Doing some upgrades, needing some help

Leopoldo · January 27, 2015

Hey,

I just got a few things to upgrade on my PC, and although not all are from this section of the forums, i hope to get some help with them

Upgrades:

1- Thermal Paste on CPU

2- Graphics card
3- Upgrading from HDD to SSD

Well, i've never concerned myself about details before, it was more of a plug in and out, but i've saw that the location does matter(will be explained further onwards) and other things, so,

For upgrade 1, does spreading the thermal compound matters? I mean, its necessary or should i just apply a dot or line and put the cooler(hyper 212 evo, not sure if it matters) on it?

For upgrade 2, I've never noticed before, but i have an ASUS p8z77-v deluxe motherboard and it matters where i put the video card from what i read, but after trying to read the manual, i just got more and more confused of which slot should i use. I bought an ASUS GTX970 strix(yeah, i know, ram gate, bought before it) and i wanna make it right

For upgrade 3, I'm gonna move, so i am unsure of two things, which sata port should i use for the SSD(Primary drive) and keep 2 others HDDs i had as secondaries, so which sata connections should i use? And also, should i make any configuration changes to the motherboard or anywhere else? Never used one before,

So, i apologize for looking lazy, but i tried to read the motherboard manual but it just got me more and more confused as i read, anyone with the same board could help?

Thanks a lot everyone, once more, sorry for asking so much =/

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, · January 27, 2015

Do not spread the thermal compound, place a pea-sized dab in the center and leave it.

Place your graphics card in the top large slot on your motherboard.

You will have to read your motherboard manual which will tell you the first SATA slot which is where you should connect your SSD, second slot for your other HDD and third for your third HDD.

LogicalDrm · January 28, 2015

^^ As for SATA, you should use SATA3 (6Gb/s) port for SSD, marked grey and SATA2 ports (3Gb/s) to HDDs. If you have performance HDD like WD Black, use SATA3 port for that as well.