Building a Custom Gaming PC: The Journey Begins

We're going to build a custom gaming PC today, and I'm excited to take you through the process. First things first, we need a power supply unit (PSU) that can handle our components. I've chosen a 500 watt PSU, which should be more than adequate for our needs.

Next, we need to select a graphics card (GPU). As someone who games at 1440p, I've decided to go with the RT X 2070 Super Gaming Extreme from MSI. This card is fast, quiet, and has plenty of power to back it up. It's also quite beefy, so it should fit nicely in our case.

Now that we have our GPU, let's talk about cable management. The "true cable management test" is when you can put the side panel on with one hand. If you can even lift it with one hand, you don't need to apply any additional pressure to get the side panel closed. I'm proud to say that I've mastered this technique, and our build should look great.

Before we start building, I realized I forgot something – the capture card. That's why it needs to go in there. Let me shut down the system and back up my files before we begin. It's always better to be safe than sorry when working with sensitive data.

With everything backed up, let's boot from our new SSD and start the installation process. I've chosen a 970 EVO Plus NVMe SSD, but it seems there was a mistake – it's actually a 970 Pro instead of the 500GB model I originally thought. Oh well, mistakes happen!

We're almost done with the installation, and all we need now is a pedestal to elevate our PC off the floor. We've measured out about 27 inches, so let's call that our target height. We don't actually have a pedestal, though – maybe we can use a case or a box? Ah, I think I'll just bring my motherboard box with me.

After some trial and error, I found a suitable case – the Dell Vostro pre-built PC. It's not perfect, but it should do the job. Let's remove all the parts from the old build, including our GPU and memory. Time to start fresh!

Cable management is key in building a beautiful PC. I understand that I'm terrible at this, but I'll try my best. First, I'll put the side panel on – high clearance is good, right? And voilà! Our build looks great.

The final touches are all taken care of, and we're ready to boot up our new PC. It's time to get out of your hair, guys – I've got a plan for tonight's live stream and some household tasks to attend to. Thanks for watching the video, and don't forget to like and subscribe for more tech content coming soon!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enalright guys so something's going on today we actually have a situation because the streaming pc that I've been using for probably the last year or so is failing for some reason we blue screen almost every single time we try to stream from it and when I say we I mean me and Paul because we stream every Tuesday for awesome hardware and I'm very nervous because today is our 200th episode which marks a very special milestone for the series and Paul's coming over here today to stream at my house now normally I would go through the troubleshooting steps in order to narrow down the issue but since I'm a little bit strapped for time since Paul will be here in just a few mere hours I figured I would just build the new system from scratch because that sounds funny so I just want to make sure we're on the same page of the product message and since she'll be taking over all Kyle's out of town on another vacation no problem I'm gonna get good for you Joshy poop right so at first glance the m+ seems like your typical power supply but in fact I know it has a co-op iam fan I thought Kyle was the only one with zero fan technically that means it runs quiet but you're not wrong though ultra effects cable for easy Ralphy that's no good cables need to be stiff like a dictator regime please do not say that in the video how much they charge you I get you Chinese capacitor half prime definitely cheapen the product exactly grandly on the same page now ok thank you bye bye dictator regime fractal design delivers with the ion plus power supply supply click on the link below to learn more so this is the PC that we're working with and it's no slouch by any stretch we have a core i7 78 20 X I believe which is an 8 core 16 thread part definitely one of the oddball silly parts that Intel rolled out with in skylake X we did have 16 gigs I'm sorry 32 gigs of DDR 4 in here which you can see the original kit was right here you can see I've already tried to do some troubleshooting with the memory still blue screening with those sticks we also have an RT X 2060 super that's a Founders edition card we are running an elgato 4k 60 capture card the case is a thermal take view 37 which has been a fine case I mean nothing's been overheating temps are actually really good in this system however it's a little big it's a little bit bulky especially to be putting underneath my desk speaking of which I would like the next system to be elevated off the floor just a little bit because there's