ULTIMATE Build a Better $1500 Gaming PC Computer "How To" Guide
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
8,195 words · ~40 min read
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Welcome to the first full build guide that we've ever done on Linus Tech Tips
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powered by Intel. Today we're going to be showing you guys step by step how to
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build your very own gaming system in the better class. So that means we're
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spending around $1,500 on the tower. Sort of if you subscribe to that good,
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better, best way of thinking, which means we're not really compromising any
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features and any performance and we're not spending so much that it's sort of
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just for bling and bragging rights either. We're going to be installing
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Windows 8. We're going to talk about some of the benefits you get from Windows 8, including in some games
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better performance. and we're going to be pairing it with a touchcreen and
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talking about some of the ways that touch really makes Windows 8 come to
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life, whereas the mouse and keyboard do not. Part of getting the best bang for
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your buck is overclocking. So, everything we've got in front of us here
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is overclocking optimized in some way or another. Now, I want you to think about
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your gaming experience kind of like Pi because the two most important things
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for Pi are crust and filling. So, I'm
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going to go ahead and say the CPU is kind of like the crust. It supports the
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rest of the system. And if it's not fast enough, you're going to end up with
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bottlenecks. So if you spent like $1,000 on a graphics card and a hundred bucks
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on a CPU, that graphics card would never reach its full potential anyway. So in
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this case, for our crust, we've gone with a 3570K. It performs just slightly
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less than the 3770K in gaming
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applications because it doesn't have hyperthreading. It's a Core i5, but
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because it's a K series skew, you can overclock it to really squeeze the most
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performance possible out of the architecture. We're going to be aiming
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for anywhere from around 4.4 to 4.5 GHz
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on our CPU. The graphics card is kind of like the fruity filling. It doesn't work
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at all without the crust, but it really makes the experience, particularly from
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a gaming standpoint, enjoyable. This is what enables all those visual effects.
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And we've gone with the GeForce GTX 660Ti Power Edition from MSI. It's an
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overclocking optimized card with a dual fan cooler. And I mean, it performs
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great at stock, too. So, if you're not comfortable overclocking, you can always
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run it that way. If the CPU and graphics card are kind of like Pi, then I guess
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the rest of this stuff is sort of like ice cream because it definitely makes the experience better. And you can't
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really have Pi without ice cream, and you can't have a computer without all
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this other stuff. So, I think that's where the analogy sort of breaks down.
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But for our motherboard, we went with the Z77A G45 from MSI. This is for a
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couple of reasons. is extremely inexpensive. It's Z77, so it's
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overclocking ready, and it is Crossfire and SLI ready, meaning we are able to
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have a ton of flexibility in terms of graphics upgrade options. Speaking of
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flexible graphics upgrade options, the GS700 from Corsair has a three-year
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warranty, a single strong 12volt rail, meaning you can hook up whatever you
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want to it without worrying about it having an overcurren protection shut
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down because you connected everything to the wrong connectors. Don't worry about
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any of that. It looks great and you can change the colors from red to blue to
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white to completely off to match your build depending on what route you want
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to go. The memory choice might seem a little bit weird because you probably
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know that more than 8 gigs isn't really necessary for memory and we've gone with
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16 gigs of Corsair Vengeance DDR3600 memory. So, the reason for that
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is pretty simple. If you buy a dual channel kit, you're going to buy two
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sticks to get the most out of the bandwidth available to your CPU. Okay?
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If you buy two 4 gig sticks, then you're going to be limited to a total of 16
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gigs for upgrading, unless you want to remove those sticks and add in a
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completely new set. So, the reason we've done this is because it gives you the
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potential to upgrade to 32 gigs without running into compatibility issues by
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mixing and matching dims down the road or being stuck at a maximum of 16 gigs.
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Now, you might think that the computer case is all about aesthetics, but the CM
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Storm Scout 2 from Cooler Master does more than that. It's got great cooling.
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It's very rugged. The durability of it that the build quality of it is
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outstanding considering the price, and it's very portable. It has a handle in
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the top that's so strong that when I did my unboxing of this case, I was able to
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hold the entire case up by the handle and shake it around without any flex and
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without it breaking. It means you can haul your rig around to land parties without worrying too much about it. And
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it looks really good. So yes, there there's aesthetics as well. It is a
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factor. For cooling, we've gone with SP120 quiet edition fans from Corsair. I
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personally find that static pressure is more important than sheer air flow when
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it comes to getting the most out of your system. So I do prefer SPS in almost all
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scenarios. And for the CPU, we've gone with a Hydro Series H100i liquid cooler.
