the original Last guide you'll ever need will stay up but there's some new stuff
that we need to talk about to keep it up to date welcome to the 2024 edition of
our exhaustive PC build guide where we won't specifically be recommending
anyone's products but rather we'll be equipping you with the tools you need to
configure buy and build the right machine for you the model numbers and
the small details have changed hence the update but the process has not so
without further Ado let's give a quick shout out to our sponsor seic seic makes
solid power supplies they're built to last they're quiet and they have a great
warranty what more could you want maybe the rest of the video to start you need
to ask yourself some questions what am I going to do with this computer are you a
hardcore gamer you're going to want to allocate more of your budget to your
graphics card and maybe CPU are you a content creator maybe you can ease up on
the GPU a little bit and splurge on CPU and RAM are you just using as a
glorified nass then you'll be looking for motherboard with lots of IO and a
case with lots of Drive mounts and maybe you'll want to Splash out on a
specialized redundant power supply no matter what your budget is this is the
question you need to answer before going any further so I'm going to roll that
intro while you figure it
out now that you have your answer ask the question again but deeper what kinds
of games do you play play Mr or M gamer
RPGs and Visually complex games where exploration and sightseeing are
priorities mean you'll probably want a high resolution display for the best
experience preferably with HDR peripherals may not matter as much to
you and in fact you may prefer to get a console controller for some of your
games rather than a typical PC gaming keyboard and mouse do you prefer
hardcore competitive Shooters though where every millisec counts well now
you'll want a premium Mouse for sure and maybe even a high-end keyboard not to
mention a high refresh rate display even if that costs you some resolution or
some color accuracy the games you play will also affect the number of CPU cores
you should get since different genres of games tend to utilize them differently A
good rule of thumb for future proofing your build is to make sure that you have
at least as many cores as a current gen console if you want to stream or record
your gameplay then maybe throw on two to four more and make sure that you've got
a GPU with a highquality Hardware video encoder built in as for the content
creators out there what should you focus on well it depends on what you create a
digital artist might not need anything special for a GPU but would definitely
benefit from a drawing tablet a musician would want tons of RAM to load up on
instrument patches and samples without slowing to a crawl a video editor needs
at least a modest GPU a lot of RAM and a
buttload of storage preferably fast so they can review their footage at full
quality a 3D modeler needs a reasonably fast CPU and GPU for rendering a GPU cap
capable of real-time Ray tracing helps tremendously in prototyping and previews
an engineer might sacrifice raw horsepower for validated Hardware like a
Quadro GPU to ensure pain-free operation a programmer wants a hefty CPU with a
lot of threads for handling frequent compilation and a lot of RAM to go with
it whereas a writer really only needs a keyboard a decent display or two and a
quality water bottle to stay hydrated LTG store.com is this a Nas or home
storage of some other sort if so what is it for Cold Storage that won't often
change like backups ripped Media or game installs won't need High speeded to be
usable instead you'll want higher capacity hard drives warm storage that
changes frequently like a document or photo dump is where you'll want a
balance of capacity and speed hot storage like a footage inest or for use
as a network boot device will demand higher speed increasing cost you may
also need a fast CPU depending on the scale of your storage space adding
additional roles like Plex increases system requirements so while slower
computers can get by as a basic file server you're going to need to account
for CPU overhead especially for transcoding now let's talk about form
factor computers are available in all shapes and sizes from complete PCS the
size of a pack of gum to entire racks that contain only the storage for a bank
of machines elsewhere in the data center the most common variants or form factors
are as follows ATX is your classic it's
the big beige box size it usually features at least five expansion slots
and a taller chassis you can find these in Midtown Tower and full tower
configurations which basically just indicate height full Towers tend to be
easier to work with but are much more difficult to move around and find a home
for so they've been falling out of fashion if you're not sure what to buy
an ATX form factor case can accommodate any smaller size motherboard although
installing an ITX motherboard in one of these seems more than a little silly
although maybe that is an aesthetic that you want to uh Embrace Micro ATX is
smaller than ATX with at most four expansion slots and for most people
that's totally sufficient but you should always check to make sure
that you've got everything you need you'll find some of the more interesting
case designs in this size like these cute Cube shaped ones like ATX you can
fit smaller form factors like DTX and ITX in here and it won't look as silly
if you do mini ITX and DTX are the smallest mainstream sizes with only one
and two expansion slots respectively these are the boards you'll find in the
tiniest builds and can often pack impressive variety of features into
their diminutive size however their I/O can be somewhat limited and and if your
goal is to go as Tiny as possible you'll either want to get a couple of larger
builds under your belt first or pay extra careful attention to your case
manufacturer's documentation a DTX board
may fit in the ITX case but also may not
and if you have a larger GPU or cooler it may not fit in your case of choice at
least not without some difficulty the next big question is arguably most
important what's my budget if your answer is anywhere from less than I'd
like two I'll take what I can get then
your best bet is often to buy used you can find off least Business Machines
available for a fraction of their original price as we've shown a number
of times in the past these can be a great starting point for a new build
most of the work is already done for you and many can be improved for a
relatively small budget another option is to look for previous gen Hardware you
can sometimes find killer deals as retailers clear out old stock to make
way for the next big thing but this is mostly applicable to used gear the good
news is that solid state components with no moving Parts like CPUs rarely fail
and components with worn thermal compound or bad fans can have those
repaired I nearly always start my builds around my CPU and GPU because apart from
being the most expensive components and therefore taking up most of my budget
they also dramatically narrow down the other parts that I might select for
example I won't be able to buy an Intel chipset motherboard if I use an AMD CPU
and vice versa and I won't be able to use a small form factor case if I've got
a gigantic triple slot graphics card when shopping for a CPU there are a few
things to keep in mind first is that across brands or even different
generations of the same brand specifications like clock frequency and
cash are not likely to be useful indications of performance you can find
out more detail about this in this video but that doesn't mean that you can
ignore them outright let's say you've decided on a CPU series but there are
literally dozens of options obviously choosing the best one is easy just sort
by Price high to low but is it really that much faster is it worth it well
this is where the specs can help you make direct comparisons between multiple
products in a single lineup take for example Intel's Core i 91900 k this is
an 8 core CPU with 16 threads that runs it up to 5.3 GHz that's the turbo speed
of course it's base frequency is just 3.5 meanwhile the core i711 700 K is
also an 8 core 16 thread CPU that only
runs at up to 5 GHz meaning that the real world performance between these two
chips is 6% at most but with a price
difference of over $100 there's more to picking a CPU than raw power however
sometimes you want integrated Graphics sometimes you want more or faster PCI
Express Lanes and sometimes you just want less heat and noise on the subject
of PCI Express or PCIe as it's commonly known historically each new generation
has doubled the perlane bandwidth of the previous one making it a major selling
point for shiny new platforms the world over however the importance of this for
gamers and regular consumers alike can sometimes be overstated outside of raw
file copy tests uh PCI Express Gen 4 SSD
will perform very similarly at gen 3 speeds however again recognizing this
manufacturers are beginning to build their newest generation add-in cards
like gpus and and ssds with fewer Lanes
to save on Power and on cost that means that a CPU with fewer but faster Lanes
can avoid bottlenecks that otherwise might harm performance for example as a
writing AMD's apus can have as few as 10
PCI Express Lanes available for use only four of which are actually usable for a
GPU if a future Apu upgraded those few lanes to PCI Express Gen 5 and you
matched it with a Gen 5 GPU that limitation becomes literally half as
impactful it's worth pointing out by the way that some motherboards and even some
chipsets might differ in their PCI Express version support even from one
slot to the next so pay close attention
if your first Choices put you over budget it's time to experiment in
Bargain Hunt for Intel users an f-s series CPU might be a good option as
those lack integrated graphics and cost a little less to buy while for AMD users
paradoxically buying the G Series CPUs Nets you integrated graphics and a
decent savings over the more expensive X Series without sacrificing much
performance if you end up going back a generation or two to make your budget
work be mindful of which CPU socket and motherboard chipset you end up with
locking into something older might save you a ton of money and still result in
satisfactory performance but it could limit your ability to upgrade to a new
processor later on other parts work in much the same way when the GeForce RTX
2080 came out its price was higher than the cost of a GTX 1080ti while offering
effectively zero performance advantage and a new headline feature that hadn't
even been used in games yet let alone proven Savvy Shoppers were scooping up
1080 TI for great prices left and right and the only drawbacks ended up coming
later with more limited support for software features like RTX voice ambient
noise cancellation and in the longer term probably an earlier driver support
end date and I wish I could say things are better now but the sad fact is that
prices Remain extortionate the upper echelons of GPU performance today can
cost more than twice what NVIDIA charged for their GTX 10 adti in 2017 and that's
adjusting for inflation we live in Dark Times indeed but there is a silver
lining older gpus still provide a lot of bang for the buck especially now that
GPU mining has cooled down secondhand gpus are unlikely to come with any kind
of warranty and might lack modern features like mesh shaders realtime rate
tracing or av1 encoding but they're a great choice for traditional 1080P or
1440p gaming if you don't expect to run it Max settings make sure you don't pick
up the first shiny thing you see with a lot of megahertz as with CPUs you must
read reviews to evaluate the performance of a graphics card do not be tempted to
draw a conclusion based on clock speeds and memory do look out though for
features like Hardware video encoding real-time rate tracing support and
anything else that your game or your application might be able to use take
for example dlss which increases performance at a small cost to visual
Fidelity or the blender optics renderer for NVIDIA and on the AMD side there's
the Fidelity FX Suite which has some pretty cool cool stuff in it as well now
if you have a choice between two otherwise identical gpus but with
different amounts of onboard memory or frame buffer I would recommend the one
that has more but be careful that it's not slower memory both AMD and NVIDIA
have been caught putting large amounts of crummy memory on entry-level gpus
sometimes even mid-range gpus seemingly in an attempt to make them look more
enticing even if it comes at the cost of extremely poor performance your PC isn't
the only your GPU plugs into and as a display owner myself I own a display I
know a thing or two about plugging in displays when buying a GPU or monitor
pay close attention to the ports available on the I/O plate here most
gpus today come with a bank of DisplayPort connectors and an HDMI port and
while you might be forgiven for thinking they're the same they are very much not
while they share some similarities they're both digital they both carry
audio as well as video and as of writing the latest versions of both Port
features like variable refresh rate and HDR HDMI connectors are shaped like a
very tall D while DisplayPort looks like you folded the corner of a
rectangle also while HDMI doesn't normally lock most DisplayPort cables
will automatically click into place with these little teeth which hold it firm
until you push the release some graphics cards will also support more bandwidth
over DisplayPort than HDMI and some displays will only support certain
features refresh rates or even resolutions on on one type of connection
the bottom line is make sure you're using an interface and cable that are
rated for sufficient bandwidth matching the version numbers isn't enough a quick
note if you're short on HDMI ports but you see this logo or dual mode display
port it means your Port can convert directly to HDMI with a cheap passive
adapter one more thing some gpus have USB type-c ports but you can't connect
it to just any display both the port and the monitor will need to support display
playay Port alt mode which is an optional part of the specification the
big draw to alt mode is that it can also be combined with normal USB data and
even power in a single cable Thunderbolt AKA USB 4.0 goes a step further and
guarantees alt mode and power delivery will be available and even allows for
daisy chaining multiple displays or devices without needing a hub while
there are pros and cons to all of these connections which one you ultimately use
should be whichever one gives you the features you need and is compatible with
your Hardware motherboard s are a contentious issue because it's easy to
go for the biggest baddest board around
but the reality is that unless you're the kind of Master overclocker who gets
all their boards sponsored anyway you're unlikely to see a big performance
difference between low-end chipsets and the higher end ones much less between
two models that use the same chipset that's not to say you should just buy
the cheapest thing a lower-end chipset will usually have some artificial
limitations on things like RAM speed overclocking ability or PCIe bandwidth
AMD's a series chipsets for example don't support overclocking as of a520
and feature fewer expansion ports while their B series and X Series chipsets do
have much more expansion including the ability to bifur or split PCIe lanes for
multi-GPU or high-speed storage support the bottom line is that while some
people get bogged down on details like voltage regulators and cooling them the
