Installing a CPU

- Okay, it's time to actually get down and dirty a little bit and let's do some CPU installation. Now, what I have here is I've got my AMD FX4100 and I've got a nice AMD AM3 Socket Motherboard here. And I've got my motherboard book. Before I bought these I made sure that they would actually go together. Keep in mind, it's not only the socket but it could also be the speed as well and I went ahead, double checked everything and we're in good shape, so I do have the right socket and the right speed for this particular motherboard.

So, I'm gonna go ahead, pull out the CPU. Keep that as anti static. Notice that I'm not wearing an anti ESD wristband. Well, that's because it's my stuff, okay and for me, if I lose something it's not that big of a deal and it makes videos easier. If I was gonna be doing this for a living or if it was something I was really gonna be counting on I'd probably be wearing an anti static wrist strap right now and what's this? An instruction book! (laughing) Yeah, sorry, anyway, let's go ahead and just put this in. Now the trick, more than anything else is that all CPUs are gonna have some form of orientation notch.

If you touch any of the metal any pins or anything on the CPU you can smoke it, so you want to be really, really careful about contact at this point in the game. I'm really being very careful. Now, you can only put it in one way. If you put it in the wrong way it won't drop down nice and pretty. So, I'm actually, I could take a moment and read to figure out how to put this in but I'd rather just play for a minute.

Oh, there it goes, fourth try, all right. And you can see it dropped in nice and pretty there. If we look at it from the corner you can see it's nice and level so I don't have any raised side or anything like that, so I know I've got it in properly. So, this is a zero insertion force socket. They're designed so that they don't have any you don't have to push down. There's some kind of arm intels usually have mental shields that you have to drop down, but whatever it is it should be locked in place. That's pretty much all there is in terms of physically getting the CPU on, but the other part we have to deal with is the fan.

Now, most CPUs come with a fan. This is an OEM fan and they're okay. You wouldn't want to do any over clocking or anything like that with it. I don't like these particular fans because they're under pressure and it's always fun to try to put these things on in live video. Now, if you look underneath here you'll see that there's a thermal compound on here. That thermal compound has got to be there. It's gonna place a nice tight seal between my cooling fins and the CPU itself and then that way it makes sure to transfer it.

You can actually get thermal compounds sometimes called heat dope, and you can get it in little tubes and all this and you can spend outrageous amounts of money. They all work pretty much the same but for the most part, I just use the pre wedded ones that are on there. This one, sometimes it has a little cover on it. This one does not, okay, so we're in good shape. Let's go ahead, I want to make sure this thing is oriented properly so it'll go in. Okay, here we go, so you just want to drop it down.

On this particular one, I get one end in. I get the other end in. I hit the locking mechanism and my fan's on. If it's done right, you should be able to pick this thing up just like this and it should fit in no problem whatsoever. So, that's my test, I should be able to pick it up by the cooling system, and it's in good shape. Now, there's one last thing to do and it's always fun to find this. Is I've got to put on the CPU fan.

Now, on most motherboards there's gonna be lots of these connectors. I can see one, two, three, three different connectors here but one of them's clearly marked. It's says CPU fan, you can't see it, but I can and there's an orientation to it and I push it in, and I'm done. Putting a CPU on, it really isn't that big of a deal. The hardest part, to be honest with you is making sure that you get the right CPU with the right socket and the right speed for your particular motherboard.

Oh, and the other thing that's always fun are the cooling fans. There's a thousand ways to put them on and every one of them's different. (upbeat jazz music)