Gadgetory

building a gaming PC is actually pretty darn easy as a lot of you know there's only a couple of screws and then maybe seven components there used to be eight core components but with the obsolescence of optical drives we've dropped down and consolidated to about seven on average so this video it talks about how to build a gaming PC and we're going to go over the basics of assembly cable management and initial setup and before we get to that some quick notes here PC building is very modular but there are of course some compatibility issues so you need to make sure that your socket type is compatible with the CPU need to make sure that the memory is compatible with the CPU and the motherboard you can check all these lists online and check the article links in the description below for a lot more information on compatibility checking how you can learn to do it yourself rather than use a tool to do it and what you need to know with parts selection for our build we have sort of a modular PC build here and that is demonstrate just how much these components can change between different use cases for different users so in our setup we have two video card options two CPU options and a couple of different memory options the core setup here uses an msi gtx 970 or gtx 980 depending on what we want to do really and this is sort of a production rig for us we're going to use it internally you can see it already assembled here and this will be used for video production things like that so we're using the GTX 980 but if you wanted to lower your cost you could drop in something like the msi 970 gaming 4g card here it's a four gigabyte card and then for the motherboard we've gotten MSI is z170a sli board and that's for you can do sli of course but we're not doing that here we're just doing one card for the rest of it the CPU cooler that of course goes atop the 6700 k6 700k no longer includes a CPU cooler so we're using this this is an anti Mac's ets t40 fit there's an aftermarket cooler that'll give us some overclocking Headroom on our 6700 K alternatively you could select something like an i-5 6400 or 6500 which is one of our parts and that would give you the option of not overclocking and reducing your price you can even go down to an on z set because the Z chipset on the the motherboard down here is actually for overclocking and things of that nature some higher-end functions and the BIOS power supply of course powers it all and we're using an anorak digit fanless power supply for that this this is actually just a lower wattage PSU and you can see in our guide you normally don't need that much wattage especially for a 970 build and that has no fan so it's going to be quieter and then it's got braided cables which is a nice add as well SSD we're using an OC z drive arc 100 drive that I picked up for this build and then we'll throw in some kind of one terabyte storage for archival purposes and then the memory we're running at Corsairs at vengeance LP X memory which is 3200 megahertz you can definitely drop the frequency on this this is a ddr4 kit because skylake requires ddr4 for this particular motherboard now Scylla can do ddr3l and some boards will do ddr3 it's definitely a bit of a push but we're using ddr4 memory for this because that's the motherboards built for and then the speed is good for production tasks video processing things like that and you can read and view our content on dual channel configurations the past if you want to see how it affects the type of tasks you do gaming not a huge impact but we're running a 32 gigabyte kit alternatively you could run a 16 gigabyte kit and that would be sort of the cheaper option of course and then to put everything in we're using an NZXT h4 40 v2 case that's this black case over here with some of the sound damping foam and things like that so that is our mid tower case for this build tools for a PC build are extremely limited and easy and accessible you probably have them already or at least one of them and that is a Phillips screwdriver and then we have this ESD wrist strap so it's an anti-static wrist strap that grounds you if you use it properly and a lot of people don't use it correctly so if you are previous content on anti-static materials and setup and you'll see how to build one of these cables and use it correctly so the way we do it is we cut the head off of a normal power supply cable that we're not going to use we bend the hot pins that go into the walls we bend those so they don't go into the wall because if they go to the wall and you do this incorrectly it's not good please follow our previous guide on that but you do that cut the cable and then just give direct access to the copper for the sort of alligator clip on the anti-static wrist strap you want to make sure it's connected to the ground wire and that you've covered up safely any of the hot wires in there again previous video for that but that's what we're going to use to make sure we're grounded during the build process and make sure nothing gets shocked if you feel a shot come from your finger to a component like you would with a car door there's a very good chance you've damaged something even at a sort of low level or a latent ESD event something like that so be careful building those are really the only things you need to know with assembly before getting started the rest of it is just screwing in a couple Phillips screws and then you're pretty much done and connecting the cables of course so let's get started we're first going to build this out of the case the reason we do that is to make sure everything works and because it's a lot easier to get the CPU cooler in there before installing the motherboard into the case so we'll do the CPU the RAM installation the CPU cooler installation will test everything with the power supply and then once we know it's all good and functional we'll put it in the case and call it a day ok so first we're going to install the system as much as possible