Step 2: The Processor
Putting the processor into place is a simple step as long as you’re careful. Hold your processor and look for the gold arrow in one of the corners. Your motherboard should have a similar arrow on the processor socket. Lift up the lever on the processor socket and put your processor in, lining up the gold arrows on both your processor and the socket. Push the lever back down to hold it into place. There should be no resistance when you’re doing this and if there is, stop and double check everything is in place and lined up perfectly.
To ensure your processor doesn’t start a fire inside your PC, you’ll need to install your cooler on the top. First off, put a small line of thermal paste on top of your processor. You don’t need tons of this stuff, so don’t be over-zealous with it. Next, place your cooler on top of your processor. Fix it into place with either the four pins on an Intel processor, or by hooking the two latches onto the motherboard’s square pegs for an AMD processor. Finally, pull the lever down to keep it firmly in place.