Building a PC Case: A Small but Powerful Build

I was excited to start building this small PC case because I knew it was going to block off a lot when we drop it in here, and I really do like the size of this case. I don't need any optical drive or anything like that - that's one of the main reasons I chose this one, I wanted something real small.

As I began building my PC case, I decided to use a power supply that is compact and has a low profile, which would make it easier to fit inside the case. I chose a 2,400 G PSU, which is a great option for a small build like this. Now, let's talk about the power supply, we want to plug in our 20 plus 4 connector. I actually just ran out of zip ties a few days ago and I forgot to get some, but zip ties are your best friend in a case like this.

Now that the power supply is plugged in, it's time to mess with this whole mangle over here - all I need out of this jumble is one SATA power connector. Unfortunately, I didn't have any zip ties on hand, so I used some bread tie things that came with the case and just bundled them up as best I could. I will go back here later with some zip ties to tidy everything up.

Next, I grabbed a SATA cable and connected it to my hard drive. I mounted this drive back into the case, all we need to do from here is make sure none of these cables are touching any fans or obstructing them in any way. We'll also plug the SATA cable into the motherboard, put the top on the case, and boot this thing up.

One thing I didn't show in this video was installing the front eighty millimeter fan - you're definitely gonna want that if you're using a case like this with a stock air cooler on the CPU. If you're using a water cooler, probably already has an 80 millimeter fan on it. We're ready to go! Now I'm going to plug this thing in grab a monitor and see if it boots up.

I also installed the Wi-Fi / Bluetooth antenna - it's magnetic and just put it on the side of the motherboard. This motherboard also has RGB LEDs built-in - I mean, I'm not really into that RGB thing, but I guess there's a cool little feature if you like that. Gigabyte does have a dedicated app that lets you change the color to any color you can imagine.

Now, it's time to install drivers for my front USB ports and possibly the Wi-Fi - let's see if we can boot to the desktop. Ah, sweet! We're at the Windows 10 desktop! I really love the size of this thing - I did spend a little more money than I wanted to, but I really wanted to bring that size down.

As for cooling, I used the 2,400 G inside of this case. Now, I recommend the 2,200 G - it's just not that much different in games and emulators. Just an idea of how small this PC is. Here is a comparison with a Raspberry Pi 3 - it's not as tiny as my case, but you can get a feel for it.

I really appreciate your watching! I had a bunch of people request me doing a build on this setup - I know there are millions of other build videos out there on YouTube and they use super high-end cameras and awesome shots. But this is what I got, and I figured I make it for you guys. If you're interested in checking out my emulation test videos with the 2,200 G, links are in the description.

In conclusion, building a PC case can be quite an experience, but it's also super fun!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's going on guys this ETA prime back here again lately I've been doing a lot with this new rise in APU I've been using the rise in 320 200 G and a lot of videos for low end PC gaming medium settings 720p get really good performance also I've been testing a lot of emulation and I really like this apu so today i figured i make a video on building a pc based on one of these rise in cpus i actually have the 2400 G and the 2200 G these are really great but before you get started you need to decide which one you want the rise in 320 200 G comes in at $100 $99 on Amazon and the rise in 5 2400 G comes in at 160 I've been testing both of these CPUs out and I gotta say that I prefer the 2200 G because it's only $99 you're not getting an extra $60 performance out of the 2400 G especially with emulation and low-end PC gaming the next thing you need to decide is what size computer do you want to build I want to build a very small form-factor PC so I used a mini ITX motherboard they're a bit more expensive and the cases seem to be a little more pricey also so you can save a lot of money by going with let's say a micro ATX or even an ATX build it's gonna be a lot bigger but you're gonna save a few bucks in the process you can get out building a nice little gaming machine with a 2200 G using a micro ATX or an ATX set up for under $400 with everything you need the build I have here everything that you see that I'm about to put together was four hundred and sixty dollars on Amazon everything here will be linked in the description so Ram that's the next most expensive thing here some run in eight gigabytes of Patriot VIPRE 2666 Ram I can overclock it to 30 100 megahertz with no problem at all you really want to get the fastest memory you can for these AP use because there's no dedicated vram here it's using system memory for the vram the faster it is the better it will perform storage I have a Western Digital blue one terabyte mechanical drive to hold all my Steam games and emulators and robson thing like that and I'm also using a 64 gigabyte Kingston MDOT to to run my operating system from