reality is that a mid-range board with good user reviews that has all the slots
sockets and RGB ports you need for other Hardware is the path of leas resistance
and there's no shame in that system memory or RAM can be both
straightforward and Incredibly deep depending on who you ask and what you
plan to do with it it's usually labeled according to three main values capacity
speed and timings the higher the capacity the more concurrent tasks your
system can work on but the more memory you have the more strain on your CPU's
memory controller which usually means reduced frequency and increased timings
both of which are bad frequency determines how often information can
travel from the memory stick or module to the CPU and vice versa higher is
better while timings determine how long the wait is for actual memory chips to
respond to a given request lower is better it's important to note that there
are points of diminishing returns for all of these attributes and that some
CPUs prefer certain memory frequencies because they can lock their memory
controllers to match such as AMD's ryzen 3000 and 5000 series CPUs which tend to
work best at memory speeds of 3600 or 30 800 megatrans per second ddr4 after
which point it's better to drive down latencies than go for more speed and it
should be noted most of the fast kits on the market are overclocked meaning both
the memory modules and the CPU's memory controller will be pushed harder and
with More Voltage than usual ddr4 capable platforms like ryzen 5000 and
Intel's 14th gen core CPUs for example only officially support up to 3200 megat
transfers per second ddr4 which means reaching the speeds of a topspec memory
kit is any but guaranteed especially if you've got more than two sticks of RAM
ryzen 5000 and Intel's 11th gen core and later CPUs support up to 3200 megat
transfers per second ddr4 natively after which you're in overclock territory
regardless of speed you'll want to buy your memory in matching pairs for dual
Channel motherboards triplets for triple Channel and so on and while you're at it
for best performance you'll want to make sure your memory is also running dual
rank now rank is essentially one or more memory modules that receive commands as
a group if all of the memory sticks memory is in one group that's single
rank while some larger memory modules come split into two which is dual rank
the advantage is that while each rank has to be accessed separately no matter
what they can still split the low between themselves for better performance if you've got a matched pair
of dual rank memory you'll get the benefits by default but you can also
install four matched single rank modules for the same effect if your motherboard
has four slots generally speaking larger modules tend to be dual rank but you can
usually tell single Rank and dual rank apart by one r or two R in the model
number one more thing to consider for memory is error correction code or ECC
memory this has recently become a pretty hot topic due to the per chip error
correction that's making its way into ddr5 but there's a difference full ECC
memory has an extra chip that allows it to detect and correct errors even when
the data is moving to and from the CPU DDR5's error correction is only making
sure that the data inside each chip is safe this lets ddr5 vendors still offer
overclocked memory kits while you'd be hardpressed to find anything like that
for full ECC the more robust nature of full ECC memory meanwhile has made it a
favorite for servers and high-end workstations where stability is key even
if it comes at the cost of some performance so if that's you then you've
got some things to untangle first true ECC can come in three flavors
unregistered registered and load reduced
unregistered memory also called udm is the same kind that goes into your
desktop and notebook PC so your CPU will
access the memory chips directly with nothing in between registered memory
also called R dim includes a goete chip
that the CPU talks to that manages the data coming and going from each memory
chip load reduced memory called LR dim takes this one step further by replacing
that register chip with an ultra fast buffer this buffer reduces the amount of
chatter required to communicate with the memory allowing the CPU to access as
many as eight ranks per module that's how servers can have multiple terabytes
of memory in them the trade-off of course is higher latency don't go
thinking you can just mix and match by the way consumer motherboards almost
exclusively accept udims and not much else and while some motherboards can
support both R dims and LR dims this is
no guarantee so check the manual for your motherboard for information on what
it can handle before you pull the trigger most motherboard manufacturers
will have manuals available online in their support section storage drives can
be divided broadly into two categories old school SATA and PCI Express based
NVMe drives there are different connections for both of these with this
being the most common for SATA and this being the most common for NVMe your
motherboard manual will include a list of these ports that tells you exactly
how many you can install mechanical hard drives are for bulk storage on the cheap
and typically use a SATA interface we'll talk a bit more about these later solid
state drives or ssds are more expensive but are recommended is a boot drive for
your operating system and for key applications at almost any price point
due to their much higher performance they are available with SATA interfaces
but have mostly gone NVMe at this point in the m.2 form factor remember that
term it means size and shape even among NVMe ssds there is an obvious broad
performance spectrum and with Microsoft's upcoming implementation of
direct storage a premium PCIe Gen 4 SSD
or greater might offer a clear performance benefit but for most average
users and Gamers the main things you want are a dram cache and some kind of
manufacturer indication of endurance which is a measure of how many times the
drives can be written before the cells wear out drives with short warranties
are probably best avoided and even quality drives should be backed up regularly now let's talk talk cooling
enthusiasts tend to instinctively gravitate towards custom Loop liquid
cooling and this is usually the absolute
best you can get without going Subzero which isn't sustainable long term if
you're a coward but from a cost to Performance standpoint it rarely makes
sense liquid cooling is a topic all in itself but the short version is that
your primary concerns are going to be the water blocks and the total surface
area of your radiator setup generally speaking surface area is King more fins
on your coal plate means more heat transfer from your CPU and more radiator
surface area means the more heat you can remove from your liquid or if you like
more silence the slower you can run your many fans materials are less intuitive
though copper is the superior conductor but it's more expensive than aluminum
which might make you think you could get away with copper for your GPU and
aluminum for everything else but if you try to mix and match the
it's going to be terrible I give you my lonus tech tips guarantee that galvanic
corrosion will ruin your day sometime down the line you can try out those like
you know anti-corrosion mixtures don't do it it'll be really bad some metals
can be mixed relatively safely here's a chart of what's safe to mix and what's
not most people don't want to deal with all that though all-in-one Solutions are
both cheaper and easier to work with the general rule is that a 240 mm radiator
is fine for most CPUs but topend CPUs
with power ratings over 200 WS will want to beefier 360 mm or 2080 mm radiator
for full performance or even more oh God
it's so big the main drawbacks of aios is that they are more expensive less
reliable and units smaller than 360 mm
often have questionable performance benefits compared to larger Tower style
heat sinks that's why for most people we recommend a large heat sink for
hassle-free long-term operation the only drawback of these that due to their size
some consider them unsightly they're wrong and they can be a hazard during
Transportation due to their immense weight at the end of the day whatever
comes of your CPU is fine for most people but it might run hotter or louder
than you want thermal compound for most people doesn't matter as long it's a
decent brand and it's not some just bulk stuff you got off of wish but there are
couple things to consider if you're not going with the easy to use but not
thermally amazing graphite pads that cover your CPU like a cozy little
blanket you're going to want to make sure that whatever you get is electrically non-conductive and the best
way to do that is to just look at the label most companies exclusively carry
non-conductive compounds with the exception being liquid metal thermal
Grizzlies conduct or not for example is an actual metal alloy called gallon
standand that's fully liquid at temperature as low as 8° C it's both
electrically conductive and potentially reactive with aluminum parts like heat
sinks and this reaction is not a good thing while an aluminum oxide layer is
usually present on aluminum a tiny scratch your scuff is all that's needed
for the gallium to work its magic and turn your cooler into a crumbly mess
that doesn't even look real if you decide to try liquid metal make sure
you're using copper or nickel plated coolers if you're content with cheaper
traditional compounds then you've got nothing to fear there are some things
you just shouldn't cheap out on however power supplies are a major one while
early on it was pretty easy to figure out whether a power supply was decent by
just looking at its 80 plus rating and it is 80 plus gold that is the real draw
for this power supply Series right there it is so easy to hit the 80 plus
standards these days that it's not really a useful measure anymore the good
news is cybernetics lab has stepped up to build a more meaningful certification
system that addresses both efficiency and noise levels and hopefully more in
the future beyond that the main feature you need to decide if you need is a
modular interface those usually cost more but as connectivity standards
evolve like the controversial ATX 12vt high power connector it means that you
have a chance of Simply swapping a cable rather than being forced to use an
adapter or even replace a perfectly functional power supply power supplies
have kind of plateaued these days to the point where where no matter what I'm
building I would expect five or even 10 years of trouble-free service which
means that I'm expecting it to power more than one build cic's vertex series
of power supplies have stepped up the game in terms of build quality their
vertex gx750 is fully modular and they've added a new cable to help with
GPU compatibility the fans on these bad boys stay quiet without any compromises
to your system's temperature and they've upped their warranty to 12 years so go
check them out there's a link yeah down there click it whatever connectors
you're using though I would advise you to avoid unnecessary cosmetic adapters
on your high power connectors they might improve at some point but I'm pretty
tired of hearing stories about these things melting power supplies like
motherboards and cases have different form factors that you need to look out
for though this consideration is mostly important for small form factor builds
where the sfx standard provides a smaller footprint in order to
accommodate tinier builds while sfx defines a maximum depth for power supply
that sort of makes it look like a flat rectangle sfx L relaxes this to a square
shape and while it doesn't necessarily offer more connections you'll actually
find that usually the more powerful small form factor units are sfx L and
they have the added benefit of using larger fans so they tend to be a little
bit quieter just double check your cases compatibility because not all cases that
support one can also support the other another class of power supplies that has
grown in popularity over the last 10 10 years is DC todc converter power
supplies these use an external brick just like some monitors or your laptop
and then have a super efficient DC todc conversion hence the name that takes
whatever the input voltage is and splits it out to all the voltages that you need
internally they tend to be fanless and extremely small though it does come at
the cost of that external brick now there are other esoteric form factors
like tfx that is often used in rack mount servers but for nearly everything
else you'll be fine with an ATX form factor power supply it's big it's chunky
and it's the standard that we've had since not long after the Windows 95 days
these offer the highest wattages on the market with the largest assortment of
peripheral and 12volt plugs for CPU and
PCI Express devices and drives and all that good stuff but buyer beware the ATX
form factor only specifies the width and height of the power supply at the back
plate it says nothing about the depth so you will need to take into consideration
whether your power supply will fit your chosen case if it's not in the typical
Square footprint make sure you buffer a little extra if you have a modular
interface because those plugs take up a little bit more space now cases this is
where builds can get very interesting there are options that can be found for
as low as $20 on sale and there are options costing well over 10 times that
much or 100 times who cares just keep going if you want something truly unique
we've already gone over the different major form factors but even Within These
constraints there is an incredible amount of variety out there because
picking a case on its own is so personalized and situational we're just
going to go over a few basic things to keep in mind while picking one out first
and foremost is airf flow regardless of whether you're after a quiet rig or an
extreme cooling rig you're going to need air flow and there's no substitute for a
mesh front panel counterintuitively they tend to even offer better acoustic
performance than closed front panel cases because the fans don't need to
ramp up as high not everyone is into that aesthetic though so vendors like
Corsair come up with options with glass front panels instead with spacing and
even extra intakes on the motherboard side panel to keep things looking pretty
while maintaining solid air flow secondary to air flow should be ease of
maintenance if your case has great air flow but it's a pain to clean once it's
sucked a bit of dust in you're going to have a bad time removable dust filters
and easily accessible front panels help tremendously with maintenance and most
good cases will come with these features finally expansion what you get will
depend on how much of what kind of stuff you want to cram in plain and simple
then beyond that it should ideally be well laid out for cable management and
open enough that it's easy to work in of course you won't have any cooling
without fans so what do you buy there
are several considerations here including the Fan's diameter and bearing
type whether the blade is optimized for air flow or static pressure and of
course whether or not it has addressable RGB bearings are what let the fan blade
spin freely so the better quality of the bearing the more efficient and less
noisy a fan can be and there are three major types sleeve bearings are cost
effective and quiet but tend to wear out quickly because they rely on a lubricant
to keep them going higher quality sleeve bearing fans can last for years thanks
to better seals but that lubricant will expire and once it does so does the fan
sleeve bearing fans are also designed to run vertically to prevent the lubricant
