- Hello, my friends, and welcome back to Micro Center
for our most in-depth gaming PC tutorial yet.
Grab yourself some popcorn, a beverage of your choice,
because we're gonna go incredibly in-depth
on everything you need to know about choosing components
and putting together your very own gaming PC.
To start out with,
I would recommend actually doing something
a little bit different than our previous years,
which is to start with a graphics card.
If you're not familiar with what a graphics card is,
it's the thing that makes the games go brrr!
So, for this build, we are going with an MSI RTX 3060,
but you can just as easily go with an AMD GPU as well.
Red team have many options
that are very much equivalent to NVIDIA.
And the big thing to keep in mind is to pick a graphics card
that is available, and that is inside your budget.
I think this year, I feel pretty safe to say
it's going to be difficult to get our hands
on graphics cards for the foreseeable future.
So, if you find something, buy it.
The next decision you're gonna wanna make
is to pick your CPU.
Now, this is the processor,
and, ultimately, alongside the graphics card,
one of the most important components of your build.
Now, if chosen a mid-range graphics card,
generally speaking, you should probably get yourself
a mid-range CPU, something like a Core i5 or Core i3.
And if you got yourself a high-end graphics card,
you may want a Core i7 or Core i9,
but that's very broadly speaking.
Now, generally, if you are playing games specifically,
then you don't necessarily need a Core i9 for example.
You don't need a ton of cores
because, instead, you can get away with something
like maybe a Core i5 for that same kind of performance
and save a whole lot of money.
But on the other side,
if you plan on using the system for a very long time,
or maybe you're gonna be doing
a lot of video editing or something,
the extra cores and clock speed of a Core i7 or Core i9
could be very beneficial.
On the flip side,
if you just wanna do some little more basic gaming,
something like a Core i3 could absolutely do the job.
Intel and AMD both make it pretty easy to understand
the lower numbers are less powerful,
the higher numbers are more powerful.
Because we've got ourselves an RTX 3060,
we're gonna go a little bit more high-end
for the purposes of this tutorial,
so we're gonna go with an i7-12700K.
Now, if you look at the model numbers
for all AMD and Intel CPUs,
you'll see that there's a little bit of a code to it.
So, "i7" means that this is one of the higher-end chips.
So it goes, i3, i5, i7, i9.
Just like Ryzen goes Ryzen 3, Ryzen 5, Ryzen 7, Ryzen 9.
The "12th Gen," as well as the "12" here,
just indicates what generation it is.
So, this is the latest and greatest.
"K" on the Intel side means that you can overclock.
Now, I will say, we're not gonna get into overclocking.
So, we're just gonna show you how to build a PC
and choose the components.
But if you wanna be able to overclock
and get the absolute most out of it,
you're gonna want a K series Intel processor,
and most AMD chips are gonna allow you to do that,
regardless of which one you picked.
Notice how this box is very small?
It's because there's only a CPU inside.
Now, for example, if I were to pick out a 12400,
so this is an i5, this actually has the cooler in the box.
Generally speaking, when you're buying the higher-end chips,
they just expect that you're gonna want to get
a secondary cooler.
And for our purposes, we actually are gonna do that.
But a lot of other chips do come with at least
a decent stock cooler in the box.
Though it's definitely something
that you wanna keep in mind.
If you're gonna go all out,
you're gonna have to buy an extra cooler,
but if you're building a little bit of a more basic system,
what's in the box is actually totally fine.
The next decision is to choose your motherboard.
Now, the motherboard is a very important component,
pretty much all of the different
bits and bobs inside your system
are going to connect to the board,
which is why we're gonna go with this MSI PRO Z690-A.
Now, there are a few things you should pay attention to
when it is time to choose your motherboard.
First and foremost, does it work with your processor?
Now, all graphics cards,
well, unless they're made in like 1997 or something,
will work with pretty much any motherboard.
That's not a really huge concern.
The big thing is to make sure that your CPU
and the socket is compatible.
So, for our build, the easy way to look
is to go to this little sticker on the top,
"Supports 12th Gen Intel Core processors."
Boom. We know that this will at the very bare minimum work.
However, look closely at that sticker.
You see this one right here?
Look at this, oh, I don't know, the Z590 supports 11th Gen.
The sticker's almost exactly the same,
except it says "11th" instead of "12th."
So, it is definitely worth double and triple-checking
to make sure that you have a motherboard
which will support your processor.
Now, other things to consider
when you're choosing your motherboard are the sizes.
So, the three main sizes for motherboards.
There's ITX, which is the smallest,
there's microATX, which is a middle,
and then there's, of course, full-size ATX,
which is what we've got here.
Most builds are probably gonna wanna do ATX,
that's what the vast majority of chassis are.
If you're building like a regular mid-size
or a full-size tower, this is the move,
it's gonna give you the most expansion, blah, blah, blah.
However, if you do wanna do
a smaller form factor build or something,
you may wanna go smaller.
Most important is to make sure
that the size of your motherboard
is equivalent to the size of your case.
One other very important thing to consider
is what kind of RAM you are going to be using.
So, for AMD this is not really a problem.
And for pretty much all the last few years of Intel,
it's not a problem.
However, for the latest 12th Generation Intel chips,
they actually support two different kinds of RAM.
You can use the DDR4, which has been around for many years.
It's a little bit more cheap,
but also it's much, much easier to get your hands on,
or you can get the maximum performance using DDR5.
Now, there are pros and cons to both,
DDR5 is faster, but more expensive,
a little hard to get your hands on,
but you need to make this decision
right now when you choose your motherboard.
Because even though you can get a DDR4 or DDR5 motherboard,
it's only gonna be one or the other, right?
We're gonna be using this tutorial with DDR5
because it is the latest technology.
But honestly, feel free to go with DDR4.
If you can find yourself a board,
they're usually gonna be cheaper.
The RAM is certainly gonna be cheaper.
You're losing a little bit of performance, it's not crazy.
But, for the purposes of this tutorial,
we're gonna show you the pretty much cutting edge,
most up-to-date system that we can,
which means DDR5 and a DDR5-specific motherboard.
Speaking of RAM,
that is our next decision that we need to make.
There are a few things to keep in mind,
but it's actually not super complicated.
So, of course, first and foremost, DDR4 versus DDR5,
you gotta pick whichever one you want.
Beyond that, you need to choose the speed,
the RGB, the amount of RAM.
There's a few other things involved.
The first one is just picking how much RAM you want.
Eight gigs is the absolute bare minimum you're gonna want.
And realistically, in 2022,
you should be aiming for 16 gigs if at all possible.
If you're getting DDR4,
we're talking like 60 bucks for some 16 gig kits.
So, don't get too stressed
on trying to save a few bucks on RAM,
try to get at least 16 gigabytes.
On top of that, the speed is important.
Generally speaking,
AMD systems are a little bit more sensitive
to the RAM speed than Intel,
so you may wanna go up to 3200 or 3600 on the AMD side,
but because we're choosing Intel
and because we're choosing DDR5,
it makes our lives a lot more simple.
Now, for this, we're gonna be going with 64 gigs
of this Crucial DDR5.
Now, the other thing you wanna consider when choosing RAM,
make sure to get at least dual channel.
Now, that will make a difference,
regardless of whether you're using Intel or AMD.
So, basically, don't be tempted
to just buy a single stick of RAM,
because it's cheaper and you can expand more later.
You're gonna get more performance
if you buy a least two sticks of RAM
then you can run in dual channel mode.
Next up, let's choose our case.
This is the fun part because this really is
the most aesthetic part of your system.
And as you can see, there are hundreds and hundreds
of different options for a case.
Remember, there's the ATX, microATX,
and ITX motherboard sizes.
Make sure that you get a case
which will equivalently those different sizes.
So, for example, this fits a full ATX motherboard,
meaning that we can put any of those sizes inside
and we will be A-okay.
On top of that, make sure that you have enough room
for whatever other components you need inside.
So, generally speaking,
most cases will fit most graphics cards, but not always.
Some graphics cards are really big,
some cases are a little bit small,
so you may wanna take a look at that.