the motherboard I'm using does have an MDOT two slot so be careful make sure if you're gonna be using an MDOT two that your motherboard supports it moving along the cases I'm using the Silverstone ITX SG 13 this is a very small form-factor case this is about $50 but you're also gonna need a power supply you can find cases that come with a power supply in the same price range but I really wanted to use this case that's why I got it one thing I didn't mention while I was building this you will need a fan if you're using this case you're gonna need a fan in the front an 80 millimeter will work fine you want some fresh air flow through there because everything's really compact as for the power supply I'm using an EVGA 500 B I actually got this on sale a while ago I think they're about $46 on Amazon this is definitely overkill for just an APU build but if you ever want to add a discrete GPU when the prices come down you'll have plenty of power CPU cooler already comes with the 2200 G or the 2400 G so that's a big plus there a $99 CPU with this nice little race tell a lot of people hate on them but they work great it also comes pre-installed with some thermal paste it's not the best of the best but it will get you by grand total for everything here with the rise in three four hundred and sixty eight dollars now like I mentioned if you go with a bigger case and a bigger motherboard you can save a lot of money you can also cut out that m dot too and just use a mechanical for now alright let's go ahead and put this thing together this is the gigabyte a B 350 in gaming Wi-Fi it does come with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi already on the board also has that MDOT two on the back first things first we need to remove the old AM for cooler mount now in the future you might not even have this because AMD doesn't use this anymore I'm not sure why it's still on these boards she just four screws let me take these out real quick there is a plate on the back so you're gonna have to hold that in place or just lay it down on a nice table don't do this on any kind of metal surface wood works fine now it's time to install the CPU so AMD still uses the pen style CPUs you need to be careful about bending them on the bottom there's also a triangle to line up on the a m4 socket located on the board and on the CPU itself see if I can get this zoomed in here this little triangle here needs to line up with the triangle on the a m4 socket you'll see it when you look at yours it's gonna be on one of the corners there you want to make sure that lines up this is a zero force insertion socket so it'll drop right in the pins will line up push your lever back down make sure it locks in place and your CPUs installed now it's time to install the cooler we're also gonna need to plug the fan in now you might have a couple of these there are little four pins make sure you're plugging it into the one that's labeled CPU it might not be labeled on the board but your manual will have it you also want to watch out for this nub on these coolers it might block your ram so I'm gonna turn mine the other way fits perfectly I'm gonna line this up with the backplate all you're gonna need is a screwdriver for this I just put a couple turns here go to the other side make sure it's lined up a couple turns I get all of them started first and then I start going in order well there's really no order here I just go across from each other make sure everything gets tightened up kind of equally I just want it to be flush with the CPU now that it's all tight I just take a look at it make sure it's sitting flush and I also look at the back here to make sure all these screws look about even coming through now I'll just find the CPU fan header on the board mine is located right over here then we just need to put the RAM in here and we're almost done all we need to do is put this inside of the case now running cables can be a pain especially if you're using a non modular power supply like I am but for the RAM they only go in one way you want to make sure the little notch lines up and it's gonna click right in place this is just a dual-channel board so it'll only take two sticks of RAM we're gonna do the same exact thing with the other stick make sure it clicks in there I love how small these little mini ITX azar now if you're not using the MDOT tube that's perfectly fine you can use a mechanical drive we've been doing that for years now this is just a basic Kingston and dot 2 SSD at 64 gigabytes but it will increase my boot time tremendously versus a mechanical Drive and that's why I wanted to use it had to grab a smaller screwdriver for this one it's gonna place it right in here and put our screw in so that's on the back of the motherboard you don't ever have to mess with this you're just gonna install your operating system to it and it will boot from this so now we're done assembling the motherboard CPU cooler RAM and our storage if you're gonna be using this type of storage all we need to do now is place this inside of the case most of your motherboards will come with some SATA cables for your mechanical drive and this one came with an antenna because that is bluetooth and Wi-Fi built in here's the back IO shield this will go into your case so all of your ports on the back line up let's move over to the case now get this thing inserted so I just removed four screws from the back of the case