St. Mark's School -- Computer Build Project Introduction To Computer Science Class

Day 2
We are working to complete the external set up and testing of the basic components -- motherboard, chip, RAM memory and graphics card.

After Day 1, we had the chip on the motherboard. Today we installed RAM and the graphics card to the motherboard, and we also connected power to do a boot test. Our motherboard, the Asus P8 H67-M Pro/CSM, has 2 Ram channels. So for each of our 8 computers, we have two SDRAM DDR3 cards to install.

Each SCRAM card contains 4 Gigabytes. Thus, each computer will have 8GB of available RAM (4GB operating in each of the two channels on the motherboard). The students knew where to install the memory cards from past classes. However, many were new to the feel of pushing the cards and making sure they were secure. The trick was to push RAM card into the motherboard until the slot "snapped."

From there we installed video cards. Our card is the EVGA GeForce GTX460, which carries an NVIDIA chipset and 1024MB of GDDR5 (Graphics Double Data Rate) Memory -- for fast graphics processing. This was also a quick install, adding it to the motherboard via a PCI Express slot.

The harder part of the this class was installing the power supply and doing a boot up from the motherboard. Our power supply is the Rosewill GREEN Series (GR530-S12), which converts 120V outlet power in to usable power for the computer and disk drives. Our supply has eight separate power lines which require some sorting out (it looks a little like an octopus) -- but each line gives power a different part of the computer.

Motherboard with graphics card, RAM and power supply

We then were ready for a test. However, since the motherboard doesn't have on "On/Off" switch we, we needed to "hotwire" or "jump start" the motherboard. We located the on/off power pins on the motherboard and with a flick of a screwdriver, we tripped the on/off switch as the computers fired up!

We need to install an operating system and do further work, but the response of the computer's BIOS was a sure sign that the basic core components were working..... this was good news.