really not much room elsewhere on the desk that you can see I mean I could put it on here but that's also a bit narrow and other things are currently occupying it so I want to go with a smaller case and we can either get a really little shelf that I don't have right now I'll have to buy that on a different day off to get a shelf here and then just put the system on top of there or I'll even just like have a really small tiny shelf and I'll still have the system under the desk but it'll at least be elevated off the floor a few inches that's probably the wrap we're gonna have to take today which means I am gonna need a smaller case in this fairly large mid Tower to do that we're gonna need hardware and hardware I have my friends now this is a system that I built recently for a completely different video that's probably already up on YouTube I think and I've already decided that I'm gonna steal this case which is the fantex Eclipse P 400 a this is the non digital RGB version so it only has one fan at the front one of the back I'll probably add more fans in there just to get additional airflow I love the fine mesh and it's relatively compact for a mid Tower so it's gonna fit under the desk just fine even with a little pedestal perhaps there is a rise in 3600 in there right now but that's probably not quite enough horsepower for our needs but I do like the idea of X 570 we are gonna use the same memory kit from the last build which is a 32 gig kit of G scale treta and Z non RGB @ 3200 speed which I would generally recommend 3600 especially if you're gaming on rising 3000 but all things considered I think this will be just fine okay so we have memory and case picked out let's see what else we got here and this is actually perfect timing because wifey sauce just two days ago took apart like five or six systems in the house that have just been building up over time and we haven't boxed up the individual components yet so they're all just strewn about the house yeah it's kind of a disaster right now but it's also sort of perfect because I feel like I'm at a PC enthusiast farmers market it's awesome so let's just go ahead and peruse here and see what we have starting with I guess CPU is probably important I so it looks like if we're going for a rise in 3000 there's only one rise in 3000 chip here which is 3700 X perfect 8 core 16 thread CPU now we're not going up or down on the core thread count from our 78 20x but a much newer and more exciting platform and I'm kind of just curious to see how this thing holds up to all the streaming demands that we have for awesome hardware motherboard we're gonna need X 5 70 which could be that I think that's across here 8 we also have Taichi exercise they're tied she from Nazareth I love this part okay but I think this is the pressed version so if you look at the screws on the m2 cover plate those are not Phillips head that is like a Torx screw the retail version of this board has Philips head not Torx and I remember there being some issues with this board that we're not present on the retail version so I would totally use it if this is the retail model which again I do have that but it's in a box somewhere in the garage so I let's go back to this one this is a crosshair 8 formula excuse ROG I'm not gonna be custom water cooling or anything so it's a bit of a waste of features here still a great board nonetheless and it's ATX which means it's gonna fit inside of the p400 a just fine is there already an SSD it's already an SSD under here I don't know if why Vsauce got all the SSDs let's take a look and nothing so we're gonna need an SSD preferably nvme m2 maybe even PCIe gen four if we're lucky so I'm gonna put this back in the studio right now just to help organize a bit might as well just build as we go right except we need a cooler so let's go find a cooler I think we should go see LC liquid a IO would be good and I believe I did see aha a Corsair hydro serious 240 millimeter liquid AI oh I don't know is there any LED or RGB on here at okay wife you saw Stephen remove the thermal paste good job honey now these are not the stock fans that come with this cooler these are actually stolen off to the ROG region the not to us the doctor maybe the NFF 12 these are really nice fans let's go ahead and just steal these all right I'm going in he'll just give me a second here hey-oh installed let's find an SSD now the drive is actually a much needed upgrade because the existing streaming system only had a 256 gig SSD in it which was terrible any time Paul and I wanted to install a game for awesome hardware or whatever we had to use my external SSD which is a less than graceful solution so now I'm looking for at least 500 gigs one terabyte would be ideal but I'll settle for 500 and see what we got here now of course we could go with a smaller SSD for our boot drive and then a mechanical drive for additional storage but that's also an additional component we have to install more cable clutter and that sort of thing we do have an MDOT to drive