so I could take this whole section off your case should come with a little bag of screws for mounting the motherboard inside of the case and fans things like that you'll also have a jumble of cables in here this is for your front hard drive LED your power button your front USB reset button different cases have different connectors now I'm not gonna show you how to plug these in but they are all labeled you can refer to the manual on your motherboard to know exactly where they go so I just moved all of those out of the way because we need to put our rear i/o shield on make sure it's going in correctly you take a look at your motherboard how its gonna sit in here and it should pop right into the back could take a little bit of force try not to bend it up too bad they usually fit perfectly just like that snaps right into place I was originally gonna go with a smaller case but in the future when graphics cards are cheaper I might want to upgrade this or I'll just gonna used one on Craigslist so I can fit a full-size GPU in here along with this mini ITX we're just gonna slide it right in here and kind of line up all your ports on the back to the i/o shield that we installed and there are four standoffs we're gonna mount the motherboard with those four standoffs and your case should have came with the screws since this is a mini ITX motherboard it only has four some have six some have eight depending on the size it's going to be on all four corners of this motherboard is now mounted inside of the case now it's time to plug in all our front io the reset button the power button your front USB you want to get this done before we throw anything else in here because this is a very small case there's no room to work especially after we put the power supply in so like I mentioned I'm not going to show you how to do this but they're all labeled and your motherboards manual will show you exactly where they go so this case specifically has room for actually 3 2.5 drives or one 3.5 and 12.5 this mounts on the top here I'll just put in the four screws they were included with the case hard drive is now mounted but we need to put the power supply in as you can see this has a massive tangle of snakes I recommend getting a modular power supply I already had this laying around so I figured I'd use it a modular will be more expensive so if you want to keep the price down you might not be able to get one of those so this case is a little odd the power supply sits above the motherboard and CPU it does block off a little bit of airflow but like I mentioned at the beginning get you in the 80 millimeter fan for the front and it should have plenty of air flowing through there if you're working with a case this small make sure you plug in your CPU power this is a 6 pin you want to make sure that's plugged in because this is gonna block off a lot when we drop it in here I really do like the size of this case I don't need any optical drive or anything like that that's one of the main reasons I chose this one I wanted something real small we're just gonna put four screws to hold the power supply in now that the power supply is plugged in we want to plug in our 20 plus 4 connector I actually just ran out of zip ties a few days ago and I forgot to get some but zip ties are your best friend in a case like this now it's time to mess with this whole mangle over here all I need out of this jumble is one SATA power connector and then I'm left with a huge mess so I try to get these as bunched up as I can now like I mentioned zip ties are great I don't have any zip ties so I'm gonna use some of these bread tie things that came with the case just the jumbled them up real good I will go back here with some zip ties later on and this is all I needed I'll go ahead and grab one SATA cable so this came with two one has a ninety degree on I think I'll try this one first my power in and my SATA to the hard drive I'll mount this drive back and all we need to do from here is make sure none of these cables are touching any fan stopping any fans for moving and we'll plug the SATA cable into the motherboard we'll put the top on the case and boot this thing up so one thing I didn't show in this video was installing the front eighty millimeter fan you're definitely gonna want that if you're using a case like this with a stock air cooler on the CPU if you're using a water cooler probably already has an 80 millimeter fan on it but we're ready to go I'm gonna plug this thing in grab a monitor and see if it boots up I already had an operating system installed on the SSD that's the next step if you don't have any operating system super easy to do you can install Windows Linux Windows 7 whatever you're into the moment of truth let's see if it comes on so I also installed the Wi-Fi / Bluetooth antenna it's magnetic and I just put it on the side this motherboard also has RGB LEDs built-in I mean I'm not really into that RGB thing I could just have this with no lights at all and I'd be fine but I guess there's a cool little feature if you like that gigabyte does have a dedicated app you can change the color to any color you can imagine that's a good sign getting devices ready I guess it's installing drivers for my front USB ports and possibly the Wi-Fi see if we can boot to the desktop you sweet we're at the Windows 10 desktop so I really love the size of this thing I did spend a little more money than I wanted to