Gadgetory

excellent everybody welcome to Paul's Hardware today's video is going to be a beginner's guide on building a gaming computer for about $500 so let's get started a desktop PC is made up from seven different parts a processor or CPU which will often come with a heat sink fan for cooling in the box a case to hold everything and protect the parts inside as well as providing some airflow a motherboard which everything plugs into memory that holds on to data the computer needs quickly and at least one storage drive like a SSD your hard drive for permanent data storage a power supply to supply power and if it wants to be a gaming PC almost always a dedicated graphics card now this video is about building the desktop computer itself so if you're using this as a guide bear in mind that apart from these seven components you would still need an operating system to install like Windows 10 you can get it cheap via the video link in the card up there are peripherals as well like a mouse keyboard and monitors so factor in another 100 to 150 dollars if you need to buy those too and I'll link to some suggestions for those parts down in the description for my CPU I have an Intel Core i3 6100 it's a dual core with hyper threading so it can pretend to be a quad-core the motherboard is an asrock v 150 m pro 4 v it suck at 11:51 so that matches the cpu and I spent twelve four dollars for this board instead of the be 150 M HDB that I picked out in the monthly builds video this is all based on because it has 4 memory slots instead of 2 and also an m2 slot in there that you can add a fast SSD in the future with if you want to the case is a fractal core 1100 a budget micro ATX sized case at $40 it will get the job done for storage I have a 240 gig SSD it is a sand disc but very comparable speed wise to the a data one from the original parts list and although I highly recommend an SSD for your operating system one of the first things that you might add to this build is going to be more storage ideally you can maybe salvage a 1 terabyte or so hard drive from your old computer that is definitely recommended just a single 8 gigabyte ddr4 stick from memory that is another easy future upgrade would be to just add another 8 gig stick in the future for dual channel and 16 gigs also embarrassing mistake here I accidentally grabbed an incompatible g.skill DDR three memory stick for some of this video that I was going to use before I realize my mistake and I ended up switching to an 8 gig corsair ddr4 stick the video card is a gigabyte Radeon rx 460 with 4 gigs of video memory a great starter card for 130 dollars and also an easy part to upgrade down the line the power supply was supposed to be an EVGA 450 watt unit but so if you're wondering why there's a 700 watt power supply here and a 450 watt power supply in the description well I ordered the forum 50 watt and Amazon sent me a 700 watt plastic on the outside of it had a sticker with a boardroom 50 watt label on it too so I mean that's what I paid for but is what I got at anyway for the purposes of this video the 700 watt unit will work just as well those are my components though and for tools I'm also going to keep it simple with a standard Phillips head screwdriver scissors and a rubber mat to set delicate components on oh and later on I realized they also needed some pliers so here's everything unboxed and laid out onto the table apart from each item itself I have the box of accessories that came with the case the power cord and four screws that came with the power supply the heat sink fan that came with the CPU and the motherboard manual IO shield and SATA cable that came with the motherboard the power supply supplies power via these cables to the rest of the computer it will plug in directly to your storage the SSD as well as the graphics card and a couple places on the motherboard and if you're concerned about static electricity and take the three prong plug from your power supply and plug it into a grounded outlets and then just touch the housing that will ground you and then you'll be safe to touch other components so let's get the motherboard ready to go by installing the CPU and memory carefully open the CPU socket on the motherboard by pushing the lever arm down and out away from the socket then lift the lid there's a triangle on the corner of the CPU that you should align with the triangle that's on the socket as well as the socket cover remember to never touch the gold contacts on the bottom of the CPU or those pins in the socket they are very delicate hold the CPU by its edges line up those gold triangles and with the contacts facing down lower the CPU on to the socket bear carefully there are also two notches along the edges of the CPU that will help align in the socket once it's in don't push down just give it a very light jiggle to make sure it's settled and then close the socket lid then push down the lever all the way back into place and note that it might take a little bit of pressure to do that the socket cover will pop off and the CPU is installed next we'll install the stock CPU heatsink fan which has some thermal paste pre applied to help it transfer heat from the CPU don't touch that thermal paste like I did just line up the four plastic mounting plugs with the four holes around the CPU socket keep it level and push those pins in starting with opposite corners once it's secure plug the fan in it connects to the four pin CPU fan header next is memory I have one stick and four slots and the manual doesn't really say which slot to use for a single stick oh well it's fine I'm just going to go with the outer one and it is easy to move a stick of memory if it doesn't happen to work fYI it did the memory sticks have a notch in the middle that's just off sensor so just make sure you've got it flip the right way open the side latch of the DIMM slot and then drop the memory straight in apply firm even pressure straight down on top of the memory stick and it should snap into place closing the latch okay let's set the motherboard CPU and memory assembly aside for a moment and work on the case in power supply remove the case side panels and the vertical drive mount that's right up at the front and prep the power supply by unbundling just the cables that we need those are the 24 pin and 8 pin plugs for the