Gadgetory

hey everyone i'm steve from gamers nexus dotnet and i'm joined by mike gag leon and we're talking about some system building tips today so tips and tricks as you're building computers whether you're intermediate or a newer builder this should hopefully help out with some of the frequently asked questions like what is the the most recent case you are working on most recently we built the roswell b-2 spirit i love working on those big cases there they're just so much easier to get in and out of however sometimes you can run into difficulty with cable length especially for the cpu power right normally you want to run it from around the back of the motherboard tray and then down and over but sometimes if the cable is not long enough you can run it up underneath the graphics card and then directly into the yeah rather than over everything oh yeah exactly and that cuts down on the profile the cables and stuff and that's right and kale management it is it is mostly an aesthetic thing but on the functional side there's not really that big of an impact for cooling if you're to move the CPU cable one place to the others are going to change that much standalone but it will change dust accumulation and stuff like that because as you have more cables it'll catch the dust most of the time I like to go when I'm looking for a case I like to look at all the pictures and see what kind of cabling they have built in or as a lot of times they'll have some really neat you know channels or ducts or or clips already built into the case that make like cable management a ton easier and they'll pre route a lot of the cable yes yeah yeah and on the dust side as well the orientation of your case fans will impact how much dust gets into the case so if you are normally one would hope that if the system is left in its stock configuration the fans should be about as good as they can be but if you're buying new fans you kind of want to make sure you're aiming at the right direction yeah this is there's a few ways to tell which way the fans point like if you you're not sure which way the intake is going there's the markings on the side of the fan right then then there's the the brand sticker yeah which is normally on the receiving end so whatever side the stickers on that's the direction that the air is going to be traveling yeah it's got the little like you said the little arrows on it too yeah most people are like so make sure you install this point in the correct direction and on that front I guess in in our thermal test we've learned things like positioning the fans on the top of the case for instance you normally have two slots on the top right and in some of my observational tests at least with the NZXT cases if you route the or if you put the fan on the top back it can sometimes steal air in a way that's undesirable from an air cooler on the cpu so you'll just have to try that with your different CPU coolers and see what works best that would probably my main piece of advice is try it on the top back try it on the top front and see with a 264 or some other software what performs best and then just change it because that will benefit you in the long run for sure other things we've talked about for building what about things that are commonly overlooked um a lot of people don't think about the front panel connectors or at least have questions of whether of how to orient them another thing when you're looking at your case for the cable management stuff a lot of cases will have the front panel connectors routed in really conveniently and they'll be coming out of the bottom right where they get plugged in the motherboard i really like that i also like labeling i like to have the the label of the cable facing out when i do the front panel connectors yeah that helps with making sure most a lot of the cables doesn't matter how one goes on which pin we're talking about the FPC the front panel controller FPC and that's your power LEDs your power button power switch right reset switch and for the most part doesn't matter but some of the cables especially the ones that you'll see with two different colored wires are actually positive and negative or ground in a positive something like that and those do matter they're normally marked on the board negative will often correlate with the black wire and if you want to make it even easier just like you're saying just point the text outward right so that you can read it and that means that it is installed in the correct orientation right but of course before you'll be doing any of that you should be putting your standoffs right yeah endear into your case to make sure you're not shortened anything yeah yeah that's overlooked a lot I think that so a lot of modern cases and I will pre install those right which is amazing but but we both know we get some cases and they're not always installed and if you don't know what they are you're looking at these brass screws and you don't know where they go right so you just directly screw in your motherboard and you fry it yeah yeah if you screw the motherboard and straight to the case you're gonna be in the most common scenario creating a direct short because the case is often made out of Steel even if it's painted it will still create a direct short and that's by just touching all the contact pins so generally you will have a scenario where just doesn't turn on and bad scenario is you could actually short something to damage it what you're saying but for the most part if you are lucky you can just put the standoffs in and try it again and hope that it works this right but generally just a direct short any other tips we have and gentle another thing when in reference to the motherboard is Ram slotting oh yeah every motherboards a little bit different in the way that they whether it's 2 4 or 1 3 if you're only using two sticks of RAM you have to open up your book and take a look don't forget to do that because RTFM because then you'll start your fear up or you'll try to and it will not start yes is just as easy as check the manual yeah always always check the manual because they'll have useful information about like which screws are the stand off screws and other kind of features that the case might have that that set it apart from anything you might have yeah or on the motherboard side the motherboard manuals include a lot of really important information that is actually this is something that we weren't talking about before the shoot the PCIe slots for multi-gpu configuration if you have a board say that x99 classified EVGA board that's got maybe five PCIe slots you can't just plug two video cards into any of those slots it's got to be correct per the motherboard prescription to make sure that they're getting the right amount of brains so check the manual for that as well if you're doing multi-gpu you need to make sure if you're supposed to use slot 1 and 3 or 1 in 5 it's very rarely 1 & 2 to close not the same line count that's something to check and then on the motherboard manual side again the the RAM slots and you'll often find extra power headers on boards right overclocking and thermal paste I don't know about you but I'm a rice grain kind of guy yeah I do not use the smearing tools that come with thermal paste I think that's crazy I never use credit cards I just do your little rice grain and I plop the CPU cooler right down on top you use the little plastics note never have never well yeah some of those thermal paste tubes will come with a plastic spoon or smoother or something it's just a gimmick it don't don't use it as someone who's pulled off and a lot of CPU coolers it always spreads out beautifully evenly without any assistance so don't don't don't risk getting pasted into your sick view or around your to another board you don't want to mess with yeah we have a whole video on that and the channel just search for the word thermal paste and you'll find it on the channel and you and then when you're torquing down your cooler you want to make sure don't over torque your screws anywhere on your computer these screws do not need to be gorilla tight I'd like to think of it as monkey tight just go till they stop and that should be plenty you're not having tons of my bread you don't worry about things falling out so yeah the CPU cooler especially because if you over torque the screws on that you can actually bend the board or damage the CPU yeah but that's what the recent sky like CPU bending scandal I guess was about sure a better thing so yeah that's suddenly a big one what about the i/o shield the i/o shield oh that's that's a pet peeve of mine I forget that almost every system build I do because I'm so excited to get them the board into the case and the CPU mounted and the graphs carded and everything plugged up that I forget to put it should be the first thing you do as soon as you open up your motherboard you should take your i/o shield and put it in the case because you will forget I forget oh yeah I forget yeah and at this point actually I don't even use that which is probably not the best practice but yeah it does it it doesn't make a real difference in anything but as somebody who's got a little bit of OCD right I really like having all the parts that it came with in the computer I have a lot of extra parts around they give you a lot of extra part yeah yeah so that is it for our quick build tips video as always if you need more information on system building feel free to post in the comments below or just check out our many other videos in the past and thank you for watching if you like this type of content hit the patreon link post or video leave comment below and we'll see you all next time see ya