from pooling making them unsuitable for use in the top or bottom of cases ball
bearing fans are far more reliable and much more expensive to match but they
tend to be louder because they utilize actual physical ball bearings to
overcome friction instead of a lubricant this also means they're much more likely
to survive high temperatures than a sleeve fan so they're common in servers
and other reliability first environments more advanced sleeve style bearings
called fluid dynamic or hydrodynamic bearings are positioned as a bridging
gap between traditional sleeve and ball bearing fans while their mechanisms are
similar to sleeve bearings they're typically filled with pressurized oil
and higher quality seals than a regular lubricating grease not all fans that use
these bearings are good but Noctua for example exclusively uses their SSO
series bearings which are hydrodynamic and very well regarded I think corers
are also pretty good too there are other bearings like mag glove which use
magnetic levitation for effectively zero friction and are thus extremely quiet
long lasting and they also call cost significantly more than other types of
bearings Corsair famously has a magb series of fans in their ml lineup but
they tend to have fewer RGB options and cost significantly more than their other
fans regardless of the bearings fans tend to get graded on two major criteria
static pressure and air flow with some designs leaning further one way than the
other Corsair's SP and no TOA P series
fans are optimized for static pressure the higher the static pressure the more
air that can be for course through a restrictive filter or fins of a radiator
or heat sink on the other side of the spectrum Corsair's AF and noct as a
series are examples of fans that are optimized for pure air flow so don't put
it in front of your radiator but at like the back of your case with no
obstructions they're really great for that you'll often run across different
diameters of fans ranging all the way from diminutive 40 mm all the way to
Behemoth 200 mm and Beyond as a rule of
thumb the smaller the fan the faster needs to spin to push the same amount of
air as a larger one and the faster a fan spins the louder it will be which is why
120 to 140 mm fans have become the go-to
thanks to the amount of air that they can push while being relatively quiet 80
and 92 mm used to be common place in older computer cases and you can still
find mounts for these in some small form factor Rigs and on smaller air coolers
like nocuous 9s thickness is another thing that can vary and again the
thinner the fan the less air it can push at a given noise level a full-sized 92mm
fan for example will actually push more air with more pressure than a 120 mm
slim fan you'll only really want to use thin fans for small form factor builds
where you have absolutely no alternative then there's the connectors some fans
have three pins on them and some of them have four what gives with that well
practically speaking they both work the same but the three pin variant speed is
controlled by changing the voltage being delivered to the motor the four pin on
the other hand use a control scheme called pwm which means that the motor
exclusively receives 12vt power but it gets it in bursts so it's rapidly turned
on and off depending on the speed that is requested by the user in short pwm
fans tend to be more efficient and offer finer control over their rotational
speeds but it's more important to match your fan type with your controller than
to choose one over the other most of your fans are going to be plugged
directly into your motherboard but if you have a truly ridiculous number of
fans or you just want to control and cable manage them all from one place you
can get controller hubs from companies like Corsair or NZXT that provide
significantly more connectors to suit your needs and depending on your needs
you might want to add one or more hard drives to your system either for long-term storage or maybe to give
storage tying a go for a blend of high performance and low cost whatever the
reason there are some things you should be aware of like the RPM cache size
noise level and cost per Gigabyte or terabyte it used to be common to just
pick a 7200 RPM Drive no matter what for for extra speed and lower response time
but it's actually becoming more of a liability for the drive's long-term Health now that high-capacity ssds exist
higher RPMs mean more noise and critically more heat so before
committing to a high-speed hard drive you should consider whether it's needed at all and when you do install one be
aware of its operating temperature so that the platter stays spinning for as long as possible for everybody else a
5600 or 5900 RPM hard drive should suffice and should be significantly
quieter and kick out less heat finally if you want to really class up your
build you're probably going to want RG GB and that means you're going to need
to learn what to look for currently there are three major types of
controllable RGB non-addressable addressable and USB non-addressable is
inexpensive and is the original RGB header that uses 12vt power and four
pins each device in the chain be it a light strip or a fan plugs into the
header on a motherboard a splitter or into another RGB device in a daisy chain
every LED in this chain will show the same color of your choosing which is
fine for ambient lighting or for when you don't really care about patterns and
animations but if you do care about those addressable is your new best
friend because like its name suggests it allows each individual LED in the chain
to be controlled independently it typically uses a 5volt three pin header
that's the same physical size as the non-addressable type with a pin blocked
off to differentiate it if you have a lot of LED strips you should be aware
that only a limited number of strips can be run off a single connector without
running into problems like dimming at the ends or the inability to control all
the LEDs if this all sounds complicated
well it kind of is that's why some companies like Corsair have devices that
use their own method via USB this lets them know exactly what devices are
connected and how many LEDs each of them has these will usually plug into a USB
header on your motherboard and can be more complex to wire up but often are
much simpler to set up usually using proprietary software now there are
packages for Universal RGB control like
signal RGB open RGB and even a function
built into Windows 11 but compatibility can be spotty and the interface may not
be as elegant as the official software or it could be significantly better so
your mileage will definitely vary this vendor lockin means that unlike non-usb
options they're usually not cross-compatible between Brands so
you'll probably end up choosing your favorite and then using the same vendor
for all your other RGB unless you want to deal with adapters this especially
sucks because some companies offer LED strips with different styles that might
be more in line with what you're going for visually like fantex digital RGB
neon strips finally finally you'll probably want some cable ties and to
make sure that you have the tools you need to set everything up if you go for zip ties for a lower profile cable
management job you'll need to make sure that you have Flush Cutters for the cleanest look whereas if you go for hook
and loop ties like the ones you can find on eltit store.com then you don't need
anything special you should consider though whether optional stuff like
custom cables will be in your build at this point they're pretty costly but
they're a cool way to Jazz up your rig if you've got the cash to spare and
you're after a specific look if not though don't sweat it not everybody is
out to build an art piece and there is no performance benefit to them
whatsoever and besides building a PC yourself is already a bigger step
towards making it yours than most people will ever take once you've settled on a
build you can go ahead and click through the checkout process and wait for the
parts to arrive or if you live near a computer store with all the stuff that
you need lucky you you get to haul it all home yourself assemble the boxes in
a photogenic pile for a quick social media pick and finally you're ready to
begin step two setting up your work area are we only on step two jeez all right
don't worry guys the hard part's over things are going to go a little faster
now clear your desk or table you're going to want a well lit area with enough space to be able to easily move
around your case whether it's laid flat or upright and grab any tools you'll
need a Phillips head screwdriver is a must and it's it's got a long neck a
magnetic tip and a ratcheting mechanism that'll make things a lot easier one or
two coffee filters and some 99% isopropyl alcohol is optional but useful
for cleaning surfaces without leaving behind any residue paper towels can also
work in a pinch but be careful not to leave behind any bits and for when
you're finishing up another optional item is a microfiber cloth to get rid of
all the greasy fingerprints that you might leave behind less optional is a
flashlight of some sort even if it's just just the flash on your phone since
it can otherwise be tough to see what you're doing when you're trying to get that one last wire installed after
everything else is in place now completely set aside any food or drink
while you're building up your machine this is build time not snack time and
make sure there's nothing around that could fall if it's accidentally bumped
an anti-static mat or a desk pad is ideal here to prevent scuffs and scrapes
not only on your desk but also on your new machine now this next bit is a bit
contentious but if the air in your area is dry then you will definitely want an
anti-static wrist strap we did show that it takes a lot to outright destroy PC
components in this collab with electr boom but what we don't know is what kind
of minor damage might have been done internally with each of those zaps it is
possible that each one of them took a year off of our victim's life and no by
the way Wireless antistatic wrist straps do not work your strap needs to be
connected to a proper ground and the same goes for an antistatic mat that's
what that connector on the end is for to do that the most foolproof way that
works in any country is to plug your power supply into Main's power and clip
your antistatic lead to its chassis just make sure you're not using one of these
never use one of these unless you know exactly how to use one because if you're
not actually grounded you're doing all of this work for nothing to say nothing
of the safety risk if you don't have a strap it's a lot better than nothing to
plug in your power supply anyway and then periodically touch it especially if
you move your feet around if you are using a strap though a pro tip is to
wrap it around your ankle instead of of your wrist so you don't end up yanking
things around while you're focused on building step three motherboard and CPU
install aka the delicate part we'll
start by unboxing our motherboard and placing it on top of its box a
convenient and free static safe surface if you want to power on your system
before you put it in the case which I highly recommend you'll want to use the
box it pulls double duty by letting you slot in a GPU which wouldn't be possible
if the motherboard was FL on a desk or an antistatic mat now your motherboard
may have one of two socket types as of today the quickly Vanishing pin git
array or PGA where the pins are all on the CPU or the near ubiquitous land grit
array or LGA where the pins are on the motherboard why is this important
because if your motherboard is LGA you need to inspect the pins before you do
anything else if you bought the board at a brick and mortar store then they'll
often get you to do this Step at the store to cover their butts in case you
come back with bent pins because this is something that's typically not covered
by the manufacturer's warranty to do this on an Intel socket push down on the
retention latch and pull out away from the socket if you're dealing with a high-end desktop socket there could be a
secondary latch for the retention mechanism that comes out the same way
and they'll only open in the correct order when you ease up on the clip it
should want to Spring upwards this is good pull it upwards all the way and the
retention clip will come up revealing the socket beneath don't worry about the
plastic cover plate for now for AMD Threadripper and epic SP sp3 dve
sockets you'll need to undo these three screws in order with the included torque
wrench and then let the retention C clip flip open the CPU's carrier will need to
come up next which you can easily do by pulling up on these tabs finally remove
the plastic cover plate to reveal the socket beneath for Intel's high-end
server and workstation Zeon motherboards using higher pin counts like 3647 or
4677 there is no retention mechanism simply a plastic cover plate the cooler
then screws directly down into the metal around the socket with the CPU already
clipped to the cooler with the pins visible it's easier to spot damage if
you angle the motherboard so the pins are reflecting light directly back at
you and rotated around to make sure that everything looks even any pins that are
bent will need to be dealt with before you go any further you can refer to this
video we did on LGA repair here but the short version is you may need to use a
magnifying glass and a pair of fine point tweezers or similar instrument to
try and straighten it back out fresh out of the factory a motherboard shouldn't
have Bend pins at all but if you bought open boxed or used it's a possibility
once you're satisfied your pins are okay it's time to unbox your CPU for most
CPUs the outer box is Expendable unless you want to put it on display but make
sure you take care of the inner plastic clam shell that actually contains the
processor not only do you not want to drop it under any circumstances you'll
also want to keep it for future in case you need to RMA or sell your CPU to
someone else regardless of your CPU you want to avoid touching any of the
exposed gold contacts be they on the flat underside of an LGA CPU or the
fragile pins of a PGA CPU we'll get to those but first we're going to keep
going with consumer style LGA line your CPU up with the socket usually there
will be a triangular Arrow or dot or other indicator to help you you figure
out which orientation is correct Intel for instance has notches on the side of
its CPUs that only allow you to insert a compatible CPU and only in the correct
orientation so you can line up with those I like to line up the bottom edge
of the CPU with the bottom edge of the socket as a bit of an anchor point then
gently lower it in give it a little wiggle once it's down to make sure it's
seated completely before closing the retention mechanism and pushing the
latch down if it feels a little stiff and creaky that's okay it's supposed to
and then the plastic socket cover is going to kind of pop off that's normal
too keep going until you can hook the latch back into place then store the
socket cover somewhere safe like in the motherboard box you'll need this in case
you need to RMA your board or sell it later on the process is the same for
AMD's motherboards that use LGA sockets like am5 because LGA sockets have a
retention bracket that can sometimes affect cooler mounting and thus cooling
performance some Builders have taken to using CPU contact frames like this one
B4 War though these May void your motherboard's warranty for what I hope
are fairly obvious reasons so check that first and proceed with caution to use a