motherboard and the SATA power connector for an SSD note that the eight pin is labeled CPU and should not be confused with these six plus two pin connectors for graphics cards which we won't be using in this build they are keyed again so you can't plug them in wrong unless you really force them but watch out for that bundle all the unused cables up so you can shove them in the drive bays at the top of the case and then drop in the power supply and secure it with the four screws from the back while you're at it finish off that case prep by removing these upper two white expansion slot covers remember there's no shame in using a screw driver for a stuck thumb screw and grab the i/o shield that came with the motherboard and pop that into the rectangle opening below the power supply use the butt end of a screwdriver to pop that into place if it's given you any trouble next you'll want motherboard standoffs so gather eight of these from the case accessories as well as eight screws of the proper threading to go in each standoff you can just test outside of the case your motherboard should have eight mounting holes that corresponds with the mounting points in the case itself I like to really secure my standoffs to the case so I used pliers here to tighten them down so they wouldn't come loose if I ever take the system apart now we can drop in the motherboard CPU and memory assembly angle the i/o into the case first and make sure you have all of your standoffs in the right place once it's settled I missed one here but I just had to pull the motherboard out move the standoff to the right spot and then everything was good to go once you're sure everything is lined up and that there's no standoffs anywhere where they shouldn't be secure the motherboard with your eight screws and remember these do not need to be tight just snug now comes the fun part of plugging all those cables into the motherboard starting with the 24 pin and eight pin power supply cables these are keyed so they'll only go in one way and there's a latch on one side of the plug that will engage with the catch on the motherboard side plug and if they do require some extra pushing especially for that 24 pin make sure to get your hand down there and support the underside of the motherboard as you push it in the rest of these cables our front panel plugs from the case they're needed so that the power button and USB ports up there will work by far the most annoying are the front panel power reset and LED plugs as they are tiny and they need to connect two equally tiny pin outs on the motherboard and just reference the manual to see what goes where remember that for the LED plugs you will need to pay attention to what's positive and negative but for these switches the on/off you won't that doesn't matter also just FYI this case does not have a reset button so those pins on the motherboard won't be used this case has one fan with a free pin plug that plugs into the chassis fan plug on the motherboard and then finally you've got the USB 2.0 USB 3.0 and front panel audio the USB 2 and audio plugs are similar but they are again keyed differently so you can't mix them up when you're plugging them in and each of these has a specific spot to plug it into on the motherboard and they're all labeled while you can reach them now is a good time to tidy up some of these cables upfront just try to gather them together in sort of a neat ish bundle with twist tire too and keep them away from blocking that front intake fan by the way if you're going to be using twist ties make sure that they're in good shape with no metal showing that could cause a short nearly finished now storage and GPU are all that's left so grab the SATA data that we set aside and plug one end into the SATA port on the motherboard their l-shaped and they only go in one way I used SATA port 1 although any of those SATA ports 1 through 6 can be used the SSD can be mounted to the inside of this vertical drive mount and I'm going to use four small screws to do that I pointed the drives plugs towards the front of the case in order to hide those cables the short plug gets the SATA data cable that you just plugged into the motherboard the long plug gets the SATA power plug that should already be ready and waiting from the power supply and then the drive mount panel can be reinstalled with v3 screws and finally we have the video card it has a long PCI Express connector on the bottom which also has a notch close to its bracket line this up with the PCI Express slot on the motherboard that is closest to the CPU and the graphics card should drop into place with just a bit of firm pressure there is a catch on the motherboard slot that you might need to slide over to the unlock position to install and then back into the lock position once the GPU is in secure the back bracket with the two thumb screws and you're finished with the build part at least but don't put the side panels back on until you've tested it that's bad luck plug in your PSU power cable you could also connect the monitor mouse and keyboard at this point turn on the power supply and hit that power button and your system should spring to life with fans spinning and I guess just fans spinning for now if you didn't plug in a monitor like me if it doesn't spin up it usually means that you have a short somewhere or that something isn't plugged in all the way so start by going through those connections and see if you missed something or maybe like the graphics card isn't see it or something like that so that's how you build this little computer but what's next well you'd want to do some basic system setup and install an operating system like Windows 10 and I have a follow-up video coming on that very soon you might also be considering upgrades this build has a lot of headroom for that which I will also be doing an upcoming video on and you'd probably also want to see how the system actually performs and you guessed it I have a video coming up on that soon too in the meantime though I hope this video helps you and your PC building adventures leave your comments in the comment section down below links to these parts as well as my Paul's hardware store you can buy shirts like this one are also in the description hit the like button to get subscribed if you enjoyed thanks for watching and I'll see next