It's very simple once you look at it- there's a few standard shapes and sizes of connectors in a computer. The most common is the 12 volt, 4 pin type- they're generally found connected to hard drives and CD drives and the like. It looks like a rectangle with two corners shaved off, so it only fits in one way.
The motherboard itself typically has one big connector, which is either 20 or 24 pins. It's impossible to miss, and again, they've designed the plug so it'll only fit one way. Many power supplies are set up as 20+4s, meaning you've got two separate connectors that can snap together to fit into a 24 pin, or you can just use the 20 pin. In addition there's some smaller ones used for other things, such as video cards, and possibly a CPU fan- as well as a separate CPU power plug-in on the motherboard. Not everything has all the connectors- some old video cards don't need extra juice, for instance.
Newegg (which isn't paying me anything, I swear) has a good writeup, with pictures, here.
Generally speaking, you shouldn't need to worry too much so long as you look at the number of things currently hooked up in the box, figure out how many pins are involved, and make sure you've got at least that on anything new. Worst case, you can always resort to either taking pictures of the PSU and inside of the case, or lugging it over to the shop and getting Tonia to tell you which PSU you need.
Honestly the whole thing's easier than you think. Connecting things up is akin to those blocks and holes when you were a toddler, figuring out which will fit in which.
Re: Computer Problems Suck
The motherboard itself typically has one big connector, which is either 20 or 24 pins. It's impossible to miss, and again, they've designed the plug so it'll only fit one way. Many power supplies are set up as 20+4s, meaning you've got two separate connectors that can snap together to fit into a 24 pin, or you can just use the 20 pin. In addition there's some smaller ones used for other things, such as video cards, and possibly a CPU fan- as well as a separate CPU power plug-in on the motherboard. Not everything has all the connectors- some old video cards don't need extra juice, for instance.
Newegg (which isn't paying me anything, I swear) has a good writeup, with pictures, here.
Generally speaking, you shouldn't need to worry too much so long as you look at the number of things currently hooked up in the box, figure out how many pins are involved, and make sure you've got at least that on anything new. Worst case, you can always resort to either taking pictures of the PSU and inside of the case, or lugging it over to the shop and getting Tonia to tell you which PSU you need.
Honestly the whole thing's easier than you think. Connecting things up is akin to those blocks and holes when you were a toddler, figuring out which will fit in which.