contact frame on either Intel or AMD you first need to remove the existing
retention mechanism which can be a little scary even for veteran Builders
since it completely exposes the socket
carefully unscrew the retaining screws a tool is often included in case you don't
have the right driver then install your CPU as before next next the contact
frame goes over the CPU and bolts down with the original retention mechanism
screws the main disadvantage to this approach is that if you ever need to
receip or replace your CPU for any reason it's a bit more of a chore to get
it out if your CPU is PGA take this time to make sure that your pins are all
straight it should be as easy as looking at it from two different angles to make
sure that you can see through Straight rows of pins if any of them are bent
your best bet is to use a mechanical pencil or a very thin piece of metal
like a razor or an iFix it Jimmy opening tool to gently nudge them back into
position too much force though or too much back and forth and these can easily
snap off making for a very difficult repair job so make sure you have steady
hands once you're satisfied lift the Locking ARM and line the CPU up just as
we did with LGA using the indicator on the CPU and the socket to determine the
correct orientation on PGA CPUs you can also just have a look at the pins and
the holes in the socket typically the pins are arranged so that there's a
corner with fewer pins so that it can only drop in one way and it will drop
right in so if you encounter any resistance at all do not push check your
pins then line it up and try again a few
more seconds of your time now is worth it compared to hours for totally mashed
pins once the CPU is in place I like to press down on it to prevent it from
moving while I close the lever if you're a high roller and you've got a more
exotic socket you'll be surprised to learn that it's actually pretty easy
despite how complicated it looks before you begin some high-end motherboards
have support for dual CPUs these are usually epic or Zeon if that's what
you're building and you only have one CPU you'll need to consult your motherboard's manual for which socket to
use and which RAM slots are connected to said socket if you have two then just
double up on the CPU installation instructions trust me it's exactly as
fun as it sounds for AMD sp3 based sockets remove the plastic dummy CPU
from the carrier ARM then Gras the CPU's plastic tabs and gently guide it into
the carrier rails it helps to pull back a little bit on the tab while you do so
in order to make the CPU stays aligned with the top of the ARM you'll know what
I'm talking about if you end up slipping once it's almost all the way in it'll
stop moving freely and you'll need to push it down another notch before you're ready to start closing things up lower
the carrier ARM to the socket until you can't move it freely any further if
you've guessed we need to push it a little more you're right Each corner
clicks into place and with that done all that's left is to close the retention
mechanism if you're using the screwdriver that came with the CPU this
is easy take note of the close order and screw in the screws in that order it
makes things a little easier to get them all started a tiny bit before tightening
them dead all the way it's important not to overtighten the screws however this
is where the included screwdriver is great once it reaches the right tension
the driver will snap to let you know you're done when the last screw is down
Intel Zeon sockets are pretty simple too it's an intimidating looking mechanism
at first but in fact it's so simple that you aren't even supposed to install the
CPU into it wait what yeah you install
the CPU onto the cooler itself first and then the cooler is the carrier that
lines the CPU up onto the socket which thanks to this pattern of screw holes
and posts means you you can't really misalign it unless something goes very
very wrong the way this plays out is like so you have your CPU Cooler
motherboard and plastic CPU carrier the CPU snaps into the carrier by lining up
a Golden Triangle on one corner of the CPU with a triangle cutout on the
carrier itself then angling it in like so you might need to bend the carrier a
little to make it snap together but once you do it'll be a firm hold then after
applying thermal compound more on that soon align the Triangular cutout of the
CPU carrier with the heat sink and clip it into place it doesn't matter which
orientation you use but if you're using a liquid cooler you'll want to pay
attention to which side the tubes will be coming from to align with the socket
once you're ready line up the triangle on the CPU carrier with the triangle on
the motherboard socket and place it down the posts automatically align everything
for you so all you have to do here is tighten the torque screws until they stop the LGA 4677 socket introduced with
sapphire Rapids is slightly different because there will be two different
carriers one for CPUs with 112 PCI Express Lanes marked with e1a and
another for CPUs with 64 Lanes marked e1b you'll know which you need to use by
checking for the corresponding marking on the CPU's heat spreader first clip
the appropriate carrier to your cooler with the remover lever in the same
direction the fan will blow or tubes will run then apply thermal paste
compound again more on that later and align the Golden Triangle on the CPU
with a corresponding white triangle on the carrier insert that side first then
gently press down on the other side to clip it in place you'll then want to
press it down on each of the four corners to make sure it's seated you can
sometimes give it a little wiggle once you've gotten it the right way around align the completed assembly with the
triangle on the socket and the mounting posts and lower it in place the process
from here is the same as LGA 3647 so tighten down the cooler screws in an x
pattern unless it says otherwise and now your CPU is installed we'll come back to
the cooler in a minute first we want to deal with RAM because depending on your
cooler it could be anywhere from a little bit to a lot easier to install it
now rather than later unbox your RAM and lay it out in front of you depending on
your motherboard and your priorities you might have anywhere from one stick to 12
or 60 sticks of memory or even more the
ultimate Authority for which slots to use will be your motherboard manufacturer so check your manual to be
sure you never know when some engineer is going to get a fun new idea for how
things are supposed to be colorcoded but we'll go over the most common
configurations anyway if you look at your motherboard closely you'll usually
see silk screen labels for the memory channels on ASUS for example dim A1 dim
B1 dim A2 and so on the letter here
indicates which channel the slot is connected to so for two sticks in dual
Channel you'd install each module in the same numbered slot one in Channel a and
the second in Channel B dual Channel now we mentioned before that dual Channel
operation is usually best for Consumer PCS but if your motherboard has only two
RAM slots you might have opted for a single large stick today in order to
leave room for an upgrade later rather than going for two smaller sticks adding
up to the same capacity that will both need to be replaced if you need to
upgrade this is a a totally valid strategy though you should bear in mind
that some newer CPUs in particular will give up a significant amount of
performance running in single Channel mode if you're willing to make that
trade-off just make sure to install your single module in the slot that is
nearest to the CPU or in the one indicated by your motherboard manual if
that sounds weird to veteran Builders that's because they're used to dual
Channel configurations with two sticks of RAM usually unless you're filling out
all the slots you should leave the slots closest to the CPU empty in order to
improve the stability of the system at higher speeds this is because the
farthest slots from each channel are where the channel itself ends when you
have something in the near slot but the fire slot is empty signals can reflect
off of the empty slot and mess things up in fun and unpredictable ways the same
principle applies to triple and quad Channel setups they're just usually that
many more RAM slots although the exact layout can change from board to board so
for these setups it's almost always best to rtfm multiple CPUs get weirder still
with two entire rows of memory slots with potentially opposite Channel
Arrangements due to the orientation of the CPU again in this scenario rtfm do
not skimp on rtfm do it are you still with me good here's how you actually
install memory first push down the tabs at the ends of the slot that you're
installing the memory into some boards will have two tabs one on each end While
others will have just one which can make things a little bit easier if you have
clearance issues with a large graphics card next look at at the pins on the
memory module itself there will be at least one notch as shown here with ddr4
memory this is offset from the middle of the module and there's a matching Post
in the slot itself so that it can only go in one way hold up the module so the
notch is aligned with the post then line up the module with the grooves on the
slot getting one lined up at a time is often easiest and push down until you
feel resistance at that point press a little harder until the tab or tabs lock
back into place on their own you should hear a distinct click if it's done
correctly then repeat these steps for any more memory modules that you have to
install here's a pro tip by the way you can skip figuring out subsequent modules
orientations by looking for the label side of the stick you already installed
and matching against that instead keep in mind though for some motherboards
with RAM on both sides of the CPU socket one side will often be flipped if your
build has an m.2 SSD now is the time to install it it's pretty common for the
slots to be hidden under heat sinks so if you don't see any you'll want to
check your motherboard manual to figure out where these slots might be hiding
some m.2 slots only support NVMe while some only support SATA and some support
both your motherboard manual again will help you to identify them so if your SSD
is seta you should purposely avoid an NVMe slot that's labeled as going to
your CPU to leave it open for a faster NVMe SSD later on down the road but it
really shouldn't matter as long as the slot supports SATA on the flip side if
your SSD is NVMe you should avoid slots label is going through the chipset or
PCH because these could bottleneck the drive's performance compared to a CP
connected slot if you have multiple NVMe ssds and don't really have a choice
you'll want to use the CPU m.2 slot for the faster SSD if applicable thankfully
because m.2 slots have the same installation instructions regardless you
don't need to take any of that into consideration when it's time to actually
put it together remove the heat sink from your motherboard if applicable and
For the Love of All that's good take off the protective film on the thermal pad
now so you don't forget next make sure
that the standoff is in the appropriate position most .2 ssds use the 80 mm long
2280 position it may already be installed here and if so it may also
have a very small Phillips screw inserted into it you'll need to remove
that Phillips screw before going any further if so but if you don't have a
standoff at all you'll had to find it in your motherboard box usually it's in a
little baggie along with the tiny Phillip screw free it from its prison
twist it into place on the 2280 position and you're up to speed visually line up
the SSD's pin side with the slot taking note of the notch that's cut into it
this should line up perfectly with a tab on the m.2 slot and typically results in
the SSD's label facing out it's okay if your SSD has two notches but your slot
only has one this keying means that the SSD is either SATA or supports two PCI
Express Lanes rather than four a special note for if your SSD has its own heat
sink the connector side will almost always be on the bottom of the heat sink
with the fins facing outwards if your motherboard has a heat sink for this
slot you might want to remove the heat sink from your SSD now in order to use
that instead there's usually some clips on the Sid so you can just prize apart
to release it there will be a gummy thermal pad on the inside that sticks to
it but no one I'm aware of glues these together so it shouldn't be a big deal
to peel it free all right enough foreplay already angle the SSD by about
30° or so relative to the slot and line
it up it should slip in easily with a little bit of pressure and once you can
no longer see the pins it should stand up freely on its own from here it's
easier if you get the tiny Phillips screw on the tip of a magnetic screwdriver before going any further
because you'll need to push the SSD down flat against the standoff we installed
earlier and hold it there while you screw it into place now you want to be
careful with this screw it's very thin very fragile and very easy to misplace
it also offends easily line it up and twist it counterclockwise until you feel
a little click then start turning it clockwise to tighten it it only needs to
be snug enough that the SSD no longer moves when you let go now you can put
your motherboard heat sink back on if applicable now there are other ways to
install an m 2 SSD including on a PCI Express card or ASUS dim. 2 interface
and these are conceptually similar to connecting directly to the motherboard
with the exception of how they slot in dim. two installation is identical to
standard RAM modules open the tab line up the key notches with the slot then
align yourself with the vertical posts push down and click into place the PCI
Express card is the same as any other expansion card and we'll take care of
that later for now it's time to move on to your cooler if you've got an
all-in-one liquid cooler this step will be just installing the appropriate
bracket but if you have an air cooler or a CPU block for a custom Loop both of
these will be installed now most coolers use similar mounting mechanisms in
theory but often the actual install will be pretty different for air coolers
mounts like Noctua SECU firm system are among the easiest for Consumer
processors no matter what socket it consists of two pieces of metal with
screw down posts on the top side that screw into a back plate there are
spacers fitted to make sure the vertical alignment with the the socket is just
right for optimal mounting pressure and the cooler itself screws down into these
screw posts right here for a secure connection let's see what that looks
like in practice on Intel consumer systems nocta provides a back plate
since that socket actually lacks one out of the box so instead of screws going
down into it the back plate has posts that stick up through four holes in the
motherboard along with a little Notch that allows it to clear the retention
bolt on the lower side of the socket spacers are added per the instruction
manual double check the color and then the approach apprpriate bars are put on
top now because Intel's cooler dimensions are symmetrical that means
they can go in either orientation depending on how you want your air to
flow in your case in most situations you want your cooler to blow air towards the
rear of the chassis so you would install These Bars laterally then screw them
down with these reverse thumb screws on AMD because a back plate is included the
spacers simply fit over the parts of the back plate that stick up through the motherboard which means that your first