And think about your cooling.
This is probably one of the big ones.
If you are doing a mid-range system,
you probably don't need a ton of fans
and AIOs and all this kind of stuff.
But, on the other hand, if you're building an RTX 3090
and Core i9, and all this kind of stuff,
you're probably gonna want some space in the top
or on the front for radiators and whatnot.
So, think a little bit about how high-end your system is,
and whether or not the cooling in the case
can either support it
and/or if you wanna be able to add additional radiators
or fans to then help improve the cooling of that system.
So, for now, we're gonna go with the 205,
which is right here.
With this case, we had not only glass,
but we also have room to mount a radiator up top.
We have an exhaust fan, as well as one fan on the front.
So, you can obviously mix and match this however you want.
Continuing on, it is time to choose our storage device.
Now, I say "storage device," you should buy yourself at SSD.
Now, if you have an old hard drive laying around
and you wanna use it, not as your actual boot device,
but you just wanna have extra storage, whatever, feel free.
However, don't run your operating system
off of a hard drive in 2022.
SSDs are cheap, fast,
and pretty much better in every possible way.
So, we're gonna actually pick out two SSDs today.
First off, we're going to choose a 980 PRO.
Now, this is an M.2 SSD.
This is, for the vast majority of people,
the kind of SSD that you should be using in your system.
They're not that much more expensive,
they're far easier to install,
and you are going to get the very best speeds
with an M.2 SSD.
Specifically, with the 980 PRO,
this is one of the fastest SSDs
you can get, period, right now, highly recommended.
However, you may also wanna is a SATA drive.
So, that is where the 870 QVO comes in.
Now, this is an older school approach.
So, the way to install a SATA SSD
is the same as a SATA hard drive.
And even the same if you're installing a SATA optical drive
for like DVDs and Blu-rays and stuff.
So, I'll show you how to use it for this tutorial.
If you've got an old SSD laying around
or an old hard drive laying around,
feel free to install it.
What we're gonna do, is we're gonna install Windows
on our fastest SSD,
and we're gonna just use this for storage.
But, generally speaking,
you should probably be picking yourself up an M.2 SSD.
Next decision we need to make,
you've gotta keep that CPU of ours nice and cool.
So, there are a number of different ways
that you can go about this.
So, if you're going with a low to mid-range processor,
you actually can use the stock cooler that comes in the box.
You might not be able to overclock or push it super hard,
but, honestly, those stock coolers are totally fine.
For one-step up above that, is to do an air cooler.
So, a cheapish air cooler
will still give you more performance,
more cooling capability through your system,
it'll look nicer, and won't really break the bank.
However, if you're gonna go with a higher-end processor,
especially when it comes to something like
the 11th and 12th Gen stuff, or like a Ryzen 9 or whatever,
you're gonna be pumping some serious power
through that chip.
And while an air cooler will work,
oftentimes you're gonna wanna consider doing one of these,
a liquid cooler, also typically known as an AIO.
Now, these come in a lot of different sizes,
a lot of different variations configurations.
It gets a little bit complicated,
but there are a couple things to consider.
Now, because the new Intel 12th Gen processors
are fairly new, you wanna make sure
that whatever cooler you pick will work for it.
On top of that, think a little bit about how powerful
of an AIO or whatnot that you need.
So, they usually come in a couple different sizes.
So, you can do a 120, you usually don't wanna do.
A 240, which is gonna fit in most cases.
Or you can go all the way to something like a 360.
It all depends on how many fans
and how thick the radiator is.
So, this is where you gonna definitely wanna
consult with the box
of the actual PC case that you've chosen,
and then choose it cooler, which looks nice,
that fits in your budget,
and that will be able to cool your processor accordingly.
Usually speaking, though, 240 or 360
is the sweet spot when it comes to AIOs,
and we will be picking a white Lian Li Galahad
for this particular build to match your case.
Now it's time to power our beautiful
brand new gaming PC system.
One of the most important things
is just the amount of wattage that you need.
As you can see, there's a wide variety.
You can go from 500, 650, 850, 1,250.
The easy way to tell
is actually usually using your graphics card.
So, the graphic card will always tell you
the minimum that it needs.
And oftentimes for something like our build,
we can probably get away with a 600 and 650 watt,
something like that.
I'm actually gonna go with a 750 watt,
just to give ourselves a little bit of headroom,
because especially if you're gonna be reusing components
and rebuilding your system over the years,
it's always nice to have a little bit extra
on your power supply,
so you know that you can reuse this for the next build
even if you get an RTX 5080 or something like that.
Now, what you've chosen the power supply
or at least the wattage that you need,
there are only a couple of other things
you need to keep in mind.
See this little sticker here? "80 PLUS."
You want to see that on your power supply.
Now, there are different levels of 80 PLUS certification.
Usually, bronze is a good place to start.
Even white is fine.
But gold is sort of like a good sort of mid-range option.
It generally means that you're gonna get a power supply
which is high-quality, efficient,
gonna last you quite a while.
The last thing to consider are your cables.
So, again, when it comes to your graphics card,
'cause the graphics card's usually the problem here,
make sure that you have enough leads from your power supply
to take care of your graphics card.
This has four PCI 6+2 pins.
That means that this is gonna work
with basically every graphics card ever made.
You may also wanna consider picking up a copy
of Microsoft 365 Family.
Not only do you get all of the premium Office apps,
but you're also going to get
one terabyte of OneDrive cloud storage
you can share with up to six people.
And now it's time to go build ourselves a gaming PC.
Friends, it's time!
And thanks to our very kind sponsors, Micro Center,
they are running a promotion right now.
The next time you're in-store,
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And so, the very first thing you should do
is to acquire your tools.
I forgot mine this morning,
so I found the screwdriver in my bag.
You, however, should be more prepared
and have a screwdriver that isn't terrible.
- [Ken] Well, first of all, Jeremy,
you have an iFixit literally right there.
- Those are not my tools.
Those are not my tools. - You're not Jeremy?
- I'm not Jeremy.
I'm not gonna steal tools! - What are you doing here?
What are you doing here?
- Little pro-tip, when it comes to opening case boxes,
flip it upside down, don't be a hero.
Thankfully, this is not a super heavy case,
so it's actually very easy to open up.
So, I always like to start with the case.
The first thing is just to start stripping it down.
I'll tell you one of the worst things about building a PC,
losing a little tiny screw in your carpet
and you'll never find it again.
So, don't build on carpet.
Also, don't shock your components with static.
And most importantly, don't lose your screws,
'cause you'll never find them again.
- [Ken] You'll find them in 10 years when you accidentally
step on them. - When you step on it?
Yeah. (all laughing)
So, here we've got our sort of main area
where we're gonna be putting our motherboard,
graphics card and everything,
but we'll also wanna flip it around
and take off the other side.
This is where we're gonna run pretty much all of our cables.
So, just open up the case with the front and this back panel
and you should be fine.
Now we have access to pretty much
all of our various different components.
And you'll also see we have some extra goodies.
So, here we have our manual, which may or may not be useful,
but it's always nice to kind of keep that around.
And importantly, you'll also have your hardware.
Keep these handy. We will come back for these later.
With our case ready, the first thing I like to do
is prepare the power supply.
We open up our power supply.
You'll find a few things in here.
Usually, don't really need the manual.
So, because this is a semi-modular supply,
what we'll see is that some of the cables we can attach,
but we only need to use some of these
and I'll explain them later.
And then we have the power supply itself.
So, you can see that some...
I just Linused that, didn't I?
So, with the semi-modular supply,
these are the cables that we are pretty much
going to need regardless.
So, these are already attached.
And you can see that you can connect additional cables,
if you need them, right over here.
Now, on top of that, before you toss your power supply box,
take a look for the screws.
These are always included in the power supply.
And quite honestly, they're very easy to miss.
Sometimes they get underneath the foam or whatever.
So, when you're pulling everything out,
make sure to grab the four little screws
that come in the baggy along with them.
So, before you install your power supply,
you do need to decide what orientation it goes in.