outside of the case and the reason for that is because if something goes wrong you want to know about it before you do all the work of installing it in the case and doing all the cabling so just trust me on that to get the CPU and there you remove the CPU socket cover on the motherboard which I've just done and you want to keep that cover for warranty reasons the Intel CPUs have two notches on either side and you can line those notches up with the little nubs that stick up on the CPU socket itself and there's also an arrow pointing to the bottom left corner in this case but you can of course correlate that with your socket and the has pins in the CPU rather than in the socket and that you can align by looking at their missing pins where they have transistors and things like that and align those and then for the MDC peas they also have an arrow on the corner so we've got the CPU installed do the cooler in a minute first let's do the memory installation so for memory you can run either four sticks or two sticks ideally for the dual channel setup this particular platform and that is a that is dependent on the cpu architecture so this is a dual-channel build we're assembling you can see here if you install this way that is the only way it will not fit so the role with Ram is if you apply pressure and it doesn't go stop and so you line this little notch here up with this one rotate it accordingly you install it and pop these little pins out here and then once you push down you apply some force and you'll hear it snap so that means that we've installed it correctly it is seated all the way very important to be seated all the way and in this case we're installing all four sticks so we'll use all four slots but if you're only doing two sticks then you need to look at the manual and figure out which two slots you use to get the maximum memory capacity dual channels not really that critical for gaming we've done testing on it you can actually look it up on the channel but we're going to run it because we're doing a build that is very heavily targeted for production use internally at the site that means we want the fastest memory we can get and that's why we're running this event lpx set up at 3200 megahertz with the proper dual channel configuration so that we can render out videos as quickly as possible so that's how you install the memory and the CPU now we'll do the CPU cooler so now we're going to install the CPU cooler this part is one of the more tedious of building systems actually normally the most difficult demand what board you have so we're using a z series board and unless you're running an extreme series Intel motherboard it does take a bit more work to install one of these CPU coolers but it's not that bad first of all you've got a backplate that goes on the backside of the motherboard if you're on an AMD you'll have to remove it unless you're running an aftermarket cooler that uses the stock backplate and then there's these different retention errs that are used and will depend on the cooler that you purchase so this is not the exact same you'll see for every CPU cooler out there certainly not the same for liquid coolers and we do have an alternative automatic slick Mattox cooler if we wanted to run a liquid cooler for this setup so for this process you basically first need to put on the thermal paste if it's not pre applied as on liquid coolers these days and when you're putting on the thermal face we have a few videos on this generally about the size anywhere from a grain of rice to a pea depending on how large the CPU itself is and we like to apply it in the center and then torque down the CPU cooler to spec and that will spread out the thermal paste appropriately across the surface the point of the thermal paste is just to fill microscopic imperfections in the surface and it's really not supposed to fill the whole plate the whole cold plate because that is actually worse than copper contact if copper contact can be made direct to CPU mount that on top of the CPU by following the instructions and then you want to tighten the corners across from each other or not don't tighten one side or one screw all at once you definitely want to do opposing corners for tightening to distribute the weight evenly so that's how you install the CPU cooler make sure it's all good and tight not going to fall out and then once you're done with that plug in the four pin CPU fan header to the specific CPU fan plug on the motherboard don't plug it into a chassis fan port and if you're running a liquid cooler there's only a pump power as well plug that in as your manual instructs you all right so take a good look at this this board is flexing a lot right now not good for the board not good for anything on it this will happen if you over tighten those screws so always go with monkey tight not gorilla tight on these you basically just want to be sort of hand tight tight enough to hold it down and apply pressure but not tight enough to do this with the board so that's what we want to avoid that is why you do not ever over tighten screws on a CPU cooler because it can do damage to the system in the long term or even the immediate future thank you this found the point of tension okay so to finalize our build outside of the case before assembling everything we're going to plug in the video card you'll want to hang this over the edge of your table I'm not doing it here for demonstration purposes but you'll plug in the video card in the top PCIe slot hang that back silver plate over the edge of the table and then get your power supply ready you need the 24 pin which 24 pin goes in right here and then you need the CPU EPS 12 volts header which goes in over here near the CPU cooler so that's your 8 pin in this case sometimes their 4 pin so you plug those two cables in from the power supply mount your video card and then connect to your appropriate PCIe cables Aziz you've got two banks right here so you connect those run the power to the