order of business is to remove these plastic clip adapters that come standard
on AMD board boards make sure you keep those by the way because some coolers do
require them and losing them is pretty bad for resale value then your mounting
bars go on and get screwed down in the same way now because AMD's cooler holes
are asymmetrical there are two sets of mounting bars one long and one short the
short bars are what most people will use as these are installed laterally so the
cooler can exhaust air towards the rear of the case once it's screwed into place
you're ready to go we interrupt your regularly scheduled broadcast with a quick word for from seic reliable that's
the word whether it's how seic stands behind their warranty or the fact that
their power supplies just work seic has your back so grab one of their power
supplies today by clicking the link below Intel's LGA 2000 series of sockets
are a little more straightforward simply screw in the four studs slot the
mounting bars over in the orientation you prefer or that will fit and tighten
them down with reverse thumb screws similar to Intel's consumer desktop
sockets finally Threadripper and epic sockets are simpler still the cooler
just bolts down straight onto the socket's own retention mechanism because
of the socket design the cooler can only go on one way so make sure to align it
properly one side is space narrow and the other side space wide but that
mechanism is so simple that we're getting ahead of ourselves we need
thermal compound first many coolers come with some compound pre-applied and feel
free to use that if you like it's usually fine and it's easier than cleaning it off to apply something
different but if you want something fresh or you're remounting an old cooler
that's where isopropyl alcohol and coffee filters or paper towels come in
if it is an old cooler I'd recommend doing a dry wipe first but if not not
wet the bottom of the filter or paper towel with isopropyl alcohol then rub
away the thermal compound from the cooler in a circular pattern until most
of it is wiped away then go over it one or two or three more times with some
fresh isopropyl and a clean part of the towel until the towel starts to come off
clean to make sure the finger grease and dust is removed you should repeat that last step with the CPU itself as well
with the surface is clean you can grab your thermal compound most of the time it'll be in a syringe like this so Twist
Off the cap then hold it at an angle against the CPU like so making sure it's
flat and perpendicular to your surface perpendicular I think we should just
leave that I actually prefer that slowly squeeze the plunger until the thermal
compound flows the amount you want and where to put it varies by CPU Intel
consumer CPUs need about as much as a cooked grain of brown rice from there
LGA 2011 and 2066 and AMD's am4
processors get about a psize blob and it's up to you if you want to just plop
it down in the middle or go for the line or the X method it doesn't really matter
as long as there's enough compound at the end of the day for large CPUs like
Threadripper and zon Platinum however you're going to need a lot more you can
go with two psize blobs and hope for the best but in our experience a series of
dots or a line setup like this works best and we've seen in the community
that a large x pattern can work great too if you're nervous about it just
spread it out to make sure you have full coverage and if you're really nervous
about it the Honeywell PTM 7950 thermal pads that we sell on LTT Store.com are
really easy you just cut it to the size of the CPU peel it off stick it on if
you're having trouble put it in the fridge easy can't screw it up the main
take takeway is just to make sure you use enough to completely cover the Cooler's integrated heat spreader or IHS
that's the metal part on top of the CPU with its name lasered onto it once
you're satisfied with the amount of thermal paste you've used you can press the tip flat against the CPU to break
the surface tension of the paste so it doesn't come up off the CPU when you lift the syringe away don't forget to
recap it of course if you're using a thermal pad don't just plop it down on
there make sure you buy one that's sized for the CPU you want to use it with you
might need to use multiples for a big rectangular Beast like Threadripper now
the thermal compound sorted just bolt down your cooler for Tower style coolers
you'll first want to uncp the fan from the cooler like so in order to access
the screws then it's as simple as aligning the heat sink with the screw
posts and tightening it down for coolers with just two screws it's best to
tighten one side a little then go to the other side and just keep on going back
and forth until you can't go any further for coolers that have four screws like
the custom Loop CPU blocks and air coolers like the hyper 212 you'll first
want to make sure there's no sticker on the coal plate and then you'll want to
screw them in in an x pattern it helps to get all of them started partway first
then start teing them down a bit at a time by alternating to the opposite
corner until it's tightened down all the way you're using an air cooler now is as
good of a time as any to attach the air part depending on the configuration you
might have one fan two fans or zero fans
if you're one of those passive types you lock can just ignore this bin you can
also ignore it if your fan is integrated into the cooler like with a stock one
fans are directional and we'll talk more about this later in the case fan section
but here is all that you need to know for now some fans have markers that show
the direction the air will flow from them but if you're unsure the side with
the stickered part that doesn't move usually indicates that's the side the
air will come out of when installing a fan into a cooler it's tidiest to have
the Fan's power cable coming out towards the motherboard so just take that into
account when you're finanger coolers these days have wire
clips that hook into the Fan's mounting holes in order to then clip into the
grooves on the cooler itself it can be a little tricky but it's basically just a
matter of placing the fan in the desired orientation and stretching those wires
over the grooves in the heat sink it'll clip into place and you're good to go
repeat as desired if your cooler takes more than one fan but be careful about
the orientation and especially note any clearance issues with nearby motherboard
heat sinks or memory you may need to either Mount the fan a bit higher than
you otherwise would or just scrap it entirely it's still fine one fan will do
it once the fans are in look for the four pin header labeled CPU fan on your
motherboard or similar this is almost always right next to the CPU socket and
for ASUS motherboards it tends to be on the top Edge as seen here line up the
tabs on the cable with the one on the motherboard and press it into position
either a three pin or four pin fan can function perfectly plugged into a
connector like this and as we said previously all the fourth pin does is
add a separate pin for a finer fan speed control via pwm so four pins are ideal
but not necessary and in the case of liquid coolers there might actually only
be one wire to sense the RPM of the pump because it will draw power from a
separate Molex or SATA connector so that RPM sense wire is just to ensure that in
the event your pump fails your motherboard can either set off an alarm
or initiate a safe shut down now if your cooler has two fans you're going to want
to check for a CPU opt or two header if
there isn't one the cooler will often include a y splitter that lets you
connect both fans to a single header usually it is no problem to have two
fans on one header but don't go overboard because there are current
limits through those connectors with that done we're finished with our
motherboard for now but now is also an excellent time to power on our system
and make sure that everything's working while it's easy to access for you air
jockeys you get to relax while the all-in-one liquid cooler users awkwardly
hook their coolers up now outside the case only to uninstall them again once
they're done and reinstall them yet again when everything is inside the case
yes it is a pain but it's a small price to pay for not having to tear everything
down if it doesn't work now most liquid coolers simply have a bracket that
twists on and off depending on the socket that you're using and then screw
straight down onto the mounting bracket that you installed earlier if that's you
make sure you tighten them down in an x pattern going a little on each Corner
one by one until none can go any further
there are unfortunately some vendors like Cooler Master and newer Corsair
units that use Clips on AMD systems instead of screwing into the back plate
and this is where those standard AMD plastic clip things come in it's
inelegant in the modern age but it ensures that coolers remain compatible
backwards and forwards to an absolutely ludicrous degree so you can't really
blame AMD for this Slide the Clips through the holes on the Block start the
retaining thumb screws enough to keep them from falling out and then put the
whole thing in place and make sure the tabs were captured by the clip then
while holding the Clips in position tighten it all down it's going to feel
really delicate but stick with it and eventually it'll all be okay consider
this a practice run for when you don't have so much room to maneuver as for
those of you who just have a water block and nothing else right now well you
could fill up your loop on the bench and that is what I would recommend but if
all you want to do is verify that it's working you can slap the block on
without water in it and Power on for just long enough to see the post screen
about 10 to 20 seconds it should be fine
let's get into what that looks like step seven pre-built test aka the part where
it going horribly wrong is a good thing because if you don't find out now you'll
definitely find out later in order to do a quick test you'll need three things
your power supply with accessories your graphics card if applicable and a
screwdriver first if you have one install your graphics card this is
significantly easier to do while the system is outside the case make sure
that the tab on the long PCI Express x16 slot is pushed down then grab your
graphics card pull off any protective covers on the card Edge connector then
light it up with the slot giving it a gentle push until the retention clip is
pushed into the Locking position make sure it's in straight and you can't see
any pins because outside of the case there isn't anything to hold it down
once it's in one trick to make it a little bit more stable is to use the
motherboard Box's flap to Anchor the card in place if it does have a flap
that you can kind of slide it into next grab your power supply cables at a
minimum you'll need the 12vt CPU connector which is usually eight pins
but sometimes four a 24 pin connector and if you're running a GPU you'll need
as many connections as your GPU requires most won't work without them expect to
see a combination of 6 and8 pin or 12 and 16 pin connectors on our machines
take special note by the way that GPU power connectors even the ones that look
similar are not the same as the eight pin for the motherboard do do not force
anything lining these up outside the case is easy make sure the tabs line up
then push them down until they clip into place you also want to make sure that
you press down a little bit more on them after you've clipped them in just to
make sure that they're seated properly this is especially important for the ATX
12volt high power connector which can get a little spicy when it's not plugged
in all the way and this will be especially important later when it's
inside the case if your motherboard has more than one 12v CPU connector usually
the one marked as one is the primary one that's actually required but it's good
practice to install all of them if you can these cables can often be split into
two groups of four if for example your motherboard has an eight and a four pin
connector rather than two eight pins with all that done connect up your
keyboard and display making sure of course to plug into your graphics card
and not your motherboard if you have a graphics card installed then you can flip on the power switch on your power
supply and wait um where's the power
button about that there isn't one not
always anyway this is where the screwdriver comes in find the front
panel header for your motherboard often in the lower right corner and then find
the pins labeled for power switch what now stick the screwdriver in yes
seriously your screwdriver doubles as a button who
knew wow what else can screwdrivers do LTD store.com maybe someday anyway if
you have a boot screen mash the setup key which is usually delete until you
get into the BIOS check to be sure that everything's been detected all your
memory your CPU your fans and your m.2 ssds should all be visible either on the
main info page in the system health section or in a storage related menu
like NVMe configuration or SATA configuration if you're using an empty
water block this is as far as you want to go your CPU is probably already
getting toasty however for anyone else it's worth making sure that your
temperatures are okay here let it sit powered on for a few minutes and see
where the temperatures get to when it's warmed up a bit some CPUs will idle
pretty hot in the BIOS regardless of the cooler and that's normal what you're
looking for for is temperatures to stabilize and for them to not get any
better or worse by pushing down on the cooler if they do change that's an
indication that your cooler may not be making proper contact with the CPU so
what you should do now is shut it down pull off the cooler check the pattern of
your thermal compound to be sure that it's spread evenly then repaste and try
again but what if every novice Builder's worst nightmare happens and nothing
shows up on the screen after powering it up thankly there are often ways to
understand what's gone wrong some motherboards have led displays that show
a two character hexid decimal code that should help identify which part of the
boot process failed and you can look up what those mean in your manual or online
often another LED indicator somewhere on the motherboard is present either
instead of or alongside that help make it even more clear ASUS for example
tends to put a kind of stoplight type of array of LEDs that show red to indicate
CPU tests orange to indicate memory tests white to indicate storage and
green to indicate graphics with these you can tell at a glance exactly where
the issue is even if there's nothing on the screen other vendors have LEDs that
light up each section of the mother board as they tested that startup so
check around your CPU socket RAM slots or graphics card to see if there's
anything lit up the most common cause of no video is an issue with the cable
either broken or lowquality cables or plugging it into the wrong Port it
doesn't really matter where on the graphics card you plug it in but if you plug it into the motherboard especially
for older AMD or Intel f-s series systems without integrated Graphics
you're not going to get anything failing that make sure your graphics card is
fully inserted receip if you aren't sure and do the same for memory if you have
more than one memory module try removing all but one and then if everything works
try adding them back one by one if none of that helps but the PC turns on you
may need to try reating your CPU and especially check to be sure that there
are no bent pins and that there's no lint or anything in the socket that
might prevent a good connection it's rare these days but some computers won't