So, you see that there's a large fan on one side.
Now, usually, the power supply will install
either facing up or down.
But you just wanna think about this fan
as in terms of it needs some airflow.
So, every case is slightly different.
Now, for I would say the majority of cases these days,
you're gonna put it on the bottom,
and you can see there's a little sort of mesh panel here,
which means that that will perfectly give us
some airflow from the bottom.
You just wanna make sure that wherever your fan is,
it can get access to air.
So, you know, if it's here, it can breathe here.
Or if you have a mesh panel, whatever the case is,
just make sure that this is not going straight
against the bottom metal component there.
Although, I would hope that you'd look at that
and you'd realize that that's not right,
unless you're "Scrapyard Warsing" it. (laughs)
So, once you've decided what orientation
the actual power supply needs to go in,
it's time to screw it in,
except if you have a modular or semi-modular supply.
So, you can see with this supply,
we have a couple of cables that are already attached, right?
So, these are cables that you always need regardless.
However, all the rest are optional.
So, you wanna take a quick look
at the components that you have for your system
and which ones you actually need to use.
So, for example, if I grab my graphics card.
You need an eight-pin as well as a six-pin, right?
So, we wanna make sure that we have those
on a power supply before we install it,
which is simple enough.
They've thankfully color-coded it.
So, you can see here, we have a PCIe power connector.
This is what you need for a graphics card.
So, figure out however many pins
you need for your graphics card
and grab those cables and install them now.
So, we're gonna line it up and go, boom.
Look at that. Now we're playing with power.
This SATA power.
So, this is what you will use
for generally speaking hard drives, SSDs,
as well as optical drives.
"Hard drive, SATA, floppy."
It kind of has it all right here.
So, we just line it up, click it in.
And then that actually should be
all of the different cables we need.
So, to install our power supply, it is very simple.
And for this case, what we're gonna do
is we're gonna slide it in.
Now, you'll see that with these cables,
it's gonna get slightly in the way,
so just make sure they're slightly tucked
so that you're not completely fighting them.
And you see, we can slide it in from the side.
Now, I will say that some cases
are gonna be slightly different.
So, some cases actually have a little bracket in the back
that you wanna screw into the power supply
and then you slide it in.
So, just check your case manual
if something doesn't look right,
but with this one, it's very standard, very straightforward.
What we're gonna do is when we come around to the back,
you just wanna make sure this is aligned correctly.
So, there's a little panel I can remove here,
but, honestly, most cases don't have that.
So, I'm gonna leave it there
just to make my life more difficult,
and to making a more representative tutorial
on how to line this up.
There are four screws
that will attach your power supply to the case.
And there should be if you look right here,
there's a hole on the top left top, top right,
bottom right, bottom left.
Very simple.
At this point, grab that little baggy of screws
that came with your power supply, grab your screw,
and start screwing it in, in one corner.
Doesn't matter which one you start with.
However, this is where you should use
the cross pattern method.
So, as you can see here, as we screw one in,
it starts to pull that tight to the top of the case.
However, you don't wanna actually do this
just going around in a circle.
And this actually goes for a lot of things in life,
but specifically when it comes to PC components,
and really when it comes to CPU coolers and stuff,
you should always go from opposite corners.
That way you're gonna be applying even pressure
to your actual system.
For power supply doesn't actually matter,
but this is just good habits to get into.
So, with that, we have our power supply installed.
So, you can see here, we've got our IEC lead.
This is what you're gonna plug into the wall.
We have our switch.
Just a little heads up, leave that switch on.
Just leave it on.
You're gonna forget it later. Turn it on.
Don't plug it in yet, but leave the switch on.
So, with our case out of the way,
now it is time to grab our motherboard.
So, we're gonna put the next few components
all inside the board itself.
And actually, what I like to do
is, I actually like to use the box of the motherboard
to use as sort of my test bench.
So, one thing you should keep in mind,
computer components and static electricity
don't necessarily mix well.
So, generally speaking,
when you're touching things like the motherboard,
you should try to grab it by the more like
metal components and whatnot.
Don't be super scared,
it's not crazy fragile or anything like that.
What we will need is the instruction manual,
which is helpful, or at least keep this handy.
We also wanna grab the I/O shield.
So, this is what goes on the back of our case
so that all your ports will come through.
Let's just toss it off to the side.
And then there's gonna be a bunch of other stuff.
So, you'll see some little screws.
Just grab all of this and put it off to the side.
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With the motherboard, you can start building now.
However, if you've never built a PC before,
let me walk you through a few of the things
that you should pay attention to.
Now, if you look at this, it's pretty complicated.
There's a lot of stuff going on here,
but most of it isn't really relevant for you.
And once you're building a very simple system like this,
there's only a few main things
that you need to pay attention to.
First and foremost, the CPU.
So, this is where your processor is installed.
Now, AMD and Intel are slightly different in this respect,
of if you look at this one here.
So, I'm gonna pull the little arm back,
so you can see it's just sort of spring-loaded.
Now, you look here, there are a bunch of little pins here.
You see that? These pins, you do not want to touch or bend.
That will cause a big problem.
However, if you're building an AMD system,
there are the pins
actually on the CPU instead of the socket, right?
So, in that case,
you don't wanna touch the bottom of that CPU.
Regardless, all of this stuff,
just don't touch it in general.
But just keep in mind that if you knock it
or cause a problem or whatever,
those pins look misaligned for any reason,
you're probably gonna have a big, big issue.
Other things to pay attention to is your RAM slots.
Different boards will have different amounts.
So, four is the most common.
The main thing you wanna pay attention to here
is what order you want to install your RAM in.
Now, some like this, if you look very closely here,
you'll see it says, "First."
So, it says, "A2 and B2 first,"
which would be the second and fourth slot.
That's pretty common for modern boards.
If you have a little sticker like that,
a little graphic on it,
it will tell you in what order you wanna do it.
You pay attention to that.
If you have any doubt,
check the manual for your motherboard.
Working our way down
is where you install your graphics cards.
So, these are the PCI slots.
So, you'll see, we actually have a number of them.
You pretty much always wanna use the top one.
And you can see this one's actually made out of metal
versus the plastic ones here.
This is what you are going to install your graphics card in.
But these additional ones can be used
for wifi cards or capture cards or whatnot.
But for this build, we're only going to be installing
a graphics card right here.
And on top of that,
there are a number of different M.2 slots.
So, you can see that we have a couple of them
that are exposed, so there's one right here, one right here,
and one right here.
You could always spot them
because not only do you have all these little pins,
but also you have these little screws, right?
So, the SSD would go right here,
it'd go right here, or go right here.
Most motherboards will have a little cover
over at least one of the M.2 slots,
which is you'll wanna use,
mostly because it's got a little thermal pad on the bottom,
just to use as a little bit of a heat sink.
But you can see, it looks exactly the same on the bottom.
Continuing on, there are a few power connectors
you should pay attention to.
So, I'll go over these again
when we actually need to plug things in,
but just so you know, up top left,
you'll generally find your PCI power
specifically for your CPU.
So, different boards will have different configurations.
Some have four pins, some have an eight-pin,
and some of the higher-end boards will have dual eight-pin.
Coming around to this side
is the most important power connector on your board,
which is the 20+4 pin.
This is the main power for the motherboard.
So, while these work specifically for your CPU,
this is what powers basically all the rest of it.
So, just keep in mind that that is always 100% of the time
going to need to be plugged in.
Now, from there,
those are the most important things on the board,
but because we've got it out here,
let me show you some of the other things
that we will be using later.
So, you go over to the top right,
you'll see a bunch of fan headers.
So, you'll see that they all are labeled.
So, there's a little CPU fan here, a pump fan,
system fan one, two, three, et cetera, et cetera.
This board actually has a lot of fan headers.
Lower-end boards generally only have a few.
The thing is, this is where you will install fans
for not only your CPU, for maybe your AIO.
Maybe you'll wanna plug it in for case fans.
You can kind of configure it however you want,
but pay attention to where your fan headers are.
