PC Hardware in a Nutshell, Second Edition

Step 13: Finishing Touches

At this point, the system should be fully functional, but a few things remain to be done:

1. Dress the cables. Many OEMs and most individuals neglect this step, but it’s an important one. The typical rats’ nest of cables that results when you build a PC can impede air flow, causing sporadic problems due to overheating. One system we saw ran fine for a few minutes and then locked up. As it turned out, a loose wire had fouled the CPU cooling fan, causing the CPU to overheat and crash. If you have them, use cable ties to secure individual wires—like those on power connectors—into neat bundles, and then secure those bundles to the frame. If you don’t have cable ties, the little yellow plastic ties that come with garbage bags work about as well. Tape ribbon cables in flat bunches and secure them to the chassis, well away from the processor and fans. We’ve used everything from masking tape to duct tape with equal success, although the heat inside a PC can make some types of tape gummy and hard to remove. Fold over a quarter inch or so at the end of the tape to provide a pull tab in case you need to remove the tape later.

2. If you have a tape drive or CD-ROM burner, run a full backup and stick it on the shelf. If your backup software allows you to make an emergency recovery disk, make one now.

3. If you have diagnostic software that provides a burn-in function, use it. Most hardware failures occur immediately. Those that don’t are likely to occur within hours or days. ...