PC motherboard
fixings:
One of the things we believe in is re-using old components so
whenever we dismantle an old machine we tend to keep the bits
so a quick look in the parts bin gave us a chassis for mounting
a mATX board. This saved us from having to drill new fixings
for mounting posts for a motherboard all we had to do was drill
2 fixings for the chassis itself. The other benefit was that
we could manoeuvre the chassis within the case before drilling
the fixings to make sure we had enough clearance to be able to
close the case without anything hitting against say the power
supply or optical drive. (Sounds good but we nearly came to grief
at the last hurdle - see later on for details). Another thing
this allowed us to do was to do a preliminary installation of
the motherboard cpu and memory etc. (we actually fired the computer
up before assembly to prove the hardware before installation.
Orientating the board:
Using the chassis it was easy to trial fit the motherboard and
assembly in position before final fixing. We installed temporary
PCI and Graphics cards to line up the rear panel fixings (This
is important - allow space for when the plastic goes back or
your connectors will foul). We ended up cutting away the join
between the two sections of the rear panel to clear the Audio
connectors but some motherboards may not need this.
 Card fixings:
Thanks again to the chassis we only needed the top rail from
the old I/O panel
to be able screw the top of the cards to the rear panel the chassis provide the
bottom fixings for the cards. The top rail was hack sawed from
the rear panel and fixed back onto the case using self tappers.
We actually did this at the same time as orientating the board
so that the cards lined up perfectly. If you are not lucky
enough to have a chassis then you will need the bottom fixing
points as well so just hacksaw down the middle of the I/O panel
and fix once again with self tappers.
Optical
Drive caddy:
At the last hurdle just as we thought we were home and dry
on closing the case the ATX power connector was found to catch
on the drive caddy.  Fortunately it was not catching on the
drive itself so with the application of the hacksaw again,
1.5cms was removed from one corner of the caddy. Unfortunately
this
was still not enough because we found that the retainer for
the ATX cable itself was catching on the back of the optical
drive - the only solution was to cut this off using a knife.
It was a tight fit but the panel closes.
Part
4 looks at the assembly, cable choices etc. next
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