but I really wanted to bring that size down so I did use the 2,400 G inside of this one now I recommend the 2200 G I'm gonna be making some video showing some comparisons but there's not much of a difference in games emulators and things like that just to give you an idea of how small this PC really is this is a Raspberry Pi 3 sitting beside it it isn't a little acrylic case but if you have a PI 3 you can kind of get the feel for it you could even go smaller if you don't want to dedicated GPU in the future now this apu does a great job at 720p pretty much everything i've thrown at it is a playable frame rate so that's it for this video guys I really appreciate you watching I had a bunch of people request me doing a build on this setup I know there's a million other build videos on YouTube and they use super high-end cameras awesome shots great techno music but this is what I got and I figured I make it for you guys if you guys are interested in checking out my emulation test videos with the 2200 G links are in the description I did some PSP some GameCube some ps2 I did some Wii U and some Dreamcast I also have a video where I tested a few older steam games I'll also leave some links to Amazon if you're interested in picking up any of these parts I'll just leave everything that I had in this video down below and keep an eye out on the channel because I'm gonna do some thermal testing and some more testing with the 2400 G clocked at 4 gigahertz I'm gonna try to get that GPU up to 1600 megahertz I've only been able to get it to 15 right now but you never know if you could hit that like button and subscribe and like always thanks for watchinghey what's going on guys this ETA prime back here again lately I've been doing a lot with this new rise in APU I've been using the rise in 320 200 G and a lot of videos for low end PC gaming medium settings 720p get really good performance also I've been testing a lot of emulation and I really like this apu so today i figured i make a video on building a pc based on one of these rise in cpus i actually have the 2400 G and the 2200 G these are really great but before you get started you need to decide which one you want the rise in 320 200 G comes in at $100 $99 on Amazon and the rise in 5 2400 G comes in at 160 I've been testing both of these CPUs out and I gotta say that I prefer the 2200 G because it's only $99 you're not getting an extra $60 performance out of the 2400 G especially with emulation and low-end PC gaming the next thing you need to decide is what size computer do you want to build I want to build a very small form-factor PC so I used a mini ITX motherboard they're a bit more expensive and the cases seem to be a little more pricey also so you can save a lot of money by going with let's say a micro ATX or even an ATX build it's gonna be a lot bigger but you're gonna save a few bucks in the process you can get out building a nice little gaming machine with a 2200 G using a micro ATX or an ATX set up for under $400 with everything you need the build I have here everything that you see that I'm about to put together was four hundred and sixty dollars on Amazon everything here will be linked in the description so Ram that's the next most expensive thing here some run in eight gigabytes of Patriot VIPRE 2666 Ram I can overclock it to 30 100 megahertz with no problem at all you really want to get the fastest memory you can for these AP use because there's no dedicated vram here it's using system memory for the vram the faster it is the better it will perform storage I have a Western Digital blue one terabyte mechanical drive to hold all my Steam games and emulators and robson thing like that and I'm also using a 64 gigabyte Kingston MDOT to to run my operating system from the motherboard I'm using does have an MDOT two slot so be careful make sure if you're gonna be using an MDOT two that your motherboard supports it moving along the cases I'm using the Silverstone ITX SG 13 this is a very small form-factor case this is about $50 but you're also gonna need a power supply you can find cases that come with a power supply in the same price range but I really wanted to use this case that's why I got it one thing I didn't mention while I was building this you will need a fan if you're using this case you're gonna need a fan in the front an 80 millimeter will work fine you want some fresh air flow through there because everything's really compact as for the power supply I'm using an EVGA 500 B I actually got this on sale a while ago I think they're about $46 on Amazon this is definitely overkill for just an APU build but if you ever want to add a discrete GPU when the prices come down you'll have plenty of power CPU cooler already comes with the 2200 G or the 2400 G so that's a big plus there a $99 CPU with this nice little race tell a lot of people hate on them but they work great it also comes pre-installed with some thermal paste it's not the best of the best but it will get you by grand total for everything here with the rise in three four hundred and sixty eight dollars now like I mentioned if you go with a bigger case and a bigger motherboard you can save a lot of money you can also cut out that m dot too and just use a mechanical for now alright let's go ahead and put this thing together this is the gigabyte a B 350 in gaming Wi-Fi it does come with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi already on the board also has that MDOT two on the back first things first we need to remove the old AM for cooler mount now in the future you might not even have this because AMD doesn't use this anymore I'm not sure why it's still on these boards she just four screws let me take these out real quick there is a plate on the back so you're gonna have to hold that in place or just lay it down on a nice table don't do this on any kind of metal surface wood works fine now it's time to install the CPU so AMD still uses the pen style CPUs you need to be careful about bending them on the bottom there's also a triangle to line up on the a m4 socket located on the board and on the CPU itself see if I can get this zoomed in here this little triangle here needs to line up with the triangle on the a m4 socket you'll see it when you look at yours it's gonna be on one of the corners there you want to make sure that lines up this is a zero force insertion socket so it'll drop right in the pins will line up push your lever back down make sure it locks in place and your CPUs installed now it's time to install the cooler we're also gonna need to plug the fan in now you might have a couple of these there are little four pins make sure you're plugging it into the one that's labeled CPU it might not be labeled on the board but your manual will have it you also want to watch out for this nub on these coolers it might block your ram so I'm gonna turn mine the other way fits perfectly I'm gonna line this up with the backplate all you're gonna need is a screwdriver for this I just put a couple turns here go to the other side make sure it's lined up a couple turns I get all of them started first and then I start going in order well there's really no order here I just go across from each other make sure everything gets tightened up kind of equally I just want it to be flush with the CPU now that it's all tight I just take a look at it make sure it's sitting flush and I also look at the back here to make sure all these screws look about even coming through now I'll just find the CPU fan header on the board mine is located right over here then we just need to put the RAM in here and we're almost done all we need to do is put this inside of the case now running cables can be a pain especially if you're using a non modular power supply like I am but for the RAM they only go in one way you want to make sure the little notch lines up and it's gonna click right in place this is just a dual-channel board so it'll only take two sticks of RAM we're gonna do the same exact thing with the other stick make sure it clicks in there I love how small these little mini ITX azar now if you're not using the MDOT tube that's perfectly fine you can use a mechanical drive we've been doing that for years now this is just a basic Kingston and dot 2 SSD at 64 gigabytes but it will increase my boot time tremendously versus a mechanical Drive and that's why I wanted to use it had to grab a smaller screwdriver for this one it's gonna place it right in here and put our screw in so that's on the back of the motherboard you don't ever have to mess with this you're just gonna install your operating system to it and it will boot from this so now we're done assembling the motherboard CPU cooler RAM and our storage if you're gonna be using this type of storage all we need to do now is place this inside of the case most of your motherboards will come with some SATA cables for your mechanical drive and this one came with an antenna because that is bluetooth and Wi-Fi built in here's the back IO shield this will go into your case so all of your ports on the back line up let's move over to the case now get this thing inserted so I just removed four screws from the back of the case so I could take this whole section off your case should come with a little bag of screws for mounting the motherboard inside of the case and fans things like that you'll also have a jumble of cables in here this is for your front hard drive LED your power button your front USB reset button different cases have different connectors now I'm not gonna show you how to plug these in but they are all labeled you can refer to the manual on your motherboard to know exactly where they go so I just moved all of those out of the way because we need to put our rear i/o shield on make sure it's going in correctly you take a look at your motherboard how its gonna sit in here and it should pop right into the back could take a little bit of force try not to bend it up too bad they usually fit perfectly just like that snaps right into place I was originally gonna go with a smaller case but in the future when graphics cards are cheaper I might want to upgrade this or I'll just gonna used one on Craigslist so I can fit a full-size GPU in here along with this mini ITX we're just gonna slide it right in here and kind of line up all your ports on the back to the i/o shield that we installed and there are four standoffs we're gonna mount the motherboard with those four standoffs and your case should have came with the screws since this is a mini ITX motherboard it only has four some have six some have eight depending on the size it's going to be on all four corners of this motherboard is now mounted inside of the case now it's time to plug in all our front io the reset button the power button your front USB you want to get this done before we throw anything else