here our D 400 I believe from Toshiba ocz but this is DVD 6 to 2 music that's not gonna cut it so we have to look elsewhere perhaps in this Tai Chi motherboard if Wi-Fi sauce forgot to remove a drive from here which I would imagine she did because again stupid Torx screw and I don't see any torque sugars on this table which means she did not crack this open yet which means we should I want to say shot do we have contact yes we do it's a fix and there's only one Torx screw we have to undo here because I lost the other two alright moving the truth nothing ok well that's just kind of unfortunate because a little bugger this is a Norris 500 gig PCIe Gen 4m controller this will just install there now we're ready for case installation not that we have to install a case but we have to install this into the case which means we have to take all the stuff that's in the case outside of the case and then we can continue so let's do that and now for the oil 100 glass removal little PC we're gonna gut you like a fish all right things are coming along just dandy lay the motherboard went in no problem I did have to do a quick change of plans however because I initially wanted the radiator to go on top of the case just for no particular reason that's just how I had the fans oriented but then I quickly realized there was a clearance issue with the vrm water block and our radiator and fan setup that's to be expected in the case this size again it's it's more on the compact size for a mid Tower so I had no problem switching the fans around to reposition the radiator at the front of the case which it looks just fine right there that does mean I had to remove the 120 millimeter pre-installed fan but I decided to put it to good use as an additional exhaust fan at the top of the case so now we have two 120 s three or two and 20 to the front so we more or less have neutral air pressure going through our case oh I totally forgot about the power supply I'm using the existing unit that was already in the system it's a C Sonic s 12 to 500 watt power supply which is going to be more than adequate and I think all we need now is GPU Wow what we're going to do for a GPU call and I tend to game at 1440p when we're doing the live show so I'm actually going to go with this bad boy right here which I used in a really recent build this is the RT X 2070 super gaming extreme for an MSI and I think it'll I think it's gonna just like it's gonna look really big inside of this case because it's a fairly sizable card it's quite beefy but it's a fast card it's a quiet card and we have the power to drive it so let's go ahead and see if you know the true cable management test is when you can put the side panel on with one hand well if you can even lift it with one hand you don't even have to apply any additional pressure to get the side panel closed that's how you do it that's how it's done boys all right she done and she look good she looked real good but before I put the glass panel on I'm gonna see if she had boots because I built this in a mad dash and with one hand most of the time so this should be interesting oh shoot I forgot something hold on I forgot I forgot the friggin L got to the capture card I need to catch the card that's why yeah it needs to go in there okay but before I do that I have to shut the system down and before I shut the system down I have to backup all the precious files or excellent presentations and things like that so let me back up the session really nice and so sinister I'd say sorry that it's kind of dark and blurry right now but I don't care ball sack come on screw you got this buddy got this you're better than this we're doing okay circling back to the new system now we're all ready for Windows 10 installation with her a little he was B stick here we're just gonna go ahead and boot from this and be underway whoa whoa whoa hold on hold on okay I originally thought that this was a 500 gig nvme SSD that I was putting in here but I must be on the devil juice today or something because look at this there's no 500 agus and we're done with drivers and programs installation we're pretty much good to go all we need is a pedestal for this thing to sit on so that it's not sucking up the bottom most filth on my floor I have no idea how tall that pedestal needs to be though let's do a quick measurement yeah we have about 27 inches and we'll just call this 19 to be safe so we're looking for a pedestal around 8 inches or so give or take mm pedestal pedestal now it doesn't have to be an actual pedestal because I doubt we actually have one of those but maybe like a box of some sort of box that might I'm gonna bring this with me about you motherboard box nope too small you know honestly I think we have to use a case I think a case makes the most sense now this is kind of a nice case I don't want to use this one even though it's like the perfect height I don't think that was deep enough that's too big that's too small they try this one yeah let's see it's about 7 inches versus 717 I think