boot or stay on without the CPU fan header connected so that's one more
thing to try if the rest doesn't help if nothing happened at all when you press
the power button I'm sorry uh the first
thing you should check is that the motherboard is getting p power usually
there will be an LED or two that turns on when you flip the power supply into
the on position assuming of course you've plugged it into the wall you
check that right oh wait okay good if
there's still nothing then turn off the power supply and make sure your cables
are properly connected the 24 pin connector can often split into a 20 and
four pin connector for compatibility reasons so it's possible that summer all
of one part hasn't been fully inserted push the click holding it into place and
pull it out then make sure it's all lined up and try again same thing can
happen with the 12vt EPS connectors so triple check those two and of course
make sure they're all plugged into the proper power connection points on the
power supply itself most modern power supplies should make it impossible to
plug these things into the wrong connectors but you never know failing
all of that there could be some compatibility reasons your system isn't
firing up some AMD motherboards in particular might require a BIOS update
to enable support for certain generations of CPUs or it might be too
far forward and you need to roll it back for your generation of CPU just look it
up in the motherb manual you may need to contact the store you bought it from or
AMD directly to arrange to have that done if none of that helps then you'll
need to do some more advanced troubleshooting preferably with a
different computer or sets of components check the LT forums for more info there
once you're satisfied that everything's powered on and working flick off the
power disconnect everything and then put it to the side it's time to make your
case it might help to lay down a blanket or a towel or something so you don't
scratch up your case or your desk while you work with it as a bonus it'll reduce
the friction of the feet so you can rotate it around more easily while working every case is going to be
different in terms of layout build quality and cable management but there
are some general notes to keep in mind when prepping first take off your side
panels and store them in a safe place place the Box the case came in is a good
candidate depending on your case the side panels might need a screwdriver or
have thumb screws if they're plastic or metal or they might have side screws or
even be held in magnetically on a hinge of their tempered glass if they're fancy
with your case open remove the hardware box if it's stored inside the chassis
and put it aside for now if your motherboard comes with an IO Shield you
should install that now line up the io shield with the back of your motherboard
to determine which orientation it should go in the flat end phes towards the
mother motherboard then align the io shield with a cutout in the rear of the
case and snap it into place using one corner as an anchor it may take a bit of
force to get it in just right and cheaper cases May Flex when you do this
and cause it to pop back out but don't get discouraged keep at it until you're
satisfied it's not going to pop out when you look at it the wrong way another
thing you should do now is move any cables out of the way sometimes they'll
be tied up with a twist tie or zip tie but generally you want to get them on
the other side of the case so you don't have to worry about pinching them or
getting them trapped under the motherboard when it's installed it also
makes it much easier to Cable manage later now let's talk standoffs some
cases will come with some or all of these pre-installed and if not
everything you need will be in the hardware box that you removed earlier
they're essentially just extensions for the screw holes on the motherboard tray
to prevent the motherboard from shorting out on the tray and they screw in the
same way that a normal screw would just you know without a screw head you can
check the hole pattern on your motherboard to determine where the standof should go and which extra ones
might need to be removed hand tightening these is enough to build but I've run
into issues disassembling systems that were only hand tight where the standoff
will come out instead of the motherboard screw just be careful if you do decide
to tighten them with a 5mm hex socket driver because cheaper cases will often
just strip the threads or skip back out instead of just tightening down if
you're trying to remove one and you don't have an adapter or driver or your
fingers just aren't cutting it then pliers can give you quite a bit more
leverage but this this will damage its finish if that matters to you a
sacrificial paper towel or microfiber cloth can help mitigate this you'll
notice that there are more holes and there are standoffs what's up with that
while there are standard layouts for these for each form factor not every
motherboard will use every mounting point or some may use non-standard ones
while you don't strictly speaking need a standoff for every Mount point on your
motherboard let's just say it's highly recommended and it's absolutely critical
that there are no EX exas a standoff placed where there isn't a mount Point
could short something out if you aren't careful or worse it could cause your
motherboard to flex and potentially break something if you screw the others
in and the motherboard ends up flexing once you're satisfied you can do a test
fit first count the numbers of standoffs in the case and the holes in your
motherboard watch out some motherboards actually have holes that are hidden by
cosmetic covers and SSD heat sinks these days if they match gently lay your
motherboard into the case and align it with the standoffs you should see screw
threads for each hole if you don't then make a note of which
is missing remove your motherboard and rearrange the missing standoffs until
you've got everything lined up if everything looks good then now is a
great time to hook up your 8 Pin 12volt cables for the CPU these are also called
EPS connectors these things are notoriously difficult to get plugged in
when the motherboard and especially the cooler are installed so if your power
supply is modular go ahead and attach the motherboard side then feed the other
end through the cable management hole that is probably up here otherwise
you'll just have to drape it across the motherboard with that done it's time to
screw your board down now each case is a little different so check the manual
before proceeding but if you don't have one then usually the larger 632 screws
are used for this rather than the smaller finer M3 screws you can safely
test this by threading one into a standoff with your fingers if a 632
screw doesn't tighten easily then you need to use an M3 and if it's loose with
an M3 then you need to use a 632 it's easiest to start with the central Mount
point if present this will anchor the board into place and help keep things
aligned while you're screwing everything in hence the peg version that some cases
come with align the screw in the hole twist counterclockwise until you feel a
click then go clockwise to screw it into place Pro tip by the way don't fully
tighten this screw yet leaving a little bit of slack helps you reposition the
motherboard as you're putting in the rest of the screws next get the corners
and if you did everything right the motherboard should now be perfectly aligned and you can tighten everything
down completely if you've got more Mount points to screw down keep going until
they're all done ideally you would populate every Mount point with a screw
but in the event that you can't due to a clearance issue a missing one isn't
going to hurt anything it's easiest to wire the front panel header now while
there are a few obstructions and cables in the way because you're dealing with
small one or two wire connections before doing anything grab the whole bundle of
them and make sure they're not Tangled Up in anything else they should hang
freely from where they enter the case from the front panel from here you'll
want to find a hole that's close to where they need to go as mentioned
before the front panel header is often located in the lower right corner of the
motherboard and there are often silk screened markings on the motherboard to
indicate which pins are for what if you don't see any markings for it consult
your motherboard's manual if your case has Cable Management guides it's best to
use these now so you don't have to rewire anything when cable managing later just because of how fiddly these
can be be conscious of how long the wires are and how far they had to go and
try to make sure that they don't cross anything that needs access you don't
want to knock them loose by accident later at a minimum all computers should
come with a power switch lead that needs to be plugged into the front panel header but they may also come with a
power LED HDD LED and reset switch very
occasionally these days you may also have a speaker or buzzer in the hardware
box and this is also where that goes the usual layout is to have the power LED
plus and minus on the top left power switch immediately right of that and PC
speaker plus and minus to the right of that on the top row the bottom row
usually goes HDD LED plus and minus then reset switch sometimes there will be a
second three pin wide power LED plus and minus to the right of that for
compatibility with older cases using a wider power LED connector of these
connections you might note that three have plus and minus or polarity that is
it matters in which orientation you have them the connector will usually have a
positive and negative indicator silk screened onto it or even be separated
into individual wires but if not they should be colorcoded and the white or
black wies us usually the negative for LEDs the polarity needs to be correct or
your lights won't function properly the good news is that if you put them in
wrong it won't hurt anything just flip them around the PC speaker header
follows the same black equals negative wire convention but these are becoming
so rare that you may never see one while building a computer for yourself its
primary role these days is to provide feedback during boot beep codes can be
useful for troubleshooting but have largely been replaced by diagnostic LEDs
it has other uses but it's mostly just a relic of a byon era two of the front
panel connections absolutely do not matter which orientation they go in and
that's the power switch and reset switch because unlike devices like LEDs or
speakers that need the draw Power these are simple switches that close a circuit
still it's neatest to make sure that they line up with the other cables if present once you've wired up the front
panel gently pull the slack back through the rear panel it's a good idea to also
wire up USB and front panel audio now if present front panel audio may have two
connectors AC 9 7 and HD audio or aelia
both are keyed the same way that is they have a blank do pin on the connector
that allows them to go in only one way
but how they work is different the tldr is that ac97 is a mostly dumb connection
that doesn't provide any feedback as to what's plugged in an HD audio or aelia
allows for things like Jack sensing and reassignment most computers since the
mid 2000s will have support for HD audio so use that unless your computer is
really old the header for this is usually on the lower left corner of the
motherboard but if you don't see it there check your manual to locate it
like your front panel wires from before make sure they're completely free of
obstructions then use the cable management guides now if you have them
to reduce the need for rewiring later find a hole close to the header then go
through it for an ATX motherboard you can usually get away with pulling it
through this little channel here even if your power supply will go right up
against it and that will give you a very clean look a common mistake when
plugging these in is to only plug in one row make sure there are no pins hanging
out directly above or below your connector when you plug it in it can
only go in one way yes but only if all
the rows are aligned first when it's on there pull the slack through and move on
to the next one front panel USB is
broken up into three types USB 2.0 USB
3.0 and USB 3 .2 often used for the
type-c ports USB 2 connectors consist of
two rows of four pins with a fifth pin on only one row to make sure you don't
plug it in the wrong way around usually but not always there's a plastic shield
around these on the motherboard to make sure it lines up exactly when it's
plugged in but it's usually pretty easy
and they can share this design with both seral and fire wire make absolutely
certain that you do not plug a USB into anything that's called fire wire FW or
1394 because uses a much higher voltage and will destroy USB devices plugged
into it usually the right headers will be labeled with USB sometimes followed
by a port number and the headers that correspond to it but if it doesn't say
or you aren't sure consult your motherboard's manual follow the same
procedure as front panel audio for these cables make sure they're free from
obstruction use the cable management guides and find a hole close to the
header for it to go through through remember it can only go on one way so
don't force it and mash up the pins pull
the slck through for the cable management later and repeat as necessary
but what about USB 3 and 3.2 these are
much larger stiffer cables and usually you'll find their headers on the right
edge of the motherboard or at the bottom Edge they're quite wide and sometimes
difficult to get through Cable Management channels so if you haven't been paying attention to Cable
Management pay attention now because these are the worst as before find a
hole near the USB 3 hutter on the motherboard and line it up but don't
connect it just yet listen first usb3
connectors are very fussy and it's easy even for a professional builder to mash
the pins due to the way that it's installed the connector easily contacts
the pins before it is fully aligned and the force required to plug it in is much
higher than the other connectors we've seen so far that basically means that
you won't know if it's aligned and you won't know if you've mashed anything by
feel alone if you do manage to bend a pin chances are it won't unbend without
snapping so very carefully line it up
and don't apply pressure until you are reasonably sure that the pins are
aligned if all goes well it should snap or click into place and you can breathe
a sigh of relief unlike the other cables this one is very stiff so Cable
Management should be done with a very gentle touch if you accidentally pull it
out you'll probably end up bending all the pins in the header at the same time
and at that point you can just say goodbye friend you USB 3 USB 3.2 is a
lot easier but has the annoying quality of being both very stiff and standing
straight up off the motherboard most of the time usually these connectors will
be found near the 24 pin power connector and are keyed to only go in one way you
don't have to worry about mashing pins on this one thankfully so you can just
plug it right in but it does have the annoying tendency to kind of rock out of
place so again a light touch is needed for cable management now there are other
older headers that you might come across even today like cereal fire wire
parallel and more and you can think of these the same way that you think of the
USB 2 or front panel audio connectors just make absolutely certain that you
are connecting to what you think you are serial for example is often labeled Comm
