[Not exactly a mess like this, but it felt like it.]
Luckily my brother-in-law, Ish (Ishmael), was willing and able to help me out as he does this sort of thing all the time.
Our first problem was that the casing for the components that I did have (my old computer) just wasn't big enough for the new mother board. Ish had a case but after we got everything into it it wouldn't power on. After playing around with the internals I came to the conclusion that the power on button had to be faulty. The next step was to get a different case. That case came from my sister.
Now when I opened up the case/computer she brought me I noticed several things that were going to be a problem.
[Hmm...well crap on a stick...]
As you can see from the picture of the computer above, my sister's computer was like that. Now the case was big enough for the motherboard, but because dell set up the computer tower as a modular set up it made putting the motherboard in impossible. You see the motherboard in the the tower is kind of "L" shaped because of the trays at the bottom of the case for the hard drives.
On top of this there is the oddity of the massive heat sink for its processor, and it just doesn't work. Its almost as if Dell doesn't like PC modders. But then again it could just be this case.
So with few options available to me I went to a local eco-electronics recycling place and bought a new tower casing for $25. This place was cool, they recycle and refurbish old electronics. Anything that can be resold is put out on the floor for sale, while everything else is of course recycled.
From there I put everything into the new case (sans my brother-in-law's help as he showed me how to do this all once before). I then powered on the system and it powered up. Finally I thought, but here I hit my next problem...a black screen. Now I did get a message asking me if I wanted to run setup for it, but it wouldn't let me use the F1 or F2 keys. That is to say I pressed them and nothing happened.
I then powered off the computer and powered it back on again...and now it was just a black screen.
Ish now took over and took the computer tower home with him a few days ago. The problem as he found was with the RAM. The RAM from the previous computer didn't want to work in this one (which is odd), but once it was out the thing powered on and did what it was supposed to.
He then was nice enough to take the RAM out of his computer and put it in mine. Least to say that I owe him big time not for just helping me but giving me the RAM for my computer.
I am back now though and I've learned a lot about building a computer. Namely, its fairly easy to do, unless something decides not to work with you...at which point just call your local computer expert friend and get them to help you out.
Just be warned, they typically work for beer.
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