So, for example, we have a bunch
on the top right of the board.
We have some on the bottom, we also have one over here.
Usually, you'll wanna plug in the fan headers
that are closest to the case.
So, for example, this one up here is great
because you'll have a fan right here for your exhaust,
you can just plug that in.
The best thing about these connectors, they're very simple.
Because you see this little notch here
that covers the first three pins, it can only go in one way.
And you can use a three-pin
or a four-pin fan in these headers.
Now, over to the right side,
we also have a couple of USB connectors.
Pay attention to where the USB headers are on your board.
So, there are three different kinds of headers.
So, this long sort of black one, this is a USB 3.0 header.
So, these are for USB-A ports.
Beside it, we have this little silver connector,
which is for USB-C.
Not all boards have USB-C,
and also, not all cases have USB-C.
So, obviously, whatever configuration your board
and your case have is what you wanna do,
but just keep in mind where those are.
And then, if you come to the bottom, you'll see USB 2.0,
which has the little USB thing
thankfully kind of printed on the bottom.
So, this is a 5+4 pin.
So, you can see there's one little pin
that's been knocked out.
And as I will show you later,
the USB 3.0 header is bad.
I don't like it. It is very easy to break.
I've broken many of these before.
So, pay attention for now where they are
and I'll show you how to not break it
or potentially break it later.
Other things you wanna pay attention to
is the audio connector.
So, this one is just the labeled "JAUD1."
That is where you're gonna plug in the audio for your case.
So, if you look on the front of the case,
you'll see that you're gonna have a headphone
and a microphone jack, that's where that plugs in.
So, if you ever have any problems with that,
you just wanna check to make sure that it's fully seated.
And like most of these cables, they only go in one way,
so you can't put them in incorrectly.
Because we are taking advantage of a SATA SSD as well,
we're gonna be taking advantage of these SATA ports.
So, this board has six.
So, there's two here and there are four on this side.
So, this is what you would plug in an SSD, a hard drive,
an optical drive, that kind of stuff here.
SATA's definitely a little bit of an older school connector.
And honestly, I wager most builds these days
don't even need SATA,
but if you do need to connect any of those things,
that's where those ports are right here.
Before you put your motherboard in the case,
just make a mental note of where these various different
things are on the motherboard.
- [Ken] 'Cause once it's all in, it's hard to put 'em all
and figure it out, right? - It's hard to see.
Even with the light, you're looking around.
I mean, look at this.
There are a lot of little tiny things
all over the place.
So, it just makes sense to spend a little bit of time
before you actually really kind of throw the board in,
to learn where each component is, where each cable is,
all of that kind of fun stuff.
Let's install ourselves a processor, shall we?
This part seems intimidating.
And I mean, to be fair, if you do it wrong,
you could ruin your entire build and be sad.
But if you do it right, you're fine. So, no pressure.
Here is our 12700K.
Now, if you look in the back,
you can see that, because this is Intel, there are no pins.
So, there are a bunch of pads
because the pins are on the motherboard.
But keep in mind that if you're building with AMD,
it's the reverse.
So there are a lot of pins here,
which you do not want to touch,
and there are no pins on the board.
Before we install that,
we're gonna go ahead and pull our arm back here,
open up our socket.
Now, you see this little plastic protector?
Leave that there.
That'll actually pop off automatically once we're ready.
So, we'll just pull this back
and you see that our pins are exposed.
So, now we wanna open up our CPU, little plastic.
Don't grab it by the bottom, grab it by the side.
There's always a little notch.
So, it's kind of hard to see,
it's actually very, very small,
but you see this little arrow on the bottom left?
That is gonna correspond with a little arrow
on the bottom left of the socket.
Now, the thing with installing a CPU,
you don't force it.
You set it down gently. Okay?
So, we're gonna go ahead and grab it from the side.
We're gonna line it up here.
And then just be very gentle and slow, line it up,
and then you just let it go.
Now we are gonna close the bracket. Okay?
So, we're gonna close it up.
Now, to be fair, this one hinges this way.
The older Intel and AMD will hinge the other way.
It doesn't matter, just close it up.
And you'll see that once you grab it like that,
you see it's gonna pull that little arm down?
We're gonna start pushing this. Okay?
So, this is gonna require force.
This is okay to push.
Honestly, you're not gonna break anything.
Push it all the way down
until it hooks underneath this little clip here.
Then you can remove the little plastic piece.
Congratulations, your CPU is installed
and not going anywhere.
Pat yourself stuff on the back.
Have a celebratory beverage of your choosing.
And then let's put the rest of the stuff in
'cause there's a lot more we still need to do, like RAM!
RAM is, I would say,
one of the easiest things to do in a PC,
whether you're upgrading an existing PC
or building yourself a brand new one
if I can open this package.
Along your RAM, regardless of what kind of DDR you're using,
you'll see that there's gonna be a little notch
that's a little bit past the halfway point,
this is to ensure that you can't install it
the wrong direction.
So, if I demonstrate
that it is gonna be going in the wrong way,
it doesn't line up.
So, I can push all I want, it will not line up.
So, I wanna flip it around
to make sure that it actually does work.
And you can see, lines up perfectly there.
Now, before you install your RAM,
again, just double-check
that you're putting it in the correct slot.
So, either use that little graphic on the RAM slot itself
or check your motherboard manual to figure out
if you need to be using like A1, A1, A4,
whatever the case is.
It'll always tell you, "Hey, use these slots first."
Now, once you've figured that out, it is super simple.
Take your thumb on either side, right?
And make sure that you've opened up
the little retention brackets if you've got them.
So, ready, set. And there we go.
That's it. You just push it in place.
It'll usually make a little click sound.
- Like that? - Yes.
I did it right. I did it right?
No, I did it right.
If you have any problems later on,
oftentimes the RAM is the issue,
whether it's not seated or right or whatever the case is.
So, this is a great time,
if you have any issues later in the build, double check.
That looking right?
Also, once you actually post the system,
make sure that all of your RAM is actually showing up too.
But, with that, we have not only our CPU
but, also, our RAM installed.
Let's get onto our SSD.
Watch how easy this is.
This is a M.2 PCI drive.
So, if you have a SATA SSD,
you actually find that there's a second little not there,
which is really the only way to visually see the difference.
But for these purposes, I'm just telling you about
a PCI M.2 SSD, which is the vast majority of the ones
that you're gonna find out right now.
So, it's really, really simple.
Remember we took off this little heat sink earlier?
You see right here?
You almost always wanna use
the topmost drive slot on your motherboard.
So, what we'll do is we'll line it up,
and you see that little notch corresponds
to a little notch on the actual thing.
So, it's very simple.
I always like to put it in slightly higher,
so kinda like tilting it up, then push it in.
It should slide in a little bit.
And then you'll push it down.
And then you'll either screw it
or, if you see actually right here,
a little retention thing.
So, I'm actually gonna use that.
So, you see that it kind of just sits there
and then this little plastic piece just rotates.
That's it. No cables, no mess, nothing.
This is definitely the way I recommend
installing SSDs in your system.
That took what? 10 seconds?
Don't forget, once you're done,
put this little thing back on.
So, you'll see that this has some plastic on it,
remove the plastic before you put the heat sink on.
This is a little sticky. This is a thermal pad.
We'll just line it up here.
And then grab those two screws that we took off earlier
and put that back into place.
Look at that.
SSD installed!
Easy.
If you wanna use a SATA SSD or SATA hard drive,
this is something we're going to be installing later.
So, put this off to the side.
But, for now, we're actually in really good shape.
We have our CPU installed,
we have our ran installed, and we have our SSD installed.
Now, the next step is going to depend
on what kind of cooler you are using for your CPU.
So if you're using, like I said,
a more low to mid-range system,
you may wanna use a stock cooler.
And we're gonna show you how to do that.
But if you're using something
that's a little bit more advanced,
a little bit more power-hungry,
then you're probably going to want to install
a third-party cooler.
So, we're actually gonna show you how to do both right now.
But we're gonna start with the easy one,
which is the stock cooler that comes with your processor,
depending on if it actually comes with it.