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This is going to allow us to reach that overclock that we wanted. And because it
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comes with Corsair's link software, we can monitor things like fluid
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temperatures, system temperatures, and fan RPMs using software, keeping close
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close tabs on our system to make sure it's running at peak efficiency. The
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storage subsystem really comes down to personal choice, but what I'll do is
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I'll explain why we went with what we did. So, we've gone with an Intel 300
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series 180 gig SSD. We didn't have a big enough budget for a 240 gig SSD. And
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rather than going for a 520 series, we sacrificed a little bit of performance
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to get a bit more capacity because I personally find that 120 gigs is not
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quite enough these days if you're running a pure SSD boot drive for all of
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your OS, application, and gaming needs. We also added a Seagate Barracuda 3 TBTE
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drive for mass storage because, let's face it, SSDs aren't at the point yet
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where they're inexpensive enough that you can store everything on them. This
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gives us a couple of interesting options. We can go with a 180 gig drive
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and 3 TB for storage. Or if you find that 120 gigs is enough, you can go with
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a 120 gig boot drive, partition away 60 gigs of it, use it as a cache using
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Intel Smart Response technology, which is built into your Z77 board, and you
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can have a super speedy boot drive with a few key applications. Then a cache SSD
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accelerated mass storage drive where you can install things like games. So, your
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most frequently used applications will be much faster than if they were just
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stored purely on a mechanical drive. When it comes to peripherals, things get
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real personal real fast. For our monitor, we went with an Acer
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T232HL. This is a 10point multi-touch touchscreen monitor. Remember, we're
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talking about the Windows 8 experience and how touch really makes it come to
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life. It's also an IPS screen, which means better viewing angles and better
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color reproduction, which I personally will prefer to the faster response times
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but lower color depth of a TN panel. Not everyone will agree with me on that one,
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and that's fine. Uh, for our headset, we went with the Vengeance 1300 from
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Corsair because they're relatively inexpensive, they sound pretty good, and
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they're lightweight and comfortable. However, there are more premium options
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out there such as the Siberia V2 from Steeleries. This one in particular also
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matches our build pretty well with a white and blue color scheme. For the
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keyboard, again, this is personal choice. Not everyone believes that you
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even have to spend a lot of money on a keyboard for gaming, but I personally
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find that a mechanical keyboard really enhances the typing experience, and I
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prefer it for gaming. And this is the Quickfire Pro from CM Storm. This
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particular one has Cherry MX Brown switches, but you can choose almost any
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switch under the sun you want. And what I like about the Quickfire Pro is it has
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great build quality and it comes in at a very very reasonable price point
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considering the budget of the rest of the components we're looking at here.
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For our mouse, we went with the Vengeance M65. You could go with the M95
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if you play more MMO games than FPS games. It has more buttons and stuff,
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but what we liked about the M65 is it's got the latest laser sensor offering up
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to 8200 DPI. It's from Corsair, so, you
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know, can't really go wrong. and it's white which matched the rest of our
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build without being overpriced. For our mouse pad, so last but not least, we
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went with a Steeler QCK. This is just the standard sized one. You don't have
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to get a huge mouse pad unless you're a low sensitivity gamer. And it's
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available not only in the plain black one you see here, but also any number of
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different configurations with cool game gaming artwork and all that kind of cool
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stuff like that. The actual tools you need to build a computer are pretty
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straightforward. I use a big Phillips screwdriver and a small Phillips
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screwdriver for when I can't get access to those hard-to-reach areas. The most
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important thing really is a static free workstation. That means no carpets, no
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cats. Hi. And most importantly, no
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clothes. Actually, wait, no, sorry. Clothes are okay, but no carpets and no
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cats. Now, techs who do a lot of
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workh might have a dedicated staticresistant test platform for making
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sure that components work before you install them in the case where some
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issues can occur. But let's face it, you
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guys are watching this video. You probably don't have one of those. So, in a pinch, a motherboard box is an optimal
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place to test the components before you actually install them into the chassis.
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Before we can assemble our ghetto test bench, we got to remove the motherboard
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from the box.
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Now, the only pieces I need are the IO shield and the SATA cables. Other than
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that, we're going to leave everything inside. If we were running SLI, for
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example, we would also take out the SLI
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bridge. Next is the motherboard itself. We remove that from the ESD bag. This
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protects it during transport. Put that inside the box. And
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being careful not to touch any of the sensitive electronics. You can see I'm
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actually holding it by the heat sink and the back plate here. We put that onto
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our makeshift test bench. Installing
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CPUs is so easy. Now, lift up the retention ARM. Lift up the hold down
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plate. No need to remove the protective plastic cover yet. Align the little gold
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triangle on the top of your CPU with the triangle on your motherboard itself.
