully straighten them.  This can be tedious and time consuming work, requiring an environment where absolute concentration is possible.  If you break a pin, as it's easy enough to do, you can kiss-off the CPU and its warranty.  I straighten pins by grasping approximately the top 25% of the pin and bending it ever so slightly.  Don't try to bend a pin at its base or you will probably break it.  Again, be very gentle.

  Looking from the top, orient the CPU so knocked-off corner is at the lower left and carefully insert it  into the socket.  Look around the edges of the CPU and make sure it is all the way in the socket.

One corner of the CPU is knocked-off and has a small square printed on the top of it.  Also, one corner of the CPU socket ("Socket 7") does not have holes at the tip of the lower left corner in the above picture.  Never force a CPU into its socket.  You may gently wiggle it a little from side-to-side to get into the socket, but if you force it you can bend pins.  If you force it a lot, the pins will get hot and may melt the solder holding them to the CPU--believe it.  If you can't easily get the CPU into the socket, go back two steps.

  Lower the CPU lever making sure it snaps into the locked position: all the way down.

  The memory module has two notch in the middle and another one near it's sides.  Orient the module so the notch is on the left side.  Hold the memory module with both hands and evenly and firmly insert it into the DIMM socket labeled "DIMM1."  make sure it is fully seated.  The leavers at the ends of the socket will come up when the module is inserted.

  Set jumpers on the motherboard as follows:

  Double-check the jumper settings.

  The CPU socket has two ears each on the left and right sides of the socket for attaching CPU fans.  Our fan attaches to the smaller ears located at the middle of the sides.  The ear on the left side is smaller than the one on the right side.  The CPU has a metal clip which attaches to the ears.  Attach the smaller end of the CPU clip to the smaller ear on the left side of the socket.  Then attach the larger and adjustable clip to the larger ear on the right side of the socket.  Wiggle the heat sink/fan to center it on the CPU.

I do not use heat sink cement install CPU fans.  The fans I use have a thermo-conductive layer on the bottom of the heat sink.  Fans that are installed with thermo-conductive cement can be very difficult to remove and replace. And that is why I do not use the retail versions AMD CPU's which come with the fans glued on to stay on forever.

The CPU fan has three wires.  Two are for power and third one is used by the motherboard to sense fan speed and may be used by system monitoring software to sound an alarm if the fan fails.  That is why you should use a 3-wire fan that connects to the motherboard instead of a fan which connects to one of the power-supply connectors.

Plug the CPU fan into the motherboard connector on the right side of the motherboard labeled "CPU FAN."

  Neatly coil-up the excess CPU fan wire and zip-tie it to keep the wire out of the CPU fan.  It is easier to do this now while the motherboard is out of the case.

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