So, a stock cooler is very simple to install.
So, this is the latest
Intel version. - Ooh! That looks nice!
- It's much heavier than the old ones.
And you'll see that it uses four pins.
So, this is super simple.
Now, before you install a stock cooler,
pay attention to the thermal paste on the bottom,
don't touch that.
But it's already applied for you,
so you don't have to do anything.
One thing before you drop it all the way down.
Once that thermal paste touches the CPU,
you don't really wanna wiggle it or pick it up again.
So, before you drop it all the way down,
just make sure that you're lined up.
It should be pretty straightforward.
And this is the easy part. Ready?
Grab this side, grab the opposite side,
and push until it does
(CPU cooler clicks) that.
- [Ken] Cross pattern.
- Cross pattern. And there we go.
So, with that, we have a cooler installed.
Now, you do have to hook up the fan,
which is gonna have a little lead
that's sort of wrapped around.
So, remember when I was talking about all the fan headers
that are all over the place?
So, this is what an actual fan connector looks like.
So, you can see that there are four pins on this
with the little notches.
Although again, some fans have three.
It's very simple to install.
Now, technically, you can put this
into any of the fan headers on the motherboard.
However, there's always going to be one
that is specifically meant for the CPU.
Just use that. It's what you're supposed to do.
I don't know, it technically makes a difference.
- It's labeled. - It is labeled.
So, you'll see "CPU_FAN1," as well as we have "PUMP_FAN1."
We're just gonna use CPU_FAN1.
It is super simple to install.
So, you see those little notches?
You just line it up and put it down.
If you try to put it in upside down...
Actually, I've never tried that before,
but it doesn't line up, so it doesn't matter.
If you're using a stock cooler,
that took no time and was very simple.
However, I'm gonna wager that a lot of you
are going to use a third-party cooler.
Now, before we get into it,
let me just say that every cooler installs differently,
unfortunately.
So, you're gonna wanna look at the manual
for your specific cooler.
But we are going to show you broadly
how to install AIO in this video.
Whoo!
Actually didn't realize it was white and silver.
That looks pretty nice.
So, we've got, obviously...
So, this is the radiator. That's where the hot comes out.
- Jesus Christ. (Austin laughs)
Did they really pay you for this?
"It's where the hot comes out."
- The heat is dissipated
using the aluminum fins of the radiator,
if you want Mr. Smart Speak.
And on top of that,
you've got your pump and block combination.
But we'll get into that in just a second.
There are some other things
that you will wanna pay attention to.
So, first and foremost, fans.
So, this uses two because it's a 240-millimeter radiator.
So, one 120 + 120 = 240.
We also have an ad absolute pile of hardware.
And this is the real differentiator
between different kinds of AIOs.
There's AMD hardware, there's Intel hardware.
There's a bunch of different ways you can install this.
I would highly recommend to find your instruction manual.
This is 100% what you should follow when installing an AIO.
Just sort out Intel versus AMD
in which socket type you're using.
The backplates always just line up here.
So, I've got the 1700.
So, you can see right here, it says, "LGA 1700."
If this is not included,
or some kind of 1700 bracket isn't included in your package,
if the instructions don't say anything about 1700
and you're building 12th Gen Intel,
maybe hit up the manufacturer,
usually, they'll send you a plate or bracket
or whatever you need free of charge.
So, we line it up and just push it in,
and you'll see that we have
all four screws coming backwards.
So, if you look on the backside,
what you see is this backplate is just gonna help support
and give our actual AIO something to screw into.
The big thing at this point, before you do really anything,
besides put that backplate on,
find all of the hardware you need and get rid of the rest,
because you'll be very confused
when you start using this one
when you needed this one, or whatever the case is.
Regardless of whether or not you're using an AIO,
the next step is to start putting your motherboard
inside of your case.
So, this is where the white case comes in handy,
because look how bright it is.
Look how easy it is to see
and not lose black screws in the black dark abyss.
So, we're gonna lay this flat.
You'll see that there are some fans
that are already installed inside the case.
So, I'm gonna go ahead
and just pull these cables out of the way,
'cause you don't want this to accidentally get
pinned underneath or something.
Just wrap that off to the side
and same thing for the front one.
From here, different cases
are gonna do things slightly differently.
So, thankfully, Lian Li has already done
a lot of our work for us.
So, if you take a look, there are a bunch of standoffs.
So, you see there's one, two, three, four, five, six,
seven, eight, nine, already pre-installed.
Now, what this means is that theoretically,
we can just take our motherboard,
line it up, and screw it in.
So, I'm gonna actually just make sure
that those are correctly aligned, which they should be.
Don't actually install it yet,
but you can just use this as a little test fit.
So, all of our standoffs are already installed.
Now, this is not always going to be the case.
Some cases don't have the standoffs installed
and some cases have them in different configurations.
Because this is an ATX board, that's pretty standard.
But if we're using a microATX board, for example,
we would need to move these standoffs.
So, that's fairly simple.
The case will come with hardware
that will give you a little tool
to be able to unscrew them with your screwdriver.
The big thing is these are brass
and they're gonna go in between your motherboard
and the actual steel of the case.
The only thing we wanna do
before installing our actual motherboard
is to pull that I/O shield out.
Now, to be fair,
some other boards actually have this pre-installed.
So, what you'll see is, right here,
these are all of our ports that are gonna be
sticking out the back of the case.
You'll see that, obviously, there's a bunch of gaps,
so that will line up something like that.
If there's already an I/O shield on that,
you can skip this step, but it is very simple.
Just line it up to make sure,
'cause, obviously, it will go in in either direction
and you don't wanna install it backwards.
So, we'll see that we want to put it like that.
Then all you need to do is walk over here
and install it here.
This is one of those things where you just push it
until it clicks into place.
So, one, two.
(panel clicking) Two.
There we go.
There we go. All right.
Also, I'm bleeding. I'm not sure how I did that.
- [Ken] Oh, my God! (laughing)
- I have blood on the motherboard now.
Pro-tip, don't bleed on your PC components.
Hello, friends.
Now that I have stopped the bleeding,
let us continue building a gaming PC.
So, when it comes to lining up the ports,
the main thing is to make sure
that everything is aligned correctly
and none of the little the metal pins
are actually in the way.
I've had it happen in the past,
where you get it all done, your system's ready to go,
then you go to plug in your ethernet
and you realize that there's a little piece of metal
that is blocking your actual cable from going in.
Just visually double-check every single the port,
maybe do it twice just to make sure
that everything is completely free and clear
before you actually screw the motherboard in.
So, with your motherboard lined up,
go into the bag of hardware that came with your case,
that you carefully put off to the side and didn't lose.
And you're gonna look for some screws to actually mount it.
It's really hard to do this without my index finger.
So, what you'll see inside the case screws
that come with your case,
there are a bunch of different types of screws.
If I can open it up,
I'll show you which one you're actually supposed to use!
I caught it.
I caught it. I caught it.
We're fine. We're fine.
So, you wanna grab a few of these screws,
in this case, we want, I believe nine,
and then you just wanna screw your motherboard into place.
So, just like I was showing you earlier,
you wanna do this in sort of a cross pattern.
So, I always like to start with the top right,
mostly because that's the one that's easiest to reach.
Screw it in pretty tight, not like all the way,
because sometimes you need to make some slight adjustments
and then we will grab another screw.
Go down to the bottom left.
Usually, once you get you or two screws into place,
the board's not going anywhere,
but before you tighten everything else down,
do one last double check.
Are all of your fans from your cables,
from your fans, your ports,
everything should still be free and clear.
If anything is penned, if anything doesn't look right,
now's the time to fix it.
'Cause trust me, once we install everything else,
you're not gonna wanna pull all apart
when you forgot you pinched a cable
or you covered up a port or something.
So, from here, we just wanna just get screwing.
So, with our motherboard installed,
this is the point in which the tutorial
is going to diverge, my friends.
So, if you are not installing an AIO,
please fast forward the video to this point.
Or unless you care about how to install an AIO.
If not, stick around.
