Section 2: Putting the PC together

The longest wire (with the right-angled plug) connects to the DVD burner, while the shorter wire goes to your hard drive. You'll also need to hide these out of the way, and a good way is to route them around the back of the internal drive cage, then wrap them around the knobs of the screwless holders to hold them in place.

Finally, install your graphics card in the blue PCI-E slot. Push the black switch to lever up the screwless metal connector at the back of the case, and then slot in the graphics card. After that, plug in the PCI-E power connector (this can be a squeeze, as it's next to the hard drive, but it is possible). You then just need to screw the side panels back on and you're ready to plug in your mains cable, monitor, keyboard and mouse. Flip the blue switch on the back of your PSU to I, and then hit the power button on the front of the case.

Installing Vista

Assuming your PC fires up without any problems (if it doesn't, check the connections to make sure that everything is secure), your next job is to set up the BIOS. To do this, press Del when the Gigabyte logo appears, then go to Standard CMOS Features and select None for Drive A. After that, press Esc and go to Advanced BIOS Features. From here, change the First Boot Device to CDROM and the second to Hard Drive. You can also disable Full Screen LOGO Show, so that you can check that your PC is detecting your CPU and memory properly when you fire it up. It's also worth changing the Init Display First setting to PEG rather than PCI, so that your PC looks for your graphics card in the PCI-E slot.

Press Esc again, go to Integrated Peripherals and disable anything you don't need, such as the parallel and serial ports. When that's done, place your Windows Vista DVD in your DVD drive, press F10, Y and Return to save the settings to the BIOS, and wait for your PC to restart. When it does, press any key to boot from CD when prompted and follow the installation instructions. When Vista is installed, go back into your BIOS and change the First Boot Device to Hard Drive to speed up the boot process.

When Vista loads for the first time, your next step is to install your drivers. Insert the disc that came with your motherboard, let it Autorun and then install the chipset and audio drivers. After that, download the latest ForceWare drivers for your graphics card from www.nvidia.com. When your PC is connected to the Internet, let Windows Vista update itself. You then need to prevent User Account Control from pestering you. If you've ever taken a car journey with a hyperactive five-year-old, UAC will be extremely familiar, although instead of the constant 'are-we-there-yet' demands, you'll be presented with a constant stream of 'are-you-sure' dialog boxes. You could turn off UAC (Control Panel > UAC), but you'll lose its security benefits. Another option is to use the Tweak UAC utility (www.tweak-uac.com), which doesn't moan quite so much, allowing you to get on with things. You're then ready to start installing games.

• Tidy your cables
• Modify an MSI Wind
• Hide your ATX power cables
• Monitor your PC with an analogue meter
• Cool your VRMs
• Make your own SSD for less than £20
• Create a 3D animated Logo
• Set up a secure browsing environment
• Remove motherboard heatsinks and heatpipes
• Remove a GPU cooler

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