While technically not a hardware repair, it is somewhat computer related and will help you repair your own stuff later.  Because of this, I've decided to write a complete guide, with pictures, of building your very own PC.

Building a Shuttle KPC is a very fun thing to do.  The KPC is a tiny computer, about the size of a shoebox on its side.  There's a lot of different things that you can do with this computer, either as a home machine to surf the web, a small computer for a dorm room, or a tiny web server.  Not only are they versatile, but they are also very easy to build.  You can literally have yours together within an hour or so, with the case together and ready for a copy of Windows or Linux.  While doing something like this might seem daunting, you should go ahead and try.  I'll walk you through all of the steps youneed to follow and before you know it, you'll have your brand new tiny PC

The first thing you need to do is get yourself the parts.  One of my favorite suppliers is TigerDirect, but you can get these anywhere.  Since my parts came from Newegg, I will supply everything you need below.  Keep in mind, this isn't a huge gaming rig or something that will even run Crysis, but surfing the web and doing some light gaming?  Sure!  The best part is that TigerDirect has a Shuttle KPC kit with everything you need to make a functioning computer for $250.  Click here for the kit.

 And that's basically all you need!  Once you get your kit in the mail, follow these instructions below and you'll be up and running in no time!

 1.) Take the KPC out of the box, wave "Hello" to your new friend, and set everything on a brightly lit workbench.  Keep the box!  It has a handy carrying handle if you ever need to travel or want to take the little thing with you to go to grandma's house for the weekend.  In the box, there will be a software installation CD, a bag of screws, an orange SATA drive cable, the black power cord, and a few plastic ties.  There's also a handy step-by-step guide in case you find the cadence of my typing annoying

  2.) Put on your antistatic wrist strap and make sure you take off your wool socks, mittens, and toque.  Arrange yourself in the light and remember that static is your mortal enemy.  Try to hold all of these little pieces parts by their edges and don't touch any of the circuit boards if you can avoid doing so.  Places like Tiger Direct sell anti-static wrist straps that help your body get rid of the excess electricity that can damage the components.  Here's one for five dollars at Newegg.com.  Take the strap, wrap it around your wrist so the metal part is touching your skin, and connect the alligator clip at one end of the wire to the KPC...on any metal unpainted part.  Once you do this, plug it in for a few seconds and let your body discharge.  Make sure you plug into a grounded outlet, or else this step would be quite useless! :D  Also, remember to do this after every step, 'lest you run the risk of damaging something with electrostatic discharge.  I usually take my socks and shoes off and follow these steps, which sometimes gets me stares at the office...ahrem...

anyway, here's a good place to attach your alligator clip, right on this part that's sticking out of the back near the PCI slot's bay:

3.) Once you're all grounded, take the three little thumbscrews out of the back of the case and slide the black part back.  The case should come apart easily.  Take the black metal exterior and set it aside.  Your new slightly naked and embarassed KPC is now fully exposed.  The National Enquirer may pay you good money for these pictures.

4.) Look inside of the computer and you'll see a little black square thing.  This is where the processor goes.  You'll want to remove the black plastic part that is in here...it's only there to protect the little gold pins beneath it.  In order to take this plastic part out of the KPC, you'll have to flip the little lever up that's sitting beside the slot.  Pull it outward slightly so that the lever will go up, then move it in an upward angle until it's completely 90 degrees with the processor slot.  After getting the lever up, use your fingers to lift the little black piece of plastic.  The whole top of the processor socket should swing upward like the little trap door in my basement where I keep all the ramen noodles.

5.) Now, take your finger and poke it through the backside of the door, pushing the plastic piece.  It should pop right off.  Take the plastic piece and make a nice keychain, earring,  or maybe fix a wobbly chair.

6.) Now, take the processor and pull it out of the plastic packaging.  Try to hold it by the edges and not touch the small gold dots on the bottom.   

There are two small cutouts on either side of the processor.  You can see these in the pictures above.  These help you to orient the processor in the socket correctly, and as such, help you not to burn your house down.  Take the processor and insert it into the motherboard, using these small circular cutouts as a guide.  Don't worry -- you can't really put the processor in there wrong, since it only fits one way.  You'll know that it's in correctly when it fits into the cpu socket like a puzzle piece.  Once you get the processor in there, take the small door (from which the small black plastic protector came) and swing it downward.  If it doesn't want to move, you may have the processor in the socket improperly.  It will go down, but may not rest completely flat with the motherboard anymore since there's a big old processor in there.  To secure the processor in the slot, push the little metal lever down so that it is flat with the motherboard.  You should feel some resistance.  This door is made to keep the processor snug in the socket, like a bug in a rug, or something.  Once you get the lever down, you may have to pull outward to get it beyond the plastic unlock gaurd.