parallel will often be labeled lpt and firewire may be labeled 1394 just keep
this in mind if you're hunting around for more USB headers to plug into oh a
fun little aside is if you run out of internal usb2 headers you can actually
get hubs that will expand them since that's a thing that USB can do if you
have any 2 and 1/2 in or 3 and 1/2 in drives now's a good time to get them
installed most modern cases have dedicated trays behind the motherboard
or elsewhere for the smaller 2 and 1/2 in type usually with the expectation
that you'll be using them with an SSD and let's face it you probably are these
are almost always removable with a thumb screw or something like that just remove
the screw and slide it free to get access your SSD will also have fine
threaded and three holes that screw onto the bottom of the tray as well as the
sides some trays use one set or the other and there will be counter sunk or
flat screws for this purpose included with the case Hardware box align the SSD
with the holes then screw it in place when it's solid go ahead and slip it
back into the position by aligning the tabs and using the thumb screws to
secure it if you got more go ahead and repeat the process most cases come with
removable trays for 3 and 1/2 in hard drives these days usually clipped in
with two tabs like this pinch them and Slide the tray out to remove it and like
the 2 and 1/2 in sled it may have holes either on the sides or the bottom
depending on the manufacturer the drive should face label up with the PCB on the
bottom and its connector should be on the side without tabs so that when it
slides back in they're facing the motherboard tray side of the case many
of these will have shock absorbing rubber grommets through which long course threaded 632 screws from the
hardware box are inserted these are the good ones some however are completely
tooless and these can be kind of annoying because you need to kind of stretch it around the hard drive to get
it to clip into place it never feels quite right regardless of the type most
modern 3 and 1/2 in trays also have 2 and 1/2 in mounting holes for ssds too
which follow the same installation steps unless they don't have grommets in which
case you're just going to screw it directly in like the other 2 and 1/2 in Drive sleds we mentioned earlier
assuming that's the case screw in the fine threaded M3 screws from the bottom
with the label up and the connectors facing the rear repeat these steps until all of your drives are installed if your
case is an older design with fixed Mount says is common with extreme budget
builds then you'll need to angle the drive into place and then line it up on
the rail with the connectors facing inside of the case yes it is as messy as
that sounds when you line it up two mounting holes for course threaded 6 32
screws on each side should be visible through the cutouts and while some cases
give you some leeway from mounting it further forward or rearward you're
limited to these holes a lot of people neglect the screws on the other side but
you're not like them are you you're not one of those no of course not I mean if
you need to mount a 2.5 in SSD this way that's fine they don't have any moving
parts and they're not all that heavy so you can even just like double-sided tape
them to wherever you want if it comes to that but heavy 3.5 in hard drives need
to be screwed in properly at least if you want them to last for any period of
time you're probably wondering how the computer talks to these drives at this
point and that's where the data cable comes in Serial ATA has made things dead
simple and most motherboards will come with cables for it in the Box sometimes
they'll have locking tabs on them to keep them in place while installing them
they'll kind of clip in automatically but to remove them you need to press down on the clip to pull it out
regardless as to whether or not they clip though they're key in an L shape
that makes it very obvious which way is the right way to insert them line the L
on the cable up with the L on the drive and just plug it in making sure it's
flush with the drive then route the cable through to your motherboard sounds
simple but these are stiff cables that
are tough to Cable manage so you may need to get a little bit creative when
hiding them especially if the corresponding connector on your motherboard isn't facing the edge like
this and instead sticks up like this like the USB 3 connector you'll want to
be care careful while cable managing these if you accidentally overdo it you
can break off the L block on the drive rendering it useless unless you've got
some pretty mad soldering skills I mean I guess it's not that difficult but oh
you don't want to do it anyway go ahead and connect the other end of the cable
to the drive now you should check with your motherboard manual which Port you're plugging into because some may
actually share bandwidth with PCI Express devices especially m.2 drives so
you may either get worse performance or completely lose the ability to use these
ports in those circumstances it's worth mentioning that you'll
sometimes get Serial ATA cables with right angle ends and some with straight
ends uh what gives with that well right angle is usually cleaner for hanging off
the back of a hard drive that's installed in a removable tray like this
while straight cables are almost a necessity for 2.5 in ssds mounted on a
dedicated tray behind the motherboard or anywhere else they mount flush with the
case they're way cleaner this way and depending on the orientation it may not
even be possible to connect a right angle connector on one of these drives so saving the straight ones for flush
fitting drives is a good idea what's that other connector for though power
we'll get to that soon but first this is an excellent time to wire up any case
fans you might have and for builds with liquid coolers this is where those come
in if you're going to use a fan controller then you should find a
centrally accessible place for it to go usually they'll come with an adhesive
backing so you can just find your own spot for it and hook it there just don't
cover up any holes or cable management holes if you can help it we'll deal with
the power for that later for now let's get to the fans themselves whether
you're replacing existing fans or installing new ones you'll need to pay
close attention to the direction the fan will blow some people prefer a balanced
approach to air flow with equal number of fans pulling air in than pushing it
out while others prefer to have more fans facing in resulting in a slightly
positive pressure environment inside of the case combined with filtered intakes
this can help control dust and debris the opposite negative pressure is not
recommended regardless you want to have a direct path for air to travel with
fresh air being pulled over your hottest components so ideally drawing Air at the
front and bottom and exhausting it from the top and rear also make sure you
don't have any intake and exhausts on the same side how you install the fan
will be determined by what the fan is going to do if the fan is strictly for
case air flow then it's as simple as lining it up with the correct set of
holes in the location you want it and screwing it in with these chungus fan
screws or or little rubber doodads like these ones be sure to keep the fan
cabling clear of the blades and Chassis while you do this and it's optimal to
have the fan cable sticking out of the corner closest to the fan header that
you expect to use it with usually towards the back panel it helps to not
tighten down all the screws until they're all at least a little bit in and
you'll want to do opposing Corners first to stabilize it so that it doesn't slip
around on you while you torque in the screws some cheaper cases by the way
might warp while you do this leading to the unfortunate situation where your fan
blades will brush against the chassis which is both irritating and not great
for air flow you can try to bend out the metal but the best solution in this case
is to undo the screws a little bit or better yet find something to use as a
spacer rinse and repeat for every fan you need to install if these fans are
part of a liquid cooling setup then your radiator is going to go in now and you
can put away those chungus fan screws in favor of Slimmer but potentially even
more chungus screws where the radiator goes is up to you some people like to
have it exhaust air out the top of their chassis While others like to have it
pull cool air through the front but at the end of the day you're probably going
to put it wherever it fits best which is usually in the top of the case now from
a performance standpoint it doesn't really matter whether your fans pull air
through the fins or push air through the fins but what it does affect is
maintenance I always recommend installing fans in a pole configuration
that allows easy access to the radiator to clear off dust for Aesthetics you may
decide to take a different path but just remember that in 2 years when you're
taking your whole cooler apart so you can get the cat hair out of it I
freaking told you another important consideration is that AI coolers are
quieter and last longer the combination pump and coal plate is below the area
where the tubes connect to the radiator you want to make sure that any air that
might be trapped in there Rises to the top and that top is not your pump this
isn't as much of an issue for custom Loops because the pump is usually going
to end up at the bottom of the case anyway but if you didn't know this now
you do put your pump down low lining up the
radiator with fans on the outside is a major pain in the butt which is why some
fans like artics bionics can daisy chain
together with a bridge connector which helps hold them in place regardless you
want all of your cables to be clear the fans and the radiator pinching them here
and having to redo the whole thing sucks line everything up like so and then use
these long screws to secure Each corner then the other and then Each corner of
the fan until you've got them all secure if you're lucky your case will let you
detach the radiator Mount and make it so much easier by just doing the whole
thing on a bench and dealing with the completed assembly after it gets much
more Awkward with a front panel Mount where you need to basically hold the
radiator and fan together like this and screw them in one at a time so they
don't just fall around everywhere again if your case lets you remove this
bracket your life will be so much easier another key benefit to a pull
configuration is that it usually allows you to screw all the fans into the
radiator ahead of time then Mount the radiator to the case using these little
screws now we're not going to revisit cooler and thermal compound application
at this time please go back and refer to that section from earlier if you need to
and don't forget to check your manual as many all-in-one coolers have their own
little installation quirks like for example the inclusion of a dedicated
pump power plug or an extra USB connection for controlling RGB lighting
or even a little built-in screen or an integrated fan splitter that's
controlled by the AI through software I'd recommend using that by the way if
you've got it because it'll let your pump and your fans work together when they need to cool your CPU during a
heavy gaming session now let's power up the rest of our fans if you want them to
be controlled by the motherboard you'll either need to plug them into a fanhub
that is plugged into your motherboard some cases include these by the way or
directly into the motherboard itself either individually into their own
headers or using Splitters now depending on how many fans you have you may run
out of fan headers on the motherboard and you might need to use wi spitters
they won't harm anything but they do tend to look a little Messier most of
the time there's at least one case fan header to the lower left of the CPU
socket and there are usually at least another two on the lower right edge of
the motherboard but motherboard manufacturers do strange things
sometimes so if you can't find your fan headers of course check your manual
plugging them in is the same as any other fan like we already did for the
CPU just align the tabs on the cable with the tab on the board cable managing
them though can be a bit of a challenge for the exhaust fan next to the io panel
you can usually run it through and bundle it up against the motherboard's
io section for a clean look but intake fans can be trickier still do your best
with it RGB wiring can also end up really messy look at all the cabling
that requires thankfully companies have
begun shipping fans both with RGB and without that can daisy chain together so
only a single fan needs to be wired up the traditional way but if you're not
lucky enough or wealthy enough to have those well I hope you like cable
management most of this can be hidden behind the motherboard tray temporarily
we'll come back to this later for now step 12 power supply if you're counting
this has been many many more steps than 12 and you're probably sick of wearing
that anti-static strap well good news
it's time to get the power supply in to ground the whole dang computer if you've
been following along your power supply is already out of its box and connect it
to the wall go ahead and disconnect it now turn your case around and look at
the power supply cutout are there thumb screws if so remove those to free the
back plate this plate and plates like it sometimes make it a little bit easier to
install later the orientation of the power supply determines which screw
holes you'll end up using and the ideal is to have the fan facing downward
pulling air up through a filtered intake at the bottom of your case if there is
not an intake there you'll want to mount it fan up unless you want to starve it
for air flow and spoiler alert you do not want to start
it for air flow begin plugging in your power supply cables if you've got a
modular unit now the end for the power supply will usually have a PSU marking
to tell you where it goes first grab the power connectors for your GPU if you
haven't already it'll be some combination of one to three six pin or8
pin connectors or it might be one of those new fangled NVIDIA 12 pin or ATX
12vt high power connectors in which case you'll need to grab the adapter bundled
with your GPU if your power supply doesn't have one in the box just be
careful when you're identifying those 12volt high power connectors some can
handle more wattage than others and the labels can be small and hard to read if
you're still not sure well there's still that adapter to convert your older style
cables in your gpus box speaking of it's worth noting that these daisy chain
connectors and six plus two pin connectors aren't inherently evil but
it's preferred to use individual cables with actual dedicated conductors for
each pin if possible once you're satisfied with your choice
clip them into place making sure they're fully seated and Route the cable
somewhere accessible for now it's time to install the PSU itself if you've got
a back plate go ahead and attach it to your power supply Now using coar
threaded 632 screws most of these back
plates are going to have enough clearance to put in all four screws but
if your switch gets in the way for example don't stress you can put in
three screws it's going to be okay once it's secure feed the wires through the
power supply mount on your case and Slide the power supply into position
it's a at this point that you'll want to connect your 12volt CPU cables to your
power supply if you've got a modular unit next if you've got a back plate all
you need to do now is tighten the thumb screws but if you're raw dogging it this
is where you'll screw the power supply into the back of your case pay attention
to which of the mounting holes on the case have screw threading from the power
supply behind them though it is very easy to make the mistake of accidentally
screwing into one of the honeycomb shaped holes that are for ventilation on
the back of the power supply that is not actually
secure if you don't have a modular power supply handling the 12vt CPU cables will
be a little trickier at this stage but if you got small hands or a high pain
threshold you can make it work line up the tabs and click them into place make
sure that they're in there before moving on by the way because if you really can't get in there there is no shame in
pulling off your CPU heat SN temporarily now and putting it back on when you're
done at this point the instructions are the same between modular and non-modular
power supplies it's time for your 24 pin ATX connector separate that cable from
the others and fish the cable out through the nearest Cable Management hole to your motherboard's 24 pin
connector from here it's just like before line up the tabs and press it in
until it clicks with that done you can use the peripheral cables to wire up
power to any drives or fan controllers you have installed in your system
usually these have just enough spacing between the connectors to line up neatly
with hard drive stacked in a bay like this plugging these power cables in is
the same as plugging in the SATA data cable just line up the little l-shape
and press it into place these ones usually don't have locking connectors
though so make sure it's on straight before moving on this will also tell you
if you've accidentally half connected it upside down which is a thing that you
can do even today you'll need to occasionally install these Molex
connectors instead of SATA power connectors and they're a bit of a pain
because of how big they are but on the bright side they're really difficult to
install wrong you can also use them for just 12 Vols and 5 volts to connect up
to your project if you really want to they have a beveled Edge on one side and
they fit quite snugly so much so that the sometimes push the pins out of
things like fan adapters this happens slip the pin back into place it should
just clip in there then try again just be patient and line it up correctly
finally your power supply might have come with a button like this one this is
usually for hybrid fan control in the O position the fan will only power up
while load or heat levels are high enough while in the in position the fan
will just always be on there's little reason to have it in the in position
unless you're counting on your PSU contributing as a case fan so just leave
it out for lower nose levels but wait did I say finally there's still
something we haven't plugged in yet the GPU if you're lucky enough to have one
that is prices are still on the moon as of early 2024 but if you follow our
guide for buying one used even if you have a skinny wallet you should be able
to get something decent first you need to figure out which slot you should use
for ITX motherboards this going to be obvious
the slot the one you get but things get
a little murkier the larger you go as a rule of thumb the top most slot is
usually the best it's almost always connected directly to the CPU for
maximum bandwidth and you'll often see this pointed out in your motherboard's
manual as well once you've determined the right slot you'll need to remove the
corresponding slot covers usually by simply removing the screws that hold
them in place but on some cheaper cases you'll need to break them off instead
and if if so be care full it's simple
enough to do you can push it down with a screwdriver and then finish the job with
your fingers but if you're too aggressive you could slip and when it finally snaps off that's a bad
time um I've gotten bit by cheap cases
before and uh it it it there was there was a mess
for a while be patient and just use a gentle up and down motion don't twists
push or pull it'll come free before long just just fatigue the metal and it'll
just come right off now the the covers are gone make sure the tab at the end of
the slot is pushed back if there is one then line up the card with the slot and
press it in it should slide in relatively easily and the clip at the
back will snap shut once it's all the way in next line up the GPU's bracket
with the holes on the case that used to hold in those slot covers and use the
screws you either removed previously or retrieved from your accessories bundle
to secure it into place a coar threaded 632 screw is usually the right one for
the job here if you're not too sure but some cases are a little bit different if
you have a multi-lot GPU and you find yourself with only one screw for some
reason put it on any other slot than the top one for best results you still have
all your screws though right by the way this is the GPU section but what you
just did should work with any PCI Express expansion card unlike most cards
some big gpus might sag a bit even after you've secured them into place and some
cards even come with adjustable anti-ag brackets or spacers that you can sit on
the bottom of your chassi this isn't strictly necessary but it just keeps
everything looking nice and reduces the risk that something will break if you move your PC just slip it into place and
Slide the bracket up until it's holding your GPU at the right height then tighten it so it stays there other
Solutions may involve drilling into your case or some cases even include a sag
bracket on their own now it's time to run power to your GPU we already
determined which cables we need and how many when we install their power supply
so grab those and Route them through the appropriate Cable Management hole according to your preference some people
like to come in from behind the GPU and others like the cables coming straight
up from the basement like me whichever you choose you should make sure you have
enough slack to get them into position and that it's clear of all other cables
to simplify your cable management just like with the 12volt CPU connectors PCI
Express connectors are keyed to only go one way although a six pin cable can be
inserted to an 8 pin connector if you're not careful this won't harm anything but
the GPU will probably complain and prevent you from booting if you try
regardless of how many pins you're looking at select the matching cable line up the tabs and click them into
place again make sure they're fully seated once you're done especially if
you're using the ATX 12volt high power connector it's often quite stiff so you
might be tempted to to bend it so it's not sticking out so far but please do
not let it curve if your power supply cables are 6 plus2 like this and you
need to make it go into an 8 Pin receptacle just make sure the two pieces
are coupled together so the pins are flush and the separate two pin connector
can't move once it's plugged in it's no good if they're only partway installed
congratulations you've just finished building your PC except you haven't
really finished not quite yet if you've been following the guide up till now you
should have reasonably well-managed cables but they're all going be kind of
loose and not very tidy on most modern cases you should have at the very least
little Hoops to slip cable ties through to provide a solid anchor for the cables
that are running around your case you can use single-use zip ties to bundle
cables together more tightly and for cables that route together like the
12volt CPU and PCIe cables you might
want to do so to keep them neat but you also might want to use reusable hook and
loop ties for the main runs which can both add a modern look and be a godsend
if you ever need to add or move any cables in the future take it from me if
you have to snip a zip tie you're probably not going to replace it and
you'll end up just undoing all the hard work you've done today the platonic
ideal of cable management is a single trunk of cables where little branches
come off and go wherever they need to go with no overlap unfortunately cables are
finite in length so unless you pre-measured and picked up some custom
length cable mod cables or something you'll almost always have to improvise
we've actually got a full video on cable management that you can go check out here but for now let's get to
tidying troubleshooting is a whole other kettle of fish but here are some quick
things that you can do if you don't get any output and you're sure that the
power supply and the outlet it's plugged into are both switched on check all your
cables first these are the most likely culprits then check your RAM and your
expansion slots to make sure that they are properly seated if your PC is
powering on but you're not getting any display make sure you've plugged your
monitor into your graphics card rather than into your motherboard directly you
can also check the diagnostic LEDs on your motherboard ASUS has a little stop
light that goes along with this where red means CPU orange means memory white
means GPU and green means good others might have LEDs that light up for each
section of the motherboard that's been initialized as well you just might have to look them up in your motherboard's
manual to figure out exactly which codes and which numbers and letters correspond
to what one of the codes is 0 if you get
this one you should try reting your CPU and firing it up again if your system
simply isn't powering on but is getting power you might have a short this is an
annoying problem to diagnose but the most common culprit is an extra standoff
between the motherboard tray and the back of the motherboard or some errant
piece of metallic something sitting bridging two pins if you're still having
trouble you can always hit up the Linus tips.com Forum to get more help now that
you've got the ufi bio setup screen the very first things you should do do in
order are check your CPU temperatures check that all your RAM is showing up
and check that your storage is showing up if all of that looks good then you
can continue on otherwise you'll need to power down and resat your cooler memory
or storage devices until they all show up one unintuitive thing is sometimes
you might have some memory that's not showing up and it's actually caused by
your CPU not being seated in the socket correctly so you might have to resat
that and with that your PC is now built
whoa hang on your RAM's not running at the right speed what's up with that time
to adjust some common settings first to fix your RAM speed you'll want to enable
XMP or Expo which are memory overclocking features for Intel and AMD
respectively this will automatically adjust the frequency the timings and the
voltage to what's on the package rather than you know the defaults and it's
almost certainly what you want unless you're running ECC memory or even if you
are on an overclockable workstation platform like Threadripper 7000 it
should be noted though that because this is technically overclocking it can be
unstable that's why some prefer to keep it disabled until they have the
operating system installed and they're sure the rest of their PC is working correctly that's a pretty good idea just
remember to come back and do it later or you could be leaving some performance on
the table speaking of you'll also want to check the status of the multi-core
enhancement setting usually this is an advanced option if it's even present on
your motherboard at all there are a bunch of different names for it so here
are some of the common ones found in boards from from major vendors
regardless of the name it tweaks or removes your CPU's limits so it can
turbo more aggressively and for far longer than it normally would improving
performance at the cost of extra heat and vice versa stock operation is with
this setting disabled of course but if you have a beefy cooler you might want
to use it to get a little more oomph out of your Hardware most other settings can
be left at their defaults although if you're installing Windows 11 you should
make sure to enable the TPM and secure boot modules and disable the
compatibility support module or CSM exactly how to do that varies by vendors
so check your motherboard's manual to be sure another option that began with the
Radeon 6000 series from AMD and the RTX 3000 Series from NVIDIA is resizable bar
also known as smart access memory or rebar the simple explanation is that
normally your CPU can only access a small portion of your GPU's memory at
once traditionally just like 256 Megs at a time to access multiple gigabytes of
vram that 250 6eg window is simply moved
around as needed if different parts of memory need to be accessed at the same
time however the system has to wait for one access to finish before the window
can move to the next one this delay can slow down your GPU and in extreme cases
can cause significant performance degradation resizable bar lets the CPU
access all the vram without that moving
window so there's no extra downtime as games have grown in scale and complexity
is gone from heat to necessary to enable
it you'll first need to make sure that the compatibility support module from
before is disabled then enable above 4G
decoding and resizable bar as usual the
exact location of these settings depends on your motherboard's BIOS so check the
manual if you can't find it some older boards might need a BIOS update for it
to work but most released since 2021 can do it and some newer boards might even
ship with it on by default it's worth noting that there are occasions where
turning on resizable bar can reduce use performance but thankfully this is a
relatively rare experience and graphic drivers are beginning to handle them on
a caseby Case basis our recommendation therefore is to keep it enabled unless
you encounter any problems and just make sure that you keep your graphics driver
up to date after you install your operating system finally your operating
systems installer should automatically boot after inserting the flash drive but
if it doesn't you can usually hit f8 or F12 on the first boot screen to bring up
a boot menu and select it that way if it's still doesn't show up there go back
into the UEFI settings and make sure that the Legacy USB devices setting is
enabled you shouldn't have to enable this under normal circumstances but
sometimes having it disabled is enough to disable USB storage altogether most
operating systems should just boot at this point now your PC is built and it's
all thanks to our sponsor seic if you need a power supply just head down to
the description and click the link it's that simple at this point we've made it pretty clear why we've worked for cic
for as long as we have we've used many of their different power supplies in our
builds over the years both for personal use as well as computers you've seen on
the channel they've been a great partner to work with and we're happy to have
them back as a sponsor for our updated build guide seriously go show them some
love if you care about reliability and build quality click the link below
they've been running sales and promos more regularly so you may even save some
money on your shiny new PSU if the time is right huge thanks to them for
sponsoring this update we literally took the longest video we've ever made and
made it 20 minutes long woohoo thanks to you for watching if
you're looking for something else like this to watch you absolute mad lad then
maybe check out our companion video on how to set up your PC now that you're
done the build again let us know if there's anything we missed down below
and maybe we'll get to it in the next one
2026 you're rolling right y sick