that's might work actually okay this is the Dell Vostro pre-built PC that I bought on Craigslist a few months back for the GTX 1050 TI upgrade video it's just collecting dust now literally maybe I'll use this alright first of all let me make sure that wiki sucks removed all the parts she was supposed to yes GPU and memory are gone good job honey all right here I need to do cable management I understand I'm terrible person the truth oh wait you know I should put the side panel on first damn it high clearance is good oh yeah if it's on there it's like it was meant to do this job beautiful alright let's wire this sucker up all right she'll she's all done looking pretty look at that beautiful yeah I'm on the floor I'm on the floor right now is what it takes to be a master cinematographer okay but everything's looking really good so hopefully now we have a stable and reliable PC for tonight's live stream but there's still much to do so I'm gonna get out of your hair guys I've got a plan for the show I also have things to do around the house that wifey sauce has assigned me so thanks for watching the video toss like on if you enjoyed it and get subscribed for tech stuff coming at you really soon I will see you guys after I do laundry after you do laundry now this is my lifealright guys so something's going on today we actually have a situation because the streaming pc that I've been using for probably the last year or so is failing for some reason we blue screen almost every single time we try to stream from it and when I say we I mean me and Paul because we stream every Tuesday for awesome hardware and I'm very nervous because today is our 200th episode which marks a very special milestone for the series and Paul's coming over here today to stream at my house now normally I would go through the troubleshooting steps in order to narrow down the issue but since I'm a little bit strapped for time since Paul will be here in just a few mere hours I figured I would just build the new system from scratch because that sounds funny so I just want to make sure we're on the same page of the product message and since she'll be taking over all Kyle's out of town on another vacation no problem I'm gonna get good for you Joshy poop right so at first glance the m+ seems like your typical power supply but in fact I know it has a co-op iam fan I thought Kyle was the only one with zero fan technically that means it runs quiet but you're not wrong though ultra effects cable for easy Ralphy that's no good cables need to be stiff like a dictator regime please do not say that in the video how much they charge you I get you Chinese capacitor half prime definitely cheapen the product exactly grandly on the same page now ok thank you bye bye dictator regime fractal design delivers with the ion plus power supply supply click on the link below to learn more so this is the PC that we're working with and it's no slouch by any stretch we have a core i7 78 20 X I believe which is an 8 core 16 thread part definitely one of the oddball silly parts that Intel rolled out with in skylake X we did have 16 gigs I'm sorry 32 gigs of DDR 4 in here which you can see the original kit was right here you can see I've already tried to do some troubleshooting with the memory still blue screening with those sticks we also have an RT X 2060 super that's a Founders edition card we are running an elgato 4k 60 capture card the case is a thermal take view 37 which has been a fine case I mean nothing's been overheating temps are actually really good in this system however it's a little big it's a little bit bulky especially to be putting underneath my desk speaking of which I would like the next system to be elevated off the floor just a little bit because there's really not much room elsewhere on the desk that you can see I mean I could put it on here but that's also a bit narrow and other things are currently occupying it so I want to go with a smaller case and we can either get a really little shelf that I don't have right now I'll have to buy that on a different day off to get a shelf here and then just put the system on top of there or I'll even just like have a really small tiny shelf and I'll still have the system under the desk but it'll at least be elevated off the floor a few inches that's probably the wrap we're gonna have to take today which means I am gonna need a smaller case in this fairly large mid Tower to do that we're gonna need hardware and hardware I have my friends now this is a system that I built recently for a completely different video that's probably already up on YouTube I think and I've already decided that I'm gonna steal this case which is the fantex Eclipse P 400 a this is the non digital RGB version so it only has one fan at the front one of the back I'll probably add more fans in there just to get additional airflow I love the fine mesh and it's relatively compact for a mid Tower so it's gonna fit under the desk just fine even with a little pedestal perhaps there is a rise in 3600 in there