[Mosrael]

Well this is my first time attempting to build a PC and to be honest with you I'm extremely overwhelmed. First I would like to list the steps I took to see if you guys notice anything first hand that I did wrong.

I started with the motherboard and put the CPU in place used a dot of paste over the CPU and placed my heatsink over it and firmly tightened it in place. Next I put both sticks of ram into their corresponding spots on the mobo and then screwed everything into place in my case. Next came the CD-Drive and the Hard Disk followed by the power supply. I hooked the 24 pin into the motherboard and the 8pin into the CPU power slot and also attached the CPU fan to the CPU fan slot. Next I attached the power cords to supply power from the PSU to the Hard Drive and CD Drive and plugged in the SATA cables to both of them and attached them to the SATA Cable slots on the motherboard.

Now this is where I am thoroughly confused. I slid my graphics card into the SLI slot and took the cables for the powerswitch/LED's from the case and read through my motherboard manual to find where I should plug what. The only problem is the manual's color coding is different than the cases and the labeling on the wires do not indicate positive or negative aside from one cable.

So my questions are have I done everything correctly so far and can I assume the color wires are positive and the white wires negative?

I'll post a list of the exact model numbers of all the parts in the next post.

Any help is appreciated, I'd really like to get this up and running asap.

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Case: COOLER MASTER HAF 922 RC-922M-KKN1-GP
PSU: COOLER MASTER Silent Pro M700 RS-700-AMBA-D3 700W ATX12V V2.3
Mem: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3
GPU: GIGABYTE GV-N560OC-1GI GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor
MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-870A-UD3 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

[Mosrael]

Case: COOLER MASTER HAF 922 RC-922M-KKN1-GP
PSU: COOLER MASTER Silent Pro M700 RS-700-AMBA-D3 700W ATX12V V2.3
Mem: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3
GPU: GIGABYTE GV-N560OC-1GI GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor
MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-870A-UD3 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

[underscor3]

Solid parts for a first time build.

So my questions are have I done everything correctly so far and can I assume the color wires are positive and the white wires negative?

That is correct. Everything seems good so far. Make sure the 6-pin cable from the PSU is plugged in to the video card.

[Digerati]

and can I assume the color wires are positive and the white wires negative?

No you cannot assume that at all. The ATX Form Factor standard does not require any specific color coding or labeling for ATX power supplies, or their connections. They offer some recommendations, but they are not required, and not all makers follow them. So you cannot assume one or the other. White is often a "common" but not necessarily a "negative" - which is often reserved for black.

The connectors themselves, however, should be keyed like your RAM was, allowing for them to go in only one way. USB connections can be tricky, but often there is a dot or 1 by pin 1 on the motherboard side, and the plug may have a mark of some sort.