in here because this is a very small case there's no room to work especially after we put the power supply in so like I mentioned I'm not going to show you how to do this but they're all labeled and your motherboards manual will show you exactly where they go so this case specifically has room for actually 3 2.5 drives or one 3.5 and 12.5 this mounts on the top here I'll just put in the four screws they were included with the case hard drive is now mounted but we need to put the power supply in as you can see this has a massive tangle of snakes I recommend getting a modular power supply I already had this laying around so I figured I'd use it a modular will be more expensive so if you want to keep the price down you might not be able to get one of those so this case is a little odd the power supply sits above the motherboard and CPU it does block off a little bit of airflow but like I mentioned at the beginning get you in the 80 millimeter fan for the front and it should have plenty of air flowing through there if you're working with a case this small make sure you plug in your CPU power this is a 6 pin you want to make sure that's plugged in because this is gonna block off a lot when we drop it in here I really do like the size of this case I don't need any optical drive or anything like that that's one of the main reasons I chose this one I wanted something real small we're just gonna put four screws to hold the power supply in now that the power supply is plugged in we want to plug in our 20 plus 4 connector I actually just ran out of zip ties a few days ago and I forgot to get some but zip ties are your best friend in a case like this now it's time to mess with this whole mangle over here all I need out of this jumble is one SATA power connector and then I'm left with a huge mess so I try to get these as bunched up as I can now like I mentioned zip ties are great I don't have any zip ties so I'm gonna use some of these bread tie things that came with the case just the jumbled them up real good I will go back here with some zip ties later on and this is all I needed I'll go ahead and grab one SATA cable so this came with two one has a ninety degree on I think I'll try this one first my power in and my SATA to the hard drive I'll mount this drive back and all we need to do from here is make sure none of these cables are touching any fan stopping any fans for moving and we'll plug the SATA cable into the motherboard we'll put the top on the case and boot this thing up so one thing I didn't show in this video was installing the front eighty millimeter fan you're definitely gonna want that if you're using a case like this with a stock air cooler on the CPU if you're using a water cooler probably already has an 80 millimeter fan on it but we're ready to go I'm gonna plug this thing in grab a monitor and see if it boots up I already had an operating system installed on the SSD that's the next step if you don't have any operating system super easy to do you can install Windows Linux Windows 7 whatever you're into the moment of truth let's see if it comes on so I also installed the Wi-Fi / Bluetooth antenna it's magnetic and I just put it on the side this motherboard also has RGB LEDs built-in I mean I'm not really into that RGB thing I could just have this with no lights at all and I'd be fine but I guess there's a cool little feature if you like that gigabyte does have a dedicated app you can change the color to any color you can imagine that's a good sign getting devices ready I guess it's installing drivers for my front USB ports and possibly the Wi-Fi see if we can boot to the desktop you sweet we're at the Windows 10 desktop so I really love the size of this thing I did spend a little more money than I wanted to but I really wanted to bring that size down so I did use the 2,400 G inside of this one now I recommend the 2200 G I'm gonna be making some video showing some comparisons but there's not much of a difference in games emulators and things like that just to give you an idea of how small this PC really is this is a Raspberry Pi 3 sitting beside it it isn't a little acrylic case but if you have a PI 3 you can kind of get the feel for it you could even go smaller if you don't want to dedicated GPU in the future now this apu does a great job at 720p pretty much everything i've thrown at it is a playable frame rate so that's it for this video guys I really appreciate you watching I had a bunch of people request me doing a build on this setup I know there's a million other build videos on YouTube and they use super high-end cameras awesome shots great techno music but this is what I got and I figured I make it for you guys if you guys are interested in checking out my emulation test videos with the 2200 G links are in the description I did some PSP some GameCube some ps2 I did some Wii U and some Dreamcast I also have a video where I tested a few older steam games I'll also leave some links to Amazon if you're interested in picking up any of these parts I'll just leave everything that I had in this video down below and keep an eye out on the channel because I'm gonna do some thermal testing and some more testing with the 2400 G clocked at 4 gigahertz I'm gonna try to get that GPU up to 1600 megahertz I've only been able to get it to 15 right now but you never know if you could hit that like button and subscribe and like always thanks for watching\n"