Everything You Need To Know About The Screws Used on The PC

Motherboard Hardware

Together with the screws come several devices for installing the motherboard to the case, especially some stands that need to be installed between the metallic chassis from the case and the motherboard. These stands can be either plastic (Figure 10) or metallic (Figure 11). It is important to note that some cases have already the equivalent of these devices already mounted on the metallic chassis.

Figure 10: Plastic motherboard stands.

Figure 11: Metallic motherboard stands.

If you pay close attention to Figure 11 you will see that the metallic stands can use thick- or thin-thread. If in your case they use thick thread, you must use thick-thread screws on them (use the short ones, the same used by hard disk drives). If your case uses thin-thread ones, you will need to use thin-thread screws (we prefer using the round head one, but you can use any thin-thread screw here).

In Figure 11 we also show a screw that does not belong to the case. The last one on the right is used by expansion boards such as video cards to hold their connectors to their I/O shields. We put it here just for you to see the difference between it and the motherboard stands.

Together with the screws the case also comes with several red card box washers that should be used to isolate non-metalized holes. This subject goes beyond the scope of our present tutorial, so we recommend you to read our How To Install a Motherboard tutorial for a complete explanation about them.

Figure 12: Washers.

Fore a more in-depth explanation about the devices shown on this page, please read read our How To Install a Motherboard tutorial.