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#121
Turn off the power supply and drain all excess power from it by holding down the start button. You should see any led lights go out.Take the Card out, disconnect all the prefills, remove the 24 Pin cable and the 8 pin cable. Take the motherboard screws out and pull the motherboard out of the case. Make yourself a work area an I use the motherboard box. It's cardboard and is non conductive. Place the motherboard on the box, with the rear edge is very slightly hanging off. When you pull the board, you can leave the ram and CPU cooler on. Take the PSU out and sit it close to the board. At first, just connect a monitor, mouse and keyboard; 1 Hard drive and CD/DVD player. Connect the 24 pin and 8 pin connector (make sure the 8 pin says CPU on it). turn the power supply on and wait to see the LEDs come on. You should know your ram timings and voltage and frequency. Don't install the card yet. Use the on board graphics. Whichever connection you use, set your monitor to expect that type connection. Start the computer. If you have an on board on/off and reset switch, use them. If not, (be careful here) look at the manual and make sure you know which 2 pins are for the start switch for the front panel connections. take a small flat blade screwdriver and touch those 2 pins, for just a second. The computer will start. Go straight to BIOS and set optimized defaults. Set you ram timings, frequency and voltage to manufacturer's specs. Set your sata controller to AHCI, set the boot order to CD/DVD first and hard drive second. Put the installation DVD in the CD/DVD in the drive. The computer should boot into the DVD drive, When you get to close to that point, let me know and I'll tell you what to do next. If there are any questions, be sure to ask. This is what I do with every board I get when I build a computer, before putting it in the case. It is important for you to ask about anything you don't understand.