wall to the power supply flip the on switch on the power supply and then you can hit if there is one present hit a power button it would normally be up here on the motherboard and that will turn the board on if there's not one present we have a video on jumpin a motherboard electrically to jump a start signal to it it's pretty easy and as you can see here you would basically take your screwdriver locate the front panel headers you got two banks here and then find the one that is the power switch that's not a PWR underscore SW and you would jump the two pins that are appropriate to that switch to get it to turn on alright so now you install the board into the case if you want the i/o shield which I do not do you want the i/o shield you put that in there before you put the motherboard in of course and you need these standoffs in here before you install the board those standoffs are the black things that are sticking up sometimes they are a sort of brass color and those are used to prevent a direct short so they go in there to basically screw in the screws in to which I'm doing right now there eight of them and you want the standoffs rather than straight into the case which would potentially drag the board into the into the steel plate on the case and that would cause a direct short which would mean your system would not boot so you do all eight of these screws do not skimp on these and once you've got those in we'll do the power supply the power supply cables and the video card last for ease along with the storage devices so now we're going to install the power supply for NZXT h4 40s through 40 and for Corsairs new 600 c do this thing where the power spot is actually in a separate compartment and that is because they use a power supply shroud which is what's in here and that hides all the cabling makes things a lot cleaner to install so those things have these brackets this is not standard you will not find this in every case it has become somewhat of a standard this year but it is not really in everything just yet so you won't have those everywhere but we're going to take the power supply obviously on the side that connects the cables to be inside the case and then we want to expose the side with the power plug to the rear of the the case here and we want the fan pointed down in this instance because that's the only way for it to breathe so we're going to line this up with the four holes that are present for the power supply and screw it in and then we'll be good to go so now we're going to install the video card all you need to do here is look for the appropriate slot you don't really want the top one and remove the cases sort of panel protectors in the back when you're ready to install this all it does is sock it in it so it's just like Ram where you get the sort of pop which is what we just felt there and if you want to remove it you push down a peg in the back that's over here and then you can just pull it out like that it should never require any force to install or remove if it does something's wrong stop and look at it and figure it out so we're going to socket this in by lining up the rear i/o shield and then slot that and then it's just a matter of installing a couple of screws into the expansion base for the case so we've got two screws for that use both screws because it will help prevent videocards sag if I only use one here you'll see that it's actually sort of sagging a bit and that's not really good for anything so installing two screws will help stop that from happening and I would recommend just sort of saving the cabling for last and install this video card first do the cables later and maybe check to make sure there's not any SATA or USB 3 cable in under the video card that you should install first so that's how you do the video card the SSD we've got installed down here already and for this particular case is a little bit different than most cases because that's just egos on top of the PSU shroud it's literally just two or four screws depending on what kind of case you're using you install it you mount it into a bracket and then later on you connect the cables so that's all there is to the SSD installation nothing special there now we're going to do the cabling and this is the hardest part of the entire process which is saying a lot because it's really not that hard otherwise so first off two main cables for the motherboard there's the 24 pin power and eight or four pin power for the CPU and the 24 pins located to the right of the RAM all you do is line up the clip with the clip on the socket plug it in do not force it if you force it and it goes in the wrong way you will cause damage to something and then you plug in the eight pin just the same way up near the CPU so those are the two main ones a lot of people overlook that CPU header and if you do your system won't turn on normally won't be damaged but it won't turn on so next after we've got those two power headers in the board there's a couple other power cables to plug into the board for various things like fans and those fan headers are the three or four pin ones they used to be white now they're white or black and three pin means it is not PWM or pulse width modulated and four pin means that it is which means that the fan speed can be controlled by the motherboard directly you want that so take the CPU header plug the CPU header in directly to the motherboard in the CPU slot if you didn't already do that in our previous step where we built the board outside the case and assemble the CPU cooler next if it's a liquid coil you plug in the three pin power from the CLC to an appropriate header and that if you got case fans you plug in those case fans to other three pin headers or four pin headers across the board now some cases like our NZXT h4 40 have fan hubs in the back and so instead of plugging your fans into the board you want to plug those into the fan hub so you plug it into the rear of the case it's a lot cleaner has some control