**Building Your PC: A Comprehensive Guide**

**Overclocking: The Potential Performance Gainer**

If you're looking to squeeze every last bit of performance out of your CPU, overclocking may be the way to go. This involves increasing the clock speed of your processor beyond its manufacturer-recommended settings. However, this is a potentially unstable process and should only be attempted by experienced users who are comfortable with the risks involved. Even if you're running ECC memory or have an overclockable workstation platform like thread Ripper 7000, it's still essential to exercise caution when overclocking.

In fact, some experts recommend disabling overclocking until your operating system is installed and you're sure that your PC is working correctly. This is a wise decision, as failing to properly configure your system can result in instability or even render your PC unusable. On the other hand, if you have a beefy cooler and want to push your hardware to its limits, overclocking can be an excellent way to unlock performance gains.

**Multi-Core Enhancement: Unlocking Your CPU's Potential**

Another advanced option that can enhance your CPU's performance is the multi-core enhancement setting, also known as "Smart Access Memory" or "Resizable BAR". Traditionally, your CPU could only access a small portion of your GPU's memory at once, typically 256 Megs. However, this can become a bottleneck when dealing with large-scale games that require massive amounts of VRAM.

The new Resizable BAR feature allows your CPU to access all the available VRAM without having to move windows around as needed. This means that there is no extra downtime between accesses, and performance should be significantly improved. To enable Resizable BAR, you'll need to disable the Compatibility Support Module (CSM), enable above 4G decoding, and then toggle on Resizable BAR.

It's worth noting that some older boards may require a BIOS update to support this feature, while newer boards may even have it enabled by default. Additionally, turning on Resizable BAR can sometimes result in reduced performance, but this is relatively rare and often dependent on the specific system configuration.

**Windows Installation: The Final Step**

Once your PC is built, your next step will be installing Windows 11. Make sure that you've disabled the Compatibility Support Module (CSM) before proceeding with the installation process. You'll also want to enable above 4G decoding and Resizable BAR during setup.

If your system boots up automatically after inserting the flash drive, great! If not, don't worry – simply hit F8 or F12 on the first boot screen to bring up a boot menu and select it from there. In some cases, enabling Legacy USB devices in the UEFI settings may be necessary to ensure that Windows recognizes your storage device.

With these final steps complete, you should now have a fully built and functional PC that's ready for use. **Seic Power Supplies: A Reliable Partner**

Our sponsor, Seic, has been a trusted partner for our channel for years, providing top-quality power supplies that meet the demands of modern gaming PCs. Their products are renowned for their reliability and build quality, making them an excellent choice for anyone building or upgrading their system.

From personal use to commercial builds, Seic's power supplies have consistently impressed us with their performance and durability. They've also been running sales and promotions more frequently in recent times, so be sure to check out their website for the latest deals.

**Conclusion**

Building a PC can seem daunting, but with the right guidance and resources, it can be a fun and rewarding experience. By overclocking your CPU, enabling Resizable BAR, and properly configuring your system's settings, you can unlock significant performance gains and create a truly exceptional gaming machine.

Of course, this comprehensive guide has covered some of the most advanced topics in PC building, but we've also made it easy for beginners to get started with simple steps and recommendations. We hope that our content has been helpful, and we look forward to continuing to provide you with the latest news and guides on all things PC hardware.

**Companion Video: Setting Up Your PC**

If you're looking for a deeper dive into setting up your new PC, be sure to check out our companion video on this very topic. In this in-depth guide, we'll take you through every step of the process, from installing the operating system to configuring your network and peripherals.

Whether you're a seasoned gamer or just starting out with PC building, our comprehensive guides are designed to help you get the most out of your new machine. So sit back, relax, and let us show you how to build a PC that truly meets your needs.

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