right now but that's probably not quite enough horsepower for our needs but I do like the idea of X 570 we are gonna use the same memory kit from the last build which is a 32 gig kit of G scale treta and Z non RGB @ 3200 speed which I would generally recommend 3600 especially if you're gaming on rising 3000 but all things considered I think this will be just fine okay so we have memory and case picked out let's see what else we got here and this is actually perfect timing because wifey sauce just two days ago took apart like five or six systems in the house that have just been building up over time and we haven't boxed up the individual components yet so they're all just strewn about the house yeah it's kind of a disaster right now but it's also sort of perfect because I feel like I'm at a PC enthusiast farmers market it's awesome so let's just go ahead and peruse here and see what we have starting with I guess CPU is probably important I so it looks like if we're going for a rise in 3000 there's only one rise in 3000 chip here which is 3700 X perfect 8 core 16 thread CPU now we're not going up or down on the core thread count from our 78 20x but a much newer and more exciting platform and I'm kind of just curious to see how this thing holds up to all the streaming demands that we have for awesome hardware motherboard we're gonna need X 5 70 which could be that I think that's across here 8 we also have Taichi exercise they're tied she from Nazareth I love this part okay but I think this is the pressed version so if you look at the screws on the m2 cover plate those are not Phillips head that is like a Torx screw the retail version of this board has Philips head not Torx and I remember there being some issues with this board that we're not present on the retail version so I would totally use it if this is the retail model which again I do have that but it's in a box somewhere in the garage so I let's go back to this one this is a crosshair 8 formula excuse ROG I'm not gonna be custom water cooling or anything so it's a bit of a waste of features here still a great board nonetheless and it's ATX which means it's gonna fit inside of the p400 a just fine is there already an SSD it's already an SSD under here I don't know if why Vsauce got all the SSDs let's take a look and nothing so we're gonna need an SSD preferably nvme m2 maybe even PCIe gen four if we're lucky so I'm gonna put this back in the studio right now just to help organize a bit might as well just build as we go right except we need a cooler so let's go find a cooler I think we should go see LC liquid a IO would be good and I believe I did see aha a Corsair hydro serious 240 millimeter liquid AI oh I don't know is there any LED or RGB on here at okay wife you saw Stephen remove the thermal paste good job honey now these are not the stock fans that come with this cooler these are actually stolen off to the ROG region the not to us the doctor maybe the NFF 12 these are really nice fans let's go ahead and just steal these all right I'm going in he'll just give me a second here hey-oh installed let's find an SSD now the drive is actually a much needed upgrade because the existing streaming system only had a 256 gig SSD in it which was terrible any time Paul and I wanted to install a game for awesome hardware or whatever we had to use my external SSD which is a less than graceful solution so now I'm looking for at least 500 gigs one terabyte would be ideal but I'll settle for 500 and see what we got here now of course we could go with a smaller SSD for our boot drive and then a mechanical drive for additional storage but that's also an additional component we have to install more cable clutter and that sort of thing we do have an MDOT to drive here our D 400 I believe from Toshiba ocz but this is DVD 6 to 2 music that's not gonna cut it so we have to look elsewhere perhaps in this Tai Chi motherboard if Wi-Fi sauce forgot to remove a drive from here which I would imagine she did because again stupid Torx screw and I don't see any torque sugars on this table which means she did not crack this open yet which means we should I want to say shot do we have contact yes we do it's a fix and there's only one Torx screw we have to undo here because I lost the other two alright moving the truth nothing ok well that's just kind of unfortunate because a little bugger this is a Norris 500 gig PCIe Gen 4m controller this will just install there now we're ready for case installation not that we have to install a case but we have to install this into the case which means we have to take all the stuff that's in the case outside of the case and then we can continue so let's do that and now for the oil 100 glass removal little PC we're gonna gut you like a fish all right things are coming along just dandy lay the motherboard went in no problem I did have to do a quick change of plans however because I initially wanted the radiator to go on top of the case just for no particular reason that's just how I had the fans oriented