options a lot of over voltage protection things like that plug it in there and then you plug that fan hub into the power supply directly no via 4-pin molex or SATA power connector in this case it's for pin molex so those all connected the next thing to look at is the front panel headers and front panel headers are exactly what they sound like they are cables or wires with headers on them and they come from the front of the case normally for USB to USB 3 and the power switch and LED items on the front of the case so the power switch plugs in with other front panel control headers in the normally bottom right of the board you want to look for something like at p1 or jf p2 and then you check the legend on the board if there's not one present check your manual it is not standard it's different for every board for the most part and you plug in corresponding cables so the thing to look out for here if it is a positive and negative cable set and it cares which way they're plugged in you basically just want the text pointing outward so if it's in the top row of front panel headers you plug it in with the text facing up it's in the bottom row you plug it in with the text facing down and you plug in the power switch to reset switch HDD led and power led if you want those things if you don't want the lights don't plug them in the next thing also down in this area is the USB 2 headers for USB 2 in the front of the case if you have that in that instance you just look for the USB two headers it's a cluster of about eight or so pins and there's one missing line it up plug it in you're done with that try and manage these cables by routing them appropriately through the behind area of the case before connecting them that way you can keep it all really clean and just do all the tied ons at the end and you can just use those grommeted holes or what-have-you for your case to route things and manage them cleanly after the USB 2 header is plugged in it's time to connect the audio header that is for the 3.5 milimeter jacks in the front if present that would be HD audio that's normally in the bottom left of the board when oriented in a standard rotation standing up in a normal case finally USB 3.0 that's of course present on basically everything now if you have an three-plus boards a lot of those don't have it still but you plug in the USB 3 header into a special I think it's a 20 pin socket that's almost always located basically adjacent to the 24-pin power header you want to do this before you connect your video card generally and that be very careful with it because those pins will Bend and it's just like a CPU socket where it's a nightmare to unbend them so plug that in line up the notch with the gap in the socket plastic shroud and make sure that lines up and you'll be good to go so that covers all of the front panel headers for the standard case covers the power headers for the motherboard and all that's left for us is the GPU power so once you've mounted your GPU and I normally do this last personally you mount the GPU or the video card and then you connect your six and eight pin power headers from the power supply into that as appropriate try and route and manage them before you connect them and you'll be good to go there's one last main set of cables to plug in and that's for the storage devices so whether you've got an SSD or a 3.5 inch hard drive they use the same type of headers the only time it's different is if you've got an MDOT two device that connects to the board and in that case it's still pretty darn simple you just connect the SSD I'm not - form factor directly into the socket you screw it down no cables involved whatsoever the board will power that device for an SSD like we're using a 2.5 inch sort of standard SSD or if you have a hard drive you need a SATA cable is come with the motherboard plug in the SATA cable line up the L brackets with the receiving end on each side try and manage it before you connect it and then line up the L bracket for of course the SATA power which is that sort of thin l-shaped cable it's not at all like the other power option for fans which would be the four pin molex so you plug the SATA power SATA data in and then that takes care of the drive we've taken care of the board the GPU the fans and the front panel headers with USB to USB 3 and HD audio all connected as well I don't think I'm missing anything there's not much else in 99% of builds but if you've got special hubs or controllers or lights then check the instructions and apply cables as necessary so that's it that's all you have to do to build a system pretty easy at the end of the day once you get good it only takes a few minutes to do even though that first run-through might be a couple hours whereas case scenario for troubleshooting steps if you run into issues with booting search our Channel for troubleshooting you'll find a guide where we talk about things to do we've got articles on the website of course as well for troubleshooting system boot problems and then your next steps would be installing Windows Linux or some other OS and installing your core applications I use ninite for installing sort of bulk applications like Libre a LibreOffice or OpenOffice or Chrome or whatever you can use one program to do that or do it manually and then once you're done with that that's it you can use your system as normally you will want to look at bios or UEFI before getting too deep into things and installing your OS though make sure it's up to either AHCI or nvme or whatever is appropriate for your build and if you have questions about that you can check our forums gamers nexus dotnet go to the forums and we'll help you out with PC parts election troubleshooting and any other issues you run across but as always a link in the description below for the full article if any of this went by too quickly and hit that patreon link the post roll video if you want to help us out directly thank you for watching I'll see you all next time