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the rear i/O SlOt on the SPEC-05 has an odd metal
shaping on one of the long sides, which can make fitting the
motherboard’s I/O shield a pain. Persevere—carefully!—and
you should be able to slot it in place. Once secured, you need
to relocate two of the stand-offs, moving them from the holes
marked “A” (for ATX) to the holes marked “M” (for micro-ATX).
These can be tough to extract, and case purists might turn up
their noses, as there’s only two holes for the lower side of the
mobo if you’re using a micro-ATX or Mini-ITX board. This is a
bit frustrating, meaning that one corner of the board will be
unsecured, but there’s nothing to be done about it. Our cooler
uses screws rather than a clip, so remove the two brackets
either side of the CPU slot, then install the B450M Steel
Legend motherboard by fitting it to the central mounting peg,
and screwing it down using seven of the screws you put aside.nOw it’S tiMe tO inStall the cooler. You need some thermal
paste (we favor Noctua’s NT-H1 compound), and the cooler
backplate from the motherboard. The AMD Wraith Stealth
that comes with the 2200G is a straightforward affair; apply
a pea-shaped drop of thermal paste to the center of the
processor, then push the cooler down on top, and screw it in.
Make sure that the side of the cooler fan that has the extended
plastic segment bearing the AMD logo is on the opposite side
to the RAM; otherwise, you may have difficulty fitting it over
the sticks. The four screws on the Wraith Stealth are fitted
with springs, so you may need to apply some pressure
to get them to catch. Screw in two opposite corners first to
make the process easier—ensure that all four screws have
caught to the backplate, then tighten them fully. Once the
cooler is secured, plug it into the CPU fan slot.the ryzen 3 2200G uses integrated graphics—Radeon Vega
8, to be precise—so ensuring that the motherboard and CPU
function properly together is vital, but we’ll get to that later.
For now, lift up the retention arm on the CPU socket, fit the
processor (being sure to line up the gold triangle on the CPU
with the triangle on the corner of the socket), then lower the
arm back into place. Next up is the RAM, which is no trouble
to install. The Steel Legend only has clips on one side of the
DIMM slots, so open them up, and fit your two sticks of Corsair
Vengeance LPX memory into the A2 and B2 slots; that’s the
second and fourth from the processor socket side. You might
assume that the correct slots are A1 and B1 (or perhaps A1
and A2), but this board is a tad unusual, and won’t give you
full performance from your RAM if you don’t use the A2 and
B2 slots. If you’re not sure, check the motherboard manual.the CrUCial BX500 Drive can be attached to the rear of the
case’s central plate, along with one other 2.5-inch SSD, but
for simplicity’s sake, we’re going to put both drives in the
drive cage. Fit the SSD to the center of one of the trays, and
screw it into place, then fit the Toshiba HDD; just line up the
plastic prongs, and slot them into the holes on either side of
the drive. You can screw the drive down for extra security,
but it is effectively locked in place, so it’s not necessary.
Make sure the drives are installed the right way around; their
power and SATA connectors should be facing the rear of the
drive cage. Once both drives are in their trays, return the
trays to the cage. We recommend placing the SSD in the top
slot, and the HDD in the third slot down, because this makes
plugging them in easier later on. Keeping the drives spaced
out helps keep their temperatures down, too.SHIELDS UP
COOL-DOWN TIME
CPU AND RAM INSTALLATION
DRIVE INSTALLATION
build a kick-ass PC
32 MAXIMUMPC aug 2019 maximumpc.com