So, there are a few different things
that are gonna change from here on out.
So, by removing the top little dust filter,
there is one screw on the very top that we're going to undo.
Now, this is going to open up a little bracket for us
where we can install the AIO
without having to, well, reach around.
Now, you can see here that we're gonna just
slide this back and drop it.
This is what we're gonna install our radiator too.
So, you can see it's gonna mount something like that.
Now, this makes it a lot easier
because that way, we can actually put this on,
install our fans, basically do everything,
and then we slide this into the case at the last second.
So, to install the AIO, the concept is simple.
So, this is our radiator, it doesn't matter what size.
Then, if you look to the bottom here,
we have our combination of our pump,
as well as our CPU block.
So, this is the part that actually touches the CPU.
And then it pumps the liquid through the radiator.
Most of the time you will mount the CPU like this
and you'll put the actual radiator
in the top part of the case.
And every case will tell you
what the configuration that it supports is.
Obviously, that's upside down,
but you can also theoretically do something
like this as well.
There's no right or wrong way to do this.
It does depend on your case, and again, where you have fans,
and ultimately, kind of what you think looks best.
The first place I like to start is by installing my fans.
Now, again, there's no wrong way of installing fans, really.
You wanna make sure they're uniform,
so you don't wanna have one facing one way
and one facing the other way.
That's a bad idea.
But the airflow direction is dependent
on how you wanna set up your configuration.
But the other thing is most fans these days are RGB,
which means that you might wanna prioritize
the fancy RGB showing
versus maybe sandwiching them on the top.
There's a lot of ways you can set this up.
We're gonna do the simple, straightforward way
that most people should do it,
which is gonna be a fan, radiator, exhaust on the top.
Keep it simple.
One thing you wanna keep in mind when mounting fans,
cables are a little bit long
and you wanna make sure that it's nice and neat.
So, if we're installing our radiator like this,
take the fans and make sure they're running out the back.
And what you'll see is there are cable channels
built in pretty much all cases on this side.
So, you can easily run the cables through the back,
and then in the back of the case,
you can connect everything as needed.
But for now, we're just gonna line these up.
Go into the hardware that comes with your AIO
and you wanna pick out some screws.
So, there are a couple of different types of screws.
So, there's a long one,
and I'll pull out a short one as well.
The long one is to mount it from the bottom side, right?
So, this screw goes all the way through.
- [Ken] Think about it has to go through the fan-
- Exactly. - And onto the radiator.
- Yes. Like before, you just wanna use a cross pattern.
So, just get your first two started.
You don't have to get them super, super tight or anything,
but just get it in there to start out with.
With the second fan, exact same thing.
You grab four more of these screws.
And if you're using a 360 or something,
you just keep adding fans until you fill up your radiator.
All right! Next!
Let's install our radiator into our case,
or more specifically in our case,
the little plate that goes inside our case.
So, this part, very simple.
So, you'll see that there are screw holes.
There's basically eight on the top.
So, there's basically four per side.
Just like the way that we installed the fans on this side,
we wanna install the plate here.
Because we have this plate,
this is very simple to do on the outside.
If you are directly attaching this to the case,
you still wanna do this next,
but basically, you have to support this
'cause otherwise, it's just gonna be dangling everywhere.
It's doable. It's fine.
It's just kind of annoying
'cause you're on one hand, holding and screwing,
and then you've got this thing that's in the way.
It's much, much nicer if you have something like this,
that you can do it outside the case for.
Oh, my God. I just cut myself.
Oh, I almost cut myself.
- [Jared] You need to see a therapist.
- Before we screw the whole thing down,
let's just make sure that it nicely fits.
So, I'll just slide this in like so.
If you look under here,
what you'll see is that we have space, right?
So, there's a little bit of a gap on the top of the board
where the fan is not getting in the way.
That's not always the case though.
Sometimes radiators might be a little too thick
or there's very little room to run cables.
So, I'll immediately say for our eight pins for our CPU,
that's gonna be kind of hard to reach.
So, this will be a time where if you see any cable up here,
they're gonna be really difficult to reach,
you may actually wanna run them now.
I'm not gonna do that for the purposes of this,
just to make sure this tutorial is clean
and easy to understand.
However, for you, who don't have to make a very detailed
57 minute tutorial on YouTube,
think about running any kind of cables on the top
before you mount this
because it will just be much, much easier to do it now,
instead of later,
when I'm gonna be cursing myself at reaching my finger
at an eight-millimeter gap to run a cable.
So, with our AIO properly installed,
with the tubing coming out the way
that it is gonna make our lives easiest,
something you should definitely think about
before you install 16 screws to mount this all in position,
next step, it is time to actually put this
directly to our CPU.
So, the nice thing about the Lian Li
is that it actually has like a rotating little bezel.
And also, it comes with this little magnetic piece,
if you don't want the Lian Li logo,
but we're just gonna leave that out.
Now, the thing to consider here
is, first of all, the mounting hardware
is gonna be different, right?
So, we're using some of these little black screws
and the little springy things,
definitely check the instruction manual,
every socket and every cooler
is gonna do this slightly differently.
So, for us, it's pretty simple.
There's just, I mean, really four screws
and four little like springy things to hold it in.
- [Ken] Sometimes it's like latches.
- Yeah, there's latches, all kinds of crazy.
Before we do this, there's a very important thing to do.
If you look at the back here,
some coolers have pre-applied thermal paste,
usually, it's fine.
Like the stock cooler, for example.
However, most high-end coolers and AIOs do not.
You have to apply it yourself.
So, first step, remove the plastic.
I like to do this at the very end,
right before about to install the cooler,
but remove the plastic.
You wanna make sure that the copper is touching
and not the plastic in between.
Not that I've ever forgotten to do that.
Also, just let it dangle there.
Don't actually let it touch anything
since you don't want it to get all dirty.
I'm gonna lay this case down,
just to get a little bit better, sort of, view of it.
So, basically, all coolers are gonna come
with some thermal paste.
It's usually not like the greatest paste in the world.
It's totally fine for us.
You don't wanna use a ton of thermal paste.
Now, generally speaking,
more is not gonna be a huge problem,
but you don't need to make a giant bit of goop.
So, the old way was to do just a little bit in the middle.
However, these newer processors have gotten big enough
that, actually, there's other ways to do it.
I've actually started doing the dot approach.
So, basically, do four little dots.
One, two. A little too big.
Three, four, and one in the middle.
Last thing before we put this on,
just like with the other stock cooler,
once you like touch that thermal paste with the copper here,
once you start to apply pressure,
you wanna make sure that that pressure stays.
So, don't put it on until you're really ready.
Grab our screws.
And so these are the ones that go for these small ones.
So, we're gonna get our backplate fully ready.
So, mount that like so.
Again, follow the instructions in the manual.
This is a very easy installation
on the Galahad, I will say, compared to most AIOs.
Our hardware is ready.
Now, it's actually pretty simple.
We're gonna take our block.
We're gonna line it up,
again, making sure that all of our cables
and tubing are in the orientation that we want.
Make sure that this fan cable,
which decided to hop across the room,
didn't actually get in our way.
We're gonna go ahead and line this up
and press it all the way down.
Once we do that, I'm gonna use a hand to hold this down
and start screwing with our little springy bits.
One, two, three, four.
And I'm gonna push it all the way down. Okay?
Now, at this point, this hand is not gonna move,
and I'm gonna start using my other hand
to screw it in place.
We definitely recommend putting your PC
on its side for this, it's gonna make it a lot easier.
No, with these, don't get them super tight, right?
So, I'm just gonna get that somewhat tight there.
And I'm gonna switch over.
And I'm again, I'm gonna do this in a cross path pattern.
I've said cross pattern a lot for this tutorial.
I'll tell you, the CPU
is the most important place to do this.
You want to make sure there's even pressure
on that thermal paste
to make sure that it spreads out nice and evenly.
That's about on there as tight
as I wanna do with finger tight.
So, now, I'm gonna grab the screwdriver
and tighten them down again in a cross pattern.