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Like
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so. Close down the hold down plate. Close down the retention ARM. Little bit
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of strength required here. And check that out. The plastic cover will pop off
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and your CPU socket pins were never exposed. In order to make use of dual
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channel memory, take your two memory sticks. Remember, we're using two so
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that we have expandability for later and install them in the color-coded memory
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slots by pushing down firmly on both sides after opening up the tabs on the
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side. Now, I personally prefer to install them in the slots furthest away
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from the CPU socket. However, because we're using a liquid cooler, we don't
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have to worry about any clearance issues, but if you were using an air
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cooler, then this is definitely the recommended way to do
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it. We're only going to need this for the out of the testing, but I do
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recommend installing that stock heat sink that came with your CPU. The pins
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are already in the correct position out of the box. The only thing to watch out for is make sure you've got enough
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length on the four pin connector to reach the CPU fan header on your
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motherboard. Push them down in a cross pattern.
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One. Two. Waiting for the click. Then
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plug it in. We're going to use this to make sure that the system posts before
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we proceed. Now, don't worry guys. I'll show you all of these steps in detail
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once we do the proper assembly of the computer. But basically all I've
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connected here is 24 pin power, eight pin power, two six pin power adapters to
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the video card. I've connected a DVI cable so we can find out if the system
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boots. And I have plugged in a keyboard just in case we have to press anything
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in order to confirm that yes indeed we do want to boot up. So let's go ahead.
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And this board does not have onboard switches. So we can use a key, a
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screwdriver or anything else metallic to short out the power switch. And now
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we'll find out if our components are working. So, press F1 to run
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setup. And we have at least basic functionality. Time to proceed with the
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full build. Preamble's over,
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folks. Time to actually build this thing. So, you can follow along step by
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step, and I guarantee you anyone will be able to build the exact computer that
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we're building here today. And most of the principles can be applied to pretty
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much any custom machine that you would build at any time. Step one, inspect
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your case for any damage because you're going to want to let the retailer or the manufacturer know if anything bad
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happened to it during transit. Step two is to take off the side panels. Even
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though many cases ship with thumb screws, often they're too tight from the
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factory to remove by hand, so you have to loosen them with a screwdriver. Put
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all the screws you take out somewhere safe, such as in a little tray. And I
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recommend putting the side panel somewhere safe because you guys wouldn't believe how many times I've put a side
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paddle down somewhere and tripped over it as I go to do something else,
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scratching it. So, the place I recommend keeping it is in the box that your case
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came in with the styrofoam pieces in between the two side panels so that they
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don't get damaged. A lot of people ask me, uh, what screws and adapters do I
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need in order to build my computer? The simple answer is your case comes with
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all of that stuff. Most cases come with either a box or a baggie inside that
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contains the screws you need to completely outfit that case with
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whatever hardware it happens to support. So, in this
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case, in this case, we've got a cardboard box that was mounted in one of
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the 3 and 1/2 in hard drive cages that has, here we go, all the drive rails and
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speakers and zip ties even that you'll need to assemble your computer. In most
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highquality cases, the cables inside that are pre-wired are going to be tied
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up in some way to keep them from scratching up the inside of the computer. So, you can free all of them.
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Free them all. Don't worry, we'll do cable management later so that you can
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make sure that they're all going to reach the places where they need to plug into. Now, I don't like to have my
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motherboard lying around, so it's the first thing that I'm going to put in my case when I'm building the new computer.
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You need nine motherboard standoffs. These are the little golden guys with
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the hex shape. And Cooler Master includes a convenient little tool that
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allows you to drive them into the motherboard tray with a Phillips head
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screwdriver. So, you're going to install them, assuming you're using an ATX
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board, that is a fulllength board. You're going to be installing them in
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holes A, B, C, D, E, F, J, KL. The other
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holes on the motherboard tray are for different sizes of motherboards. You can
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consult the manual if you're not sure which one is right for yours. Putting in
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IO shields can be a little bit tricky. Just make sure that you press on all
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four corners firmly to ensure that it's
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actually in place before you try to install the motherboard. Before putting
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the motherboard in, make sure you've got the right screws by doing a quick test
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fit to ensure that the threads match up with the threads of the standoffs that
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you just installed. Hold the motherboard by something that's not going to damage
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it. This is why I recommend having the stock heat sink on there. We're going to
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remove it later to install our liquid cooler. and approaching at an angle,
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line up the IO ports at the
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back. Then hold the motherboard in
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place while installing at least one screw so that it doesn't move around
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because that can scratch up the back of it. You don't have to wrench it super
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tight. It just has to not move.
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Are you powered up? Actually, you're not powered up at all yet because you don't
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have a power supply in your computer yet. When you install your power supply,
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you have two main options for a bottom- mounted power supply. You can either
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mount it with the fan on top, which will draw air from inside the case and
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exhaust it out the back. The advantage is that you're drawing more air through
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the case and out the back. The disadvantage is that you can be more
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likely to accumulate dust because you don't have any dust filter right next to
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it, which you would if you mounted it the other way. And the other disadvantage is that you're using warmer
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air to cool the power supply. The other option is flipping it fanside down. So
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in this case, our Storm Scout 2 has a filter on the bottom, which should keep
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the insides clean. But the disadvantage is if you put your case down on a plush
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carpet, it might suffocate the power supply and it might not get enough fresh
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air. So, think carefully about how you're planning to deploy your computer
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before installing the power supply. I generally go fan up because particularly
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with our graphics card, we're going to draw some of that heat away from the
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graphics card and out the back of the case using this additional fan for
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cooling. Line it up with the back of the case. Install the four screws.
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And it actually takes less time to install a power supply than it takes to
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think about how to install a power supply. At this stage of the game,
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although building a computer is no game, I recommend plugging in whatever
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connectors you can because as you fill the computer up with more components,
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it'll get hard to get at some of those little finicky ones. So, we're going to
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start with the main connectors that go into the motherboard. The Scout 2 has
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built-in cable management. So, we can run our 24 pin through this gap right
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here and then bring it up right next to the connector on the motherboard, making
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it so that you don't even see the wires really.
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The eight pin connector can be routed in much the same way, going through that
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cable management hole in the
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bottom, up behind the motherboard
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tray, through the little hole, and then into the eight pin connector up at the
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very top left corner of the motherboard.
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Guys, if at this point you break open the user manual or the quick start guide
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for your motherboard, there is no shame because installing these front panel
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connectors can be a little tricky. And while many motherboards have labels
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directly on the board for what's what, often they're actually not very clear.
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So, feel free to check it out in there. We're going to start with USB. USB 3 is
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an easy connector to plug in, and it's easy to find because it's very distinctive looking. Also, it's keyed,
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so it only goes in one way. On our motherboard, we have a right angle USB3
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connector, so there won't really be any strain on the cable or on the fragile
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pins inside, but not all motherboards have that. So, make sure that you don't
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have it wrenching on the connector
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itself. USB 2 is a smaller connector, and the way this one works is there's a
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blocked off pin on the bottom of the lead coming from your case, and there's
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a missing pin on the motherboard itself.
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As long as the blocked off pin corresponds to the missing pin, you
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won't have any issues. Just make sure you're actually plugging it into a USB
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header because it looks quite similar to some other
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headers. Next is front panel audio. Usually this is located on sort of the
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left hand side of the board near the bottom left corner. This
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one has a blocked off pin, but it's in a different position than USB 2. So, as
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long as you make sure that that corresponds to the missing pin on the connector, you won't have any difficulty
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with that one in either. Plug in HD audio if you have the option. Only very
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old motherboards rely on the AC97
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standard. Which brings us to the trickiest part. Power switch, reset
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switch, power LED, and hard drive LED.
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For the power switch and the reset switch, the orientation is not
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important. It doesn't matter. Don't worry about positive and negative. Just
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plug them in. And this is what I mean about some
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motherboards not being clearly labeled. The power and hard drive LEDs do rely on
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being plugged in a certain way. And on this particular board, the positive and
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negative terminals aren't labeled, so I'll have to consult the manual to make
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sure I get them right. Don't worry though, if you plug them in wrong, it's
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not going to damage anything. Your LEDs just won't light up. So, you can crack
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it back open, reverse them, and they'll work just
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fine. Okay, we could have used the fans included with the H100i, but they
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wouldn't be so sexy like these ones with the little white mod rings on them. Of
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course, there includes white, blue, and red rings in the box, so you can pick
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whatever you want for your color scheme. We went with white to go with our white
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case. Now, not everyone would want to use an H100i in this case because it's a
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bit of a weird mounting situation where what you do is you remove the top
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plastic plate here and you mount the radiator a little bit externally. Now,
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if you're into the sort of modded hot rod look, then you might like that. If
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you're not into that, go with an H8I instead. It doesn't perform quite as
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well because it's a single 120 mm radiator, but it still supports Corsair
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Link. It's a thick radiator, so it performs about as well as a single rad,
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and it's going to keep all the components inside. So, what we're going
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to do is we're going to start by removing the stock Intel cooler. Now,
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that we don't need that anymore. We're going to pop out that top piece of
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plastic on the case using the tabs inside. We're going to get the radiator
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in position, screw the fans in from the inside. Then it's time to mount the CPU
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block and pump combo unit to the processor itself. The trick with
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mounting the fans to the rad with the H100i is making sure that you get the
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right screws. So, there's a lot of screws in the box. You can consult the
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manual if you're not sure. Otherwise, find the one that looks like what I'm holding up because we're going to go
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through the fan, through the top of the case, and into the rad. Make sure as
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you're positioning it, you leave the leads, the three pin fan connectors,
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somewhere near the back of the case so you can hide them and not have unsightly
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wires cluttering up your build. The other thing is this is where you decide
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whether you want to push air through the radiator or pull air through the
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radiator. I prefer pull because it allows you to clean it more easily
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without removing the fans first. Lining
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up the screws and the fans and the radiator can be a little bit tricky. And
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to avoid the risk of cross threading, I recommend starting them with your hands
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to make sure that you're not putting it in wrong before you tighten them up with
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the screwdriver. The last benefit of the SP
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fans that I didn't mention before compared to the stock ones that come with the H100i is the fact that they
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have rubber noise isolating mounts, meaning they'll pass fewer vibrations to
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your computer, meaning less noise.
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Because we mounted a stock cooler, we will need to remove the thermal compound
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that's left on the CPU. However, we don't need to replace it. The thermal
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compound that comes on our H100i is extremely high quality. So, if you ever
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do need to remove thermal compound, use a lint-free cloth for the final stage,
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but you can clean the bulk of it off with toilet paper and 99% isopropyl
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alcohol. The higher percentage for the alcohol, the better and the more clean
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it's going to be. Now, the hardware you need is extremely sturdy. This is why I
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like the H80i and the H100i, but there are a lot of pieces. So, we need the
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Intel magnetic hold down. See, this is why I love it. It's
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brilliant. You just click it on like that. We need the Intel back plate for
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everything but LGA 2011. We need the four mounting posts that are going to
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hold the back plate onto the motherboard. And then we need the four
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thumb nuts which are going to hold the magnetic mounting plate down to the
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mounting posts which are attached to the back plate. That's what makes it secure.
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And that's what makes it once you've done it a couple times pretty darn easy
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to do. Now, believe me when I say guys, I'm as happy as you that we're getting
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close to the end of the little tricky parts, but we're not quite there. In
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order to control the fans in the system using Corsair Link, we use the included
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adapters that come with the H100i to plug into the CPU block and pump unit.
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Then what we'll do is we'll connect all of our fans to these. And in this case,
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we had to get one additional splitter in order to hook up the front fans on the
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case. There we go. Then we can use software for our controls. Next up,
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we'll have to plug the USB connector into the side of the CPU block and then
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into a header on the motherboard, just like we did before with the front USB 2
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connectors. And last but not least, we're going to plug in the leads that
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are built directly into the CPU block, which is the fan RPM monitor or or pump
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RPM monitor and a SATA power connector
24:25
that we can run through the back so that it actually powers the pump itself.
24:30
Throughout any kind of system build, it's important to think about cable
24:34
management if you want to have a chance of having it look tidy when you get to
24:37
the end. So, this is the first time we're plugging in a power connector
24:41
other than to the motherboard from the power supply. So, it's important to make
24:45
sure that we route it somewhere that we're going to be able to tie it up
24:48
tidily later on after the fact. It's great that we're using Corsair Link and
24:53
the H100i in order to plug in all of our fans, but we have to actually plug in
24:58
that SATA connector that I showed you before. So, we're going to route this
25:01
sort of on this side of the 24, but on this side of the A pin in order to make
25:06
it so that we're going to be able to close our case easily once we're
25:10
finished. So, now by plugging this in, we have provided power for all five of
25:16
the fans in our case. We're going to leave the front fans. They're white LED
25:20
fans. They're wired into the case in such a way that you can turn them on and
25:23
off with the push of a button, which is very cool. But we're going to replace
25:26
this last rear fan with one of our SP fans so we have a more consistent look
25:31
to the inside of our build. All you got to do is remove the four fan screws from
25:35
the back. It's probably going to like fall out here. There we go. That wasn't so
25:40
bad. Keep those four screws because they're the same kinds for pretty much
25:44
all fans. We're going to take our SP fan. Again, making sure to orient the
25:49
connector so that we can easily route it behind the motherboard tray for maximum
25:53
tidiness and software control. Then we're going to put those four screws
25:57
back in. And now we have a nice consistent look to the inside of the
26:01
system. Look at this. We're getting there. It's time to put in our storage
26:05
devices. So, we've got our SSD for which we will need I just use two screws
26:10
because uh I'm lazy and it's an SSD.
26:13
It's not like it's going to get damaged if it, you know, falls around or
26:17
whatever else. And because the CM Storm Scout 2 supports SSDs natively, all we
26:22
have to do is grab one of these 2 and 1/2 in drive sleds, screw it in on the
26:27
bottom with two of the included screws that come with the
26:32
case. There we go. There we go. Just
26:35
like that. Looks good. Pop that back
26:38
in. and our SSD is installed except for
26:41
the power and SATA connectors at the back. For the hard drive, things are a
26:45
little bit different. We're going to use the sleds, so the rails that were
26:48
included in that cardboard box. We're going to plug these in with the tabs
26:52
towards the front. That is where the connectors are not on the drive. And
26:56
then the short ends where the connectors are at the back. We take that whole
27:00
assembly with the two sled rails and the drive itself and we slide that
27:06
in until we hear a nice satisfying
27:10
click. So, let's get all those fans connected. Now, we used one splitter on
27:15
one of our four fans that we can plug directly into the Corsair Link module.
27:20
So, those ones are going to be our two front fans. We're going to plug those
27:23
directly into that splitter. We're going to control them at the same time and
27:27
we're not going to be able to monitor the RPMs of both of them. So, that's
27:32
okay because if one of those fans fails, it's really not the end of the world.
27:36
Whereas, we're going to dedicate a full connector to each of the fans on the
27:40
H100i because if one of those fails, it could be a problem for us in terms of
27:44
CPU overheating, especially if we've overclocked it really far. for our rear
27:49
120 millimeter fan. That one gets its own fan header as well, so that we can
27:53
control each of the zones of the case separately using the software. We're
27:58
also going to plug in our front drives. So, power is routed with another one of
28:03
our two SATA harnesses that we have on this power supply, giving us four SATA
28:07
connectors. So, we can easily plug in
28:11
our hard drive right here.
28:20
Then we can use the next connector for our SSD, which is right
28:25
here. This gives us two more connectors that we could use for additional drives
28:29
without using any adapters. Now, we need those two SATA cables that came with our
28:34
motherboard, both of which are right angle cables, which is fine because we
28:38
can use the angled side on the back of the drives. Then we
28:44
can use the straight side to go directly into the already angled connectors on
28:49
the motherboard. The only real thing to watch out for is, as you can see on this
28:52
board, it clearly states, "Use SSDs in
28:56
the top two ports as opposed to the other ones." Don't worry, it's not going
29:00
to break anything if you use a different drive, but you'll get the best
29:03
performance if you plug your SSDs into the native Intel serial ATA 3 or 6 GB
29:10
per second ports. Now, it's really no secret. I'm not the
29:14
master of cable management by any stretch of the imagination, but I want
29:18
it to at least look decent from the front. So, we're going to take our Molex
29:22
harnesses, which we didn't end up using a single four pin Molex connector. We're
29:26
going to hide those on the other side of the motherboard tray. What's great about
29:30
this case is there's lots of room for hiding unneeded cables. So, we're going
29:34
to turn this around so you guys can actually see what I'm doing. There we
29:38
go. We're going to hide this in the front. Just like that. Just find
29:41
somewhere to tuck it. It doesn't really matter. Then what we're going to do is we're going to take some of those zip
29:46
ties that came with both our power supply and our case and we're just going
29:51
to organize these cables on the back so that they're not in the way of anything
29:56
when we try to close the side panel. I'm not worried too much again about them
30:00
being super gorgeous. So, I'm going to take this bundle and I'm going to kind
30:04
of tie it up like this. Then I'm going to take this bundle and I'm going to
30:08
kind of tie it up like this with the objective being to keep things flat so
30:12
that the side panel closes without any difficulty. You don't want to tie things
30:16
too tight because then you're going to end up with undo strain on the
30:20
connectors which can damage them over
30:24
time. If you've hung with us this long, you're almost at the end. All that's
30:28
left now is to install the graphics card. So, the first thing we're going to
30:31
do is remove the two thumb screws that correspond to the PCI Express 16X slot.
30:37
Now, PCI Express 16X slots are not all
30:40
made equally. There's physical and
30:43
electrical specifications. So, if you're not sure which one's the right one to
30:47
get the most performance out of your graphics card, it's usually the top one.
30:51
If you're still not sure, consult the user's manual and it'll tell you what
30:55
each of them is wired up for. So once we've removed those two screws and the
30:59
two PCI slot covers that are in there, all we have to do is align the PCI
31:05
Express 16X interface at the bottom of the card with the PCI Express 16X slot
31:10
on the motherboard. Push down firmly until the
31:14
connector locks into place. Then put the thumb screws back in. And then it's time
31:19
to connect the power cables. We're going to route these much the same way we've
31:22
done before along the back of the motherboard tray, which now looks a
31:27
little better than it did before with some of the zip ties that we've put in place. These are going to come out right
31:32
near the graphics card itself, which is what's so great about these modern cases
31:36
with cable management. I remember back in the old days, we didn't have that and
31:40
we walked to school both ways uphill and it was snowing and there was fire and
31:45
brimstone all over the place. And anyway, I think I'm off on a bit of a
31:49
tangent here. So, this particular graphics card requires two PCI Express
31:53
six pin connectors which we will plug in. And our build is
31:59
now almost complete. Still got to power it on, make sure she works, and close up
32:05
the side panels. Now, I'm about to do something
32:08
that's incredibly bad luck. I haven't booted up the machine yet, and I am
32:12
going to close one of the side panels.
32:17
Usually when I close the side panel before I make sure it works, it doesn't
32:21
work on the first crack. And there's one small thing I have to fix. But I'm
32:25
hoping that since we've, you know, gone to great lengths to make sure that this
32:28
is an awesome build that you guys can follow along with that we haven't
32:32
actually made any mistakes. So, our right side panel is
32:36
on our left side panel. Check out what that looks like. Isn't that a gaming rig
32:41
that you'd be proud to call your own? All right, we're going to remove the
32:45
little plastic cover on the Windows inside here. At least we're going to
32:49
try. It's on there pretty good. Hey,
32:52
there we go. There's the one. We'll take off the outside one once we're done
32:56
putting it on. Helps to have it oriented the right way there, folks. Do recommend
33:01
doing that. And she is closed. This is
33:06
what our $1,500 gaming machine looks
33:09
like. And it's time to fire her up.
33:14
Don't forget your thumb screws. And everything's working. Or is
33:19
it? Now that we've got the system booted up, it's really important to run a
33:23
couple basic utilities to ensure that it's firing on all cylinders before you
33:28
call your system done. because the last thing you want is to find out that
33:32
there's a slight instability somewhere down the line in the middle of doing
33:35
something critical only to have it go and turn off, power down, reset, have
33:41
corrupted data, anything like that. So, we're going to walk you through the
33:44
basic stuff that we run to ensure the system is working at peak efficiency.
33:49
Now, the first three utilities are mostly for your CPU and they kind of go
33:52
hand in hand in face or other hand. If you had three hands, then that's what
33:56
they would do. And they're mostly important if you're overclocking. In our
34:00
case, we overvolted our CPU to 1.32 volts and turned the multiplier up to 44
34:05
MHz because it's unlocked. So overclocking is that simple these days.
34:09
More voltage, more megahertz until it stops working. So in our case, we got to
34:13
make sure that it's working. And how do you know? Well, CPUZ tells you if the
34:17
overclock actually took. So you can see right here we're running at 4,400 MHz,
34:23
which is 4.4 GHz. So that's awesome. That's working. Next up is Prime 95. So
34:28
you go into options, torture test, small
34:31
FFT, and then press okay. And it'll run
34:34
this test for at least, I would recommend, 24 hours to ensure that your
34:39
CPU is not making any calculation errors. That tells you that it's
34:43
actually working correctly, even though you've amped the frequency way up. The
34:47
last one that you want to use is right here, Realtemp GT. And as long as your
34:51
CPU is staying at around, I'd say 85 degrees tops. And this is under load.
34:57
This is under an intensive artificial load. You'll never see a load like this
35:00
in the real world unless you're doing some pretty intensive stuff like folding
35:04
at home, for example. So, you want that to stay under around 85° to make sure
35:09
your CPU doesn't throttle. Thermal throttling is when the CPU slows itself
35:13
down. It's like, whoa, I can't handle this. I got to slow myself down to keep
35:17
myself cool enough that I can, you know, handle it and not die. So, we're not
35:22
reaching that point, which means our overclock is good to go and our Prime 95
35:25
is stable. There are other applications you can use instead of Prime 95, but
35:29
it's the one that we've always been using and we just kind of like it. So,
35:33
there you go. There's my tech tip. Now, speaking of the importance of
35:36
temperatures, graphics card temperatures are huge. What if something went wrong
35:40
with your graphics card? a fan failed, for example, or it wasn't mounted
35:45
correctly, it got jiggled loose in shipping or something like that when you
35:48
got your graphics card. So, you want to make sure your graphics card's running
35:51
right before you start firing up games on it as well. So, we use a couple of
35:55
programs called MSI's Afterburner and Combuster. And Combuster is spelled very
36:00
uniquely, so don't mind that. But, we use these to make sure that the graphics
36:04
card is running correctly. So, we can load it up with Combuster. Then, we can
36:09
monitor temperatures. We can see that it's running at about 76°, which is more
36:13
than okay for these graphics cards. Anything up to about 90 to 95° is
36:18
actually okay for a modern graphics card. And that tells us again, so
36:22
besides our CPU, our graphics subsystem
36:25
is running correctly as well. The last thing that I'd really recommend running,
36:28
but I can't show you in Windows here, is Memest 86. You load that onto a USB
36:33
drive, throw that in your system, and that'll test your memory to ensure that
36:38
nowhere within your system are any errors being made. That way, you know
36:42
you can trust it to be 100% stable.
36:45
Here's another software tip for you guys. Head to nite
36:49
nit.com as the first thing you do with your system once you've made sure it's
36:53
working correctly. Select all the stuff you want to install. You want web
36:57
browsers, Chrome, Opera, Firefox. You want iTunes, Skype, uh, Java.net, Air,
37:02
Shockwave, Dropbox, Google Drive, all that good stuff. All you got to do is
37:06
select all the things you want, get installer. It avoids all the bloatware
37:09
that comes with the programs and it does an automated install of all of them with
37:13
default options without you touching it at all. And there's one really important
37:17
one you Windows 8 users might want to check out. Under utilities, get classic
37:21
start because it is a fantastic start menu that adds Tada, the start menu to
37:27
Windows 8. Not only that, but you can decide which kind of start menu you want
37:31
and there are a ton of settings that you can change and reconfigure and make the
37:37
start menu not only there in Windows 8, but better than it ever was before and
37:42
more customizable. That way you get the benefits of all the touch features of
37:47
Windows 8 like swiping in in order to do a search or multitasking between
37:52
applications like this with all the benefits of previous editions of
37:57
Windows. So you guys saw me fire up Angry Birds there. Yes, Windows 8 is
38:02
great as a casual gaming experience. You can get games from the Windows Store.
38:07
You can install regular games that run in touchscreen. But it's not just about
38:12
the casual gaming experience that your kids are going to want to enjoy or
38:15
whatever else. I mean, it's cool having a big touchcreen like this basically
38:19
means you've got like a gigantic tablet that lives on your desk. Very neat. But
38:24
you can use the other multitasking feature here. So, we're going to open up the desktop. All the major online gaming
38:29
store platforms, Steam, Play, and Origin all run just fine on Windows 8. And not
38:34
only that, but we observed some tangible performance differences between Windows
38:38
7 and Windows 8 due in part to the fact that Windows 8 uses less resources than
38:43
Windows 7 on your system and actually handles the way that core scheduling
38:48
works on the CPU a little bit more efficiently in some cases as well. So
38:52
Battlefield 3 was an example where it ran about the same in our lab, 3%
38:56
improvement over Windows 7 for Windows 8, but we'll call that margin of error.
39:00
We'll call that the same. Dirt 3 was one example where we found that Windows 8
39:04
performed 10% less than Windows 7. However, in Far Cry 3, Windows 8
39:09
performed 32% better than Windows 7 and
39:12
in The Elder Scrolls 5, it was about 3% better. So, in general, we saw more
39:17
improvements than we saw performance decreases, or it's the same. So, while
39:21
Windows 8 might be criticized by some gamers as not optimal for hardcore
39:26
gaming necessarily, that is actually not the experience we had at all. Once you
39:31
get around a couple of little finicky things, make sure Games for Windows Live
39:35
is installed before you try to run any of your games and make sure you got the
39:39
latest drivers. I mean, it's pretty basic stuff beyond that games for
39:44
Windows Live tip. So whether or not you feel that touch belongs on the desktop
39:48
or whether it should stick to tablets and notebooks and phones and all those
39:52
other devices, you got to admit the idea that you can go between playing Jetack
39:57
Joyide on your 23in 1080p screen and
40:00
then switching out and enjoying content
40:03
on said screen or even going and playing a quote unquote real game is pretty darn
40:09
cool. I hope you guys have really enjoyed this ultimate build guide for
40:14
our $1,500 recommended system. And I'd love to hear your feedback. Post under
40:18
the video and let us know what did you think you could have improved with a
40:23
$1,500 budget? And do you really think
40:26
that with a touchscreen, you still need to be investing in high-end gaming grade
40:30
peripherals such as the ones that we've chosen here today. We're going to close
40:34
out the video with some glamour footage of our finished system. And I hope to
40:37
see you guys next time in our Yes, there will be more of these next build
40:56
guide.
41:13
Heat. Heat.