7.) The CPU needs cooling, or else it would burn up, like in that St. Elmo's Fire song.  Take the fan out of the plastic packaging, avoiding the bottom.  Any amount of skin oil or cookie dough that you get on the bottom of the CPU fan can compromise its ability to properly cool the processor, so make sure to keep it clean!

The fan part faces up, much like tires on a new car.  The gray pasty-looking stuff is called thermal compound.  It makes a tight connection between the processor and the fan, allowing better heat transfer.

8.) Notice the four plastic lugs on the corners of the fan.  These go into four holes on the motherboard on each corner of the CPU socket.  The gray goopy stuff touches the top of the processor.  If you can't see the top of the processor or if you can't fit the fan onto the processor, you may have made a bit of a mistake.  go back to steps 3 through 5 and try to see if you made any boo-boos.  Place the fan down on the processor with the four plastic lugs in the little holes.

9.) You need to secure the fan, and you do that by pushing these little lugs downward with either your fingers or a straight screwdriver.  to make it easier, do them like you are rotating the tires on a car--diagonal and not at Wal Mart's tire center.  I sent a team of ninjas to Intel's HQ to supply the following image for you.  Take it to heart.  The little lugs will move downward and pop into the board.  If you can't get it the first time or screw up, rotating the lug in the direction of the little arrows will free it, allowing you to try again.

You'll know the fan is in place when it's sitting flat on the processor and completely parallel with the board.  If it's not, try step 9 again.

10.) Take the little plug that's on the fan and plug it into the board.  There's a little white socket next to the fan where this goes.  You should put the plug on so that the plastic guides on the board slide into the plastic guides on the plug.  The extra pin on the right of this is for ground, I believe.  Speaking of ground, I hope you've been using your wrist strap and holding things by the edges!

11.) Once you do this step, it's time for the RAM.  Take the RAM and remove it from the package.  If yours is cheap like mine, it'll come in a plastic shell.  This is okay though, but you'll have to take special care not to touch the chips or gold part of the RAM when you remove it from the package.

After you get the RAM out of the bubble package, look at it closely.  On the gold edge, there's a row of pins.  In the middle of them, there's a little notch.  This notch keeps you from putting the RAM in the slot backward or using it to cut cheese.  When you put the RAM into the slot, you're going to do so by aligning this little notch with the rest of the RAM slot.  

The RAM slots are pictured below.  When you go to put your RAM into them, make sure the little plastic white arms are out and not standing up.  You can move them by using your fingers to push them down.  They'll swing away from the RAM slot and leave it vulnerable.  In this picture, one has it's plastic tabs down, the other has its plastic tabs up, so you can tell the difference.

Put the RAM in the slot by aligning that notch with the one on the board.  Once the RAM is in place and you have it in the slot, you need to take your thumbs and push down on the top of the RAM stick with some force.  You don't want to drill your thumbs through the case and touch the bottom of the table, but you want to use enough force to make the little plastic white arms pop up into place by themselves.  Once they do this, you are done.  if the RAM doesn't want to go in or if the plastic arms don't want to rise up, check to make sure your RAM is in the slot in the correct orientation.  If you don't have it in there right, try again.

Once it's in there right, it will look like this:

Notice how the little white arms are cuddling the precious, precious RAM?

12.) Once you have the RAM in, I would normally say that you are done with adding parts to the motherboard, but you should check around the board.  Make sure there's no metal parts on there and make sure your CPU fan connector is in the proper place.  Ensure the RAM is seated in its slots and that the fan can move freely by spinning the propellers with your fingers.  We're almost there!  The only difference you'll see between mine and yours at this point is the PCI slot -- I have another network card in there.  Mine is going to be a firewall, so I added this extra piece.  You can put anything in that slot that you want though -- TV tuner card, modem, or even an upgraded video card.  You don't really have to use it.

13.) Now is the time to add  the hard drive.  Take the hard drive from its anti-static bag and look at it.  This is the part where all of your information is stored, so naturally you want to be extra careful with it.  Hold it by the metal part and try not to touch the circuit board on the bottom of the drive.  There will be two connectors in the back.  Depending on what type of drive you have, SATA, or IDE, the steps to connect them are slightly different.  I'm going to assume that you bought the kit above though and will follow that.  This drive is a SATA drive, so the connections are fairly simple.  Take the drive and slide it into the KPC from above.  The black connectors should face the back of the case.  Remove the screws from the little bag that came with the KPC and find four with flat heads and thick threads.  These are hard drive screws.  Put at least four of them into the hard drive to secure it into place.

After you do this, take the little black plug as shown in the picture below and connect it to the hard drive:

This powers the hard drive.  The other cable we are going to connect is responsible for carrying your data to the motherboard where it is then monitored closely by the CIA.  Take the orange plastic cable out of the plastic bag that came with the KPC and plug the 90 degree style connector into the back of the hard drive as shown.

Once the data connector is in place, plug the other end into the motherboard.  There are a few different places on the board where this will fit, but you'll know which one is right by looking at the white lettering (silkscreening) on the motherboard.  The proper place for the other side of this orange plug says either SATA 1 near it or is the closest to the little black Intel chip in the back.  Tie the orange cable to the chassis with one of the tie wraps that come with the KPC in the little plastic bag.  In this picture, the SATA connector is in the second plug because I am actually putting two drives in here, and the second drive went in after I took this picture.

 after you finally get these routed and plugged in, you should double check to make sure all of the plugs, power and data, are tight.

14.) If you want a CD-ROM in your KPC and don't want to use an external one, you can buy a thing called the KPC faceplate kit from Newegg.  If they don't have them though, here's a link to Google Shopping.

It has a new faceplate as well as instructions on how to install it.  I have another article here where I describe myself breaking an old one out of a Dell laptop and putting it in the KPC.  You can buy a real slim drive from Newegg if you don't want to tear one apart though and they generally run $30-80.

If you want to do this, it's as simple as unscrewing the faceplate with the little allen wrench that's supplied with the faceplate kit...

Knocking out the metal tab on the front of the case with a screwdriver...

And connecting your cables.

Make sure to screw it into place with the little screws that come with it!

15.) After you've got your drives all connected, double check and make sure everything is tight.  All of the ribbons and cables should be seated and the drives should be screwed into the chassis.  After this step, you are ready to try it out!  Plug the monitor cable in, as well as the power and keyboard.  Turn the unit around, taking care not to touch anything in the case when you do this.  Push the power button on the front.  It should turn on.  If not, check to make sure your power cord is in the back snug and that the parts are all in the board properly.  If all goes well, the monitor will come to life.  Yay!

The next step is to go into the BIOS and run through all of the settings.  Get into the BIOS by pushing the delete key on your keyboard when the system is booting.  It will tell you when to do so if you pay close attention to the bottom of the screen and will take you to a blue screen with lots of options.  If you want a good guide for interpreting a lot of these as well as configuring them, here is an excellent one.  If you want the raw goods directly from Phoenix technologies, the people who manufactured the KPC's BIOS, you can go here.  The only things you should really have to do are the following:

a.) Load the Optimized Defaults.

b.) Under the "Standard CMOS Features", set the proper date and time.  Make sure all of your drives are detected properly and in the right places.  If using the hard drive in the package above, it should appear next to "SERIAL ATA 1 CHANNEL".  If it's next to "2 CHANNEL", you need to turn your computer off and plug the SATA connector into the other slot.

c.) Under "Advanced CMOS Features", Make sure the quick Power on self test is enabled, first boot device should be USB CD ROM, second boot device should be CD ROM, third should be hard disk.  HDD Security Freeze lock should be disabled.

d.) Under "PnP/PCI Configuration", Resources should be controlled by "Auto (ESCD)" and if you have it, Plug and Play OS should be set to YES unless you're using DOS or an operating system you found buried in your backyard by aliens from a distant world.

e.) Check the PC Health Status.  The processor should be warm, but not burning.  Look for a temperature around 100 - 110 degrees F.  If your processor is hotter than this and you just turned it on, I would suggest checking to make sure that the CPU fan is spinning and that the fan is flat on the processor.

f.) Save and Exit setup. The system will reboot then tell you that it can't find an operating system installed.

Once your system has gone through this, you can turn the power off and put the case back on.  Doublecheck all of the connectors one more time, ensuring that everything is snug.  Slide the black cover back onto the KPC and secure it with the thumbscrews.  make sure the little metal tabs on the inside of the black case cover are sliding on the rails on the inside of the KPC case, or else it'll bulge out on the sides, as if it had eaten too many tuna subs from Subway.

and as Shuttle says, Congratulations!

Yay!  Now you just need to install an operating system and get to using your new PC.  May I suggest Ubuntu Linux?  it's free, comes with lots of great applications, and is supported by hundreds of thousands of committed developers around the world.  If you have any problems, just contact me via the comments section and I'll try to help you as best as I can!  Enjoy

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Comments (1)

• |71.240.36.xxx |2009-04-11 23:53:03 Jack48  - Wow
  Thanks for the KPC tutorial. This is great!
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