but then I quickly realized there was a clearance issue with the vrm water block and our radiator and fan setup that's to be expected in the case this size again it's it's more on the compact size for a mid Tower so I had no problem switching the fans around to reposition the radiator at the front of the case which it looks just fine right there that does mean I had to remove the 120 millimeter pre-installed fan but I decided to put it to good use as an additional exhaust fan at the top of the case so now we have two 120 s three or two and 20 to the front so we more or less have neutral air pressure going through our case oh I totally forgot about the power supply I'm using the existing unit that was already in the system it's a C Sonic s 12 to 500 watt power supply which is going to be more than adequate and I think all we need now is GPU Wow what we're going to do for a GPU call and I tend to game at 1440p when we're doing the live show so I'm actually going to go with this bad boy right here which I used in a really recent build this is the RT X 2070 super gaming extreme for an MSI and I think it'll I think it's gonna just like it's gonna look really big inside of this case because it's a fairly sizable card it's quite beefy but it's a fast card it's a quiet card and we have the power to drive it so let's go ahead and see if you know the true cable management test is when you can put the side panel on with one hand well if you can even lift it with one hand you don't even have to apply any additional pressure to get the side panel closed that's how you do it that's how it's done boys all right she done and she look good she looked real good but before I put the glass panel on I'm gonna see if she had boots because I built this in a mad dash and with one hand most of the time so this should be interesting oh shoot I forgot something hold on I forgot I forgot the friggin L got to the capture card I need to catch the card that's why yeah it needs to go in there okay but before I do that I have to shut the system down and before I shut the system down I have to backup all the precious files or excellent presentations and things like that so let me back up the session really nice and so sinister I'd say sorry that it's kind of dark and blurry right now but I don't care ball sack come on screw you got this buddy got this you're better than this we're doing okay circling back to the new system now we're all ready for Windows 10 installation with her a little he was B stick here we're just gonna go ahead and boot from this and be underway whoa whoa whoa hold on hold on okay I originally thought that this was a 500 gig nvme SSD that I was putting in here but I must be on the devil juice today or something because look at this there's no 500 agus and we're done with drivers and programs installation we're pretty much good to go all we need is a pedestal for this thing to sit on so that it's not sucking up the bottom most filth on my floor I have no idea how tall that pedestal needs to be though let's do a quick measurement yeah we have about 27 inches and we'll just call this 19 to be safe so we're looking for a pedestal around 8 inches or so give or take mm pedestal pedestal now it doesn't have to be an actual pedestal because I doubt we actually have one of those but maybe like a box of some sort of box that might I'm gonna bring this with me about you motherboard box nope too small you know honestly I think we have to use a case I think a case makes the most sense now this is kind of a nice case I don't want to use this one even though it's like the perfect height I don't think that was deep enough that's too big that's too small they try this one yeah let's see it's about 7 inches versus 717 I think that's might work actually okay this is the Dell Vostro pre-built PC that I bought on Craigslist a few months back for the GTX 1050 TI upgrade video it's just collecting dust now literally maybe I'll use this alright first of all let me make sure that wiki sucks removed all the parts she was supposed to yes GPU and memory are gone good job honey all right here I need to do cable management I understand I'm terrible person the truth oh wait you know I should put the side panel on first damn it high clearance is good oh yeah if it's on there it's like it was meant to do this job beautiful alright let's wire this sucker up all right she'll she's all done looking pretty look at that beautiful yeah I'm on the floor I'm on the floor right now is what it takes to be a master cinematographer okay but everything's looking really good so hopefully now we have a stable and reliable PC for tonight's live stream but there's still much to do so I'm gonna get out of your hair guys I've got a plan for the show I also have things to do around the house that wifey sauce has assigned me so thanks for watching the video toss like on if you enjoyed it and get subscribed for tech stuff coming at you really soon I will see you guys after I do laundry after you do laundry now this is my life\n"