And there we go! Congratulations.
You've got yourself an AIO installed,
short of the cables, which we're gonna deal with later.
Now, it is time to install the 2.5-inch SSD.
Now, this is optional.
You may or may actually have any 2.5 or 3.5-inch SSDs,
hard drives, optical drives, what have you.
But while they're not as simple as that M.2 drive,
they're very simple to install.
So, the 2.5-inch form factor
is typically what you find in SSD.
A hard drive is usually gonna be like a 3.5.
It's just bigger and thicker.
But the most important things
are to look at the connectors on the end.
So, they're two here.
One is data. That is the smaller one.
That is what connects from here to the motherboard
for the actual data.
The larger one is the power.
That goes to your power supply,
which you can see is right here.
The main things to keep in mind here,
if you can see, especially on this side,
they're both kind of notched,
so they both have this little downward bit on the end.
That means that it only goes in one way,
again, like most cables when it comes to building a PC.
So, we're gonna rotate this around to the back.
You'll see here if I get all these cables outta the way,
we have a couple of 2.5-inch drive caddies, right?
So, this is the easiest way to do it.
Now, if I was gonna install a hard drive,
if you look down here,
I would put it into one of these 3.5-inch drive caddies.
It's really a little bit more down
to where you want to install drives,
where you wanna run cables and stuff,
but this, nice and simple, it'll be hidden on the back.
And we'll give ourselves that additional two terabytes
of still very fast, SSD storage.
These typically just attach once you take the screw off.
(caddie clunks)
You just pull them up.
Now, here, one thing you wanna pay attention to
is the orientation.
So, you wanna make sure that you have easy access
to the SATA power and data.
So, I'm gonna look at this for a second.
I think it'll make sense to do it facing down,
and then we'll run our cables like this.
and then right up to the bottom.
Now, to install this,
you're gonna use the screws that come with your case.
So, you'll see that we have a couple
of these very small ones.
And it's very simple.
Like always, we just wanna line up each of our holes
and connect it.
Just make sure this is firmly attached,
regardless of it's an SSD or a hard drive or whatever.
Hard drives, just usually, are a little bit more important
because they're moving components.
So, if they're not mounted correctly,
you may get vibrations and whatnot,
but SSDs are very straightforward.
The easy way to do it is to just
line this right back up with where we found it.
Should kind of slot in.
There we go! All right!
So, now I will take the screw and mount that back up.
And we've got our SSD installed,
but, of course, we need to run our cables for it.
So, this is the point
where it's gonna be easiest to do that.
So, the first thing I'm gonna do is install the power cable.
So, locate one of the SATA power cables
from your power supply.
I've picked this one because it's probably gonna be
a little bit easier to fold that cable over.
And then we're gonna install that on the larger connector.
So, it only goes in one way.
And unlike the data which clicks, the power doesn't click.
So, you just kind of push it in
until it feels like it's flush.
And there we go. We've got power.
The next step is to grab one of these SATA cables
that came with our motherboard,
and we're gonna run that as well.
And then you'll hear it
(cable clicks)
click into place.
Now, the last thing we need to do to install this SSD
is to run this end of the SATA cable to our motherboard.
We'll run that vaguely where it needs to be.
It's easy enough to unplug one of these cables later
if we realize it's not the cleanest run.
Come around to the front side
and you see our SATA cable is right here.
All right, now we just wanna connect this
to one of the SATA ports on our motherboard.
They are actually usually numbered,
so you wanna plug it into one then two then three then four,
et cetera, et cetera.
But, I'll be real,
I don't think it makes much of a difference.
So, you can see, there we go. We have our SATA cable.
And importantly, it's nice and neat from the front,
so it doesn't look like it's super messy.
And there you go, you've got it yourself,
an SSD or a hard drive installed.
You probably don't need to do this.
You could probably just get away with an M.2 SSD,
which takes all of five seconds to install.
But if you ever do wanna install a hard drive
or a regular SSD, that is how you do it.
From here, it is time to, well,
really start getting everything buttoned up.
You might notice that there's one
very large component missing, the graphics card.
It's very tempting to install the graphics card right now.
Don't fall for the trap.
I mean, you can technically do it,
but we have all the space, all this room for activities.
Let's start running some cables,
because, if we don't do it right now,
we're gonna have to reach around our graphics card
and it's super annoying.
Pro-tip.
First thing I always like to stay art with,
if you come around to the back to your power supply,
is the big guy, the 20+4 pin.
So, you can see, it is the largest longest connector here.
Because it's got the clip,
it is only going to install one way.
This is where I always like to start
because as you can see, it's just a thick cable.
I like to put this in first
and then run the other smaller cables around it.
If you try to do other stuff, and then this later,
sometimes it just gets in the way,
but because this is our first one,
we can run it underneath pretty much everything.
Now, this always plugs into the right side of the board.
So, if you look at it from the side here,
we wanna run it to right this point.
So, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna thread this through,
rotate it around, and we can and plug it in.
So, the clip is gonna be always on the outside.
So, just keep that in mind.
It's a little dark, I'm sure, but push it until it clicks.
There we go.
Now, at this point, we can deal with this later,
but you usually can just kind of tuck
some of the excess cable outta the way.
But we won't worry about that.
That is the most important cable,
because that is what powers all the stuff.
But we also need to plug in our CPU power,
which also comes from our motherboard.
So, it is a 4+4 pin.
Depending on your motherboard and your power supply,
you may have a four-pin, you may have a 4+4,
or you may even have two 4+4s.
Depends on the setup.
You don't really need more than the 4+4, usually.
So, we're going to run this to the top left of the board.
So, again, this is one of the thicker cables,
so I'm gonna run this underneath.
This case actually gives us
a pretty generous amount of room.
So, we're just gonna tuck that here, run it up here.
Now, I have an AIO in this system.
If I was doing this in a way
that was best for my own sanity,
I would've run this cable before installing the AIO,
but I'm gonna show you how to do it.
'Cause, generally speaking, if you don't do the AIO,
this is the point where you would do it.
It's kind of tight back here,
but you can see our 4+4 is in.
What we're gonna do is we're gonna plug that
into one of these on the board.
Typically it doesn't matter
if you only have one set of cables from your power supply
and two on your motherboard.
You may wanna check the manual to make sure,
but typically speaking, you can plug it into either one.
And because these have little clips on the side
it is only going to go in one way.
So, I'm gonna rotate it around,
and wish that I would've done this 20 minutes ago
when I was installing the AIO.
Next up, I like to install our fans,
or specifically, plug them in.
So, the nice thing about this board,
it has a lot of fan headers.
So, traditionally, when you have
three, four, five fans in a case, you'll need to use hubs.
And a lot of times they actually come with hubs.
But if you can plug everything
directly into the motherboard,
it makes controlling it easier
and there's just less extra cables and nonsense to plug in.
So, for our case fans, it's very simple,
plug them into whichever headers are closest.
So, if you're installing an air cooler, it's really simple.
You just plug that in directly to CPU_FAN.
However, if you're using an AIO,
you're probably gonna have one of these.
It's a three-pin that's coming directly off the pump.
And that is gonna go to usually it's called PUMP_FAN,
or sometimes it's called CPU_OPT,
but you just wanna plug that into here.
So, we have two different fans coming off of our AIO.
Now, you can plug these in independently, but you shouldn't.
Instead, it comes with this little adapter.
So, basically, we will plug the two into one.
And just like all other fan headers,
there's a little notch that goes in one way.
And then this will go into the CPU slot on the motherboard,
which means that the motherboard can control
when the fans need to be ramped up or ramped down.
Unfortunately, the black and the white cables
look a little bit strange,
but all of this is gonna be hidden in the back
so it doesn't matter.
And again, it's a little hard to reach,
but it's not too bad.
And there you go.
All four fans inside the system are now connected.
We'll cable manage later,
but the most important thing for now,
is to make sure that everything works.
So, at this point, it might be tempting
to start getting your zip ties out and cleaning things up.
Do not do that.
Not only is that unlucky,
but also you still may need to make some changes.
We don't know this all works.
Leave your cables mostly kind of everywhere for the moment.
Make sure the system actually works.
And then, at that point, we will start going through
and actually zip-tying things.
Trust me when I say don't get too eager.
You might feel confident, you might feel great.
There's always a chance that you forgot something,
you need to run something else, something's not working.
Let's just leave it as is for now.
Working our way down,
let's pick up some of the front panel connectors.
So, on this case, it's actually very simple.
So, we have our USB 3.0
for the couple USB ports on the top,
and we have our audio, as well as our power LED
and our power switch.
I'm gonna start out with the big one,
which is the USB 3.0 header.
This connector is bad. I don't like it.
Not only is it chunky,
you have a little notch so it will only go in one way.
But make sure that you've got this in the correct location.
I have broken a number of these in the past
because when you go to pull them out,
I'm not gonna show you 'cause I don't wanna break it,
it's just really easy to break pins
or just pull the entire plastic sleeve out.
It's a bad design. The USB-C is better.
USB 2.0 is better. It's just this guy.
But, yeah, it is what it is.
Now, this board actually gives us two options,
which is pretty unusual.
We actually can plug this in on one of two different areas.
But if you see right here,
we've got one of our headers on this side,
which is nice and neat.
So, make sure, again, that you've got it correctly located
'cause you don't ever wanna unplug this if you can avoid it.
Lot of little pins, very easy to break,
but once we line it up correctly...
There we go.
Now we have our USB up and running.
Next, let's grab our front panel connectors
and our audio jack.
If they're all side by side, this would be really easy,
but we actually need to separate these ourselves.
Which is fine, but you wanna make sure you do that first.
So, I'm gonna grab our audio. This is the HD audio.
This is what you're gonna have run your microphone,
your headphones.
And what you'll see about this
is that it looks very similar to the USB 2.0,
except it has the pin knocked out in a different way.
But it'll always say, "HD audio."
I'm gonna run this through this little hole in the case
all the way on the bottom left.
And you'll see that you usually the audio
is all the way to the bottom left of the board.
So, if you wanna see right here,
it is the far left connector.
So, it's fairly easy to spot
and it should slide right into place.
If it's not sliding in right to place
with any of these connectors, definitely double-check
that they are in the correct locations.
It's easy to be like, "Oh! It's not working!"
You might just have it upside down.
Next step, you need to install your front panel connectors.
Now, this is the fiddliest part of the whole build.
Now, sometimes, there'll be a little diagram on the board,
but usually, you'll have to dive into the manual.
Just essentially line up each of the individual pins
from the case to your front panel connectors,
keeping in mind that if you look on the back,
there's a little arrow that denotes the positive.
So, if ever a question, you can flip it around.
Don't worry if you get something wrong,
you could just rotate it around.
But, if say you plugged your power button in upside down,
your system won't turn on, you might freak out,
and you forgot to flip a pin.
Very simple. Just have patience and double-check your work.
We're looking pretty good now.
The last thing we need to do
before installing our graphics card is to hook up our RGB.
Now, this is gonna vary based on every single system,
so I'm not gonna go into depth on it.
Check your instruction manual
for whatever fine OEM decides to give you
a giant pile of cables/hubs or whatever to make it work.
Thankfully, though, for this, we can just hook it up
with one single connector,
and then we will connect it to the motherboard
using this guy.
Now comes the fun part!
Installing our graphics card.
You'll see a bunch of display-outs here. Use these.
I can't tell you how many times people have messaged me
saying that their graphics card
or their system is running bad or whatever,
because they plugged into the HDMI
or the DisplayPort on the motherboard instead.
Don't do that. That's not the way to do it.
Plug into your graphics card, which will be down here.
So, I've taken the liberty of removing our PCI slot covers.
And so, for this, what you'll want to do,
is if you come around, look for that top PCI slot.
So, you'll see here that it's actually our second slot
because the first one is where we installed our SSD, right?
So, instead of removing that top slot,
we're gonna remove slot number two and three.
Usually, that's what you'll find on most boards,
but just make sure
when you start to line up your graphics card in the slot,
it will actually line up in the correct orientation.
Now, most cases will let you slide it directly in,
however, some cases, including this Lian Li,
mean that you have to do a little bit of extra work,
mostly by removing this plate right here.
So, this plate is what holds your PCI slot covers in place.
So, all we need to do is just unscrew this real quick,
slide it out the way
so that when we go to install a graphics card,
it has some space.
Look at that.
Installing a graphics card is dead simple.
So, you'll see that there are a bunch
of gold connectors here, for power as well as for data,
they will line up only one way.
So, once you line them up correctly,
just give it some nice sort of force
until it clicks into place.
(graphics card clicks)
Boom! Look at that!
Now, we'll come back around to this side.
We will grab our screws from our case, which are right here.
Then you wanna screw your graphics card into place.
Okay. That's in there nice and firmly.
We'll tighten up this little plate
to make sure that everything doesn't slide anywhere.
And next, we just need to plug our graphics card in.
I promise you, once you've gotten this part,
we are pretty much home free.
This is the very, very easy part of this build.
So, we'll come around back.
We'll grab our PCIe connectors.
These are red, which is very helpful to be able to spot,
but all we need do is route these through
the back of the case.
So, this graphics card needs an eight, plus a six-pin.
So, these are 6+2,
so you can either put them together for the eight
or put them apart for this six.
So, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna do
the outside one as our eight.
And then we just line them up, click them into place.
And then I will take the second one,
ignoring that extra pin, it doesn't really matter
since we don't need it for this particular build,
line up like this, and connect it.
Unfortunately, that may mean that it might not be
the best-looking cable solution in the world,
but, yeah, it works.
No, my friends, is the best part.
It's time to see if the build works
or if you need to go back
and check all your cables and connections.
So, just before we start,
make sure that your power supply is plugged in,
make sure that it is turned on,
and make sure you have at least a keyboard,
ideally, a mouse, as well as a monitor, all connected.
And plug it into your graphics card for the HDMI
or the DisplayPort, not the motherboard.
Once you've done that,
we should be good to press the power button
and cross our fingers, that are not bleeding.
(button clicks)
Excellent. Okay.
So, first thing to do,
check all of your fans that are spinning.
So, we have one, two, three, four spinning.
The graphics card fans will sometimes spin,
although if they don't spin that's actually okay.
A lot of graphics cards, especially the modern ones,
don't have their graphics card's fans spinning 24/7.
So, next up, be patient. Give it about a minute or so.
And ideally, on this display,
it will fire up with something.
If not, then we start troubleshooting.
But we'll just...
I'm sure we got it.
Oh, there we go.
And the monitor's coming up. Perfect.
So, we'll hit F1.
There we go. Excellent!
All right! That is exactly what we wanna see.
So, this is the BIOS,
which means that everything is showing up correctly.
We have our 12th Gen Core i7 12700K.
We have 65.5 gigs of RAM. That's fine.
We have our XMP. Everything is showing up correctly.
I'll hop into storage real quick and see.
We have not only SSD, our 980 PRO,
but, also, our 870 as well.
Congratulations, friends.
If you see this,
you have successfully built yourself a gaming PC.
But, unlike our normal tutorials, it's not done yet
because we still have a few more things to go over.
While we're in the BIOS, let me show you a couple of things
that are gonna be very important
as you use your PC and tweak it.
First and foremost, you might wanna update your BIOS.
So, you see, for us, our BIOS date is the E7D25IMS,
which is from September of 2021.
That's old! So, we'll probably want to update that.
Now, every motherboard
has a slightly different way of doing this.
For us, we would use M-FLASH,
which I'm not gonna do at the moment.
But usually, you'll just go on the manufacturer's website,
download the update file,
put it on a correctly formatted SSD or USB or whatever,
plug it in, and then you'll be able to update the BIOS
from inside the BIOS.
Very important.
Usually, especially with these 12th Gen boards,
you'll want to update the BIOS pretty quickly.
Outside of that, there are a couple of other things
you'll probably wanna pay attention to,
XMP being one of them.
XMP is essