Q How many screws can I get away with? Do I have to nail as many as I can on the board?

Q As soon as I put everything together (using the motherboard manual as a reference), I get a large beeping noise. I’m pretty sure I put everything together right so what’s the problem?

A This is one of those questions techies can get into frothing at the mouth over. Lazy bints like me will be happy just nailing maybe three and be done with it while the more screw-obsessed will be putting screws at every corner, in the middle, pretty much anywhere the holes in the board and the casing line up. It might be a good idea to have more screws if you have more stuff on your motherboard like say, two SLI-hooked graphic cards, fancy processor fans, uber-expensive ultra-fast memory. But if you’ve got a mostly integrated board (integrated sound and graphics),then just holding it up by three screws shouldn’t be a bad idea.

A This sounds like a case of a very wonky motherboard. Some motherboards, especially the earlier Core 2 Duo boards, are known for their quirks. I know one board where you have to manually set processor settings before the board will calm down and allow you to tinker with it. Beeping is usually the sign of an error somewhere so check your board’s manuals about beeps and error messages so you can pinpoint what exactly went wrong. If three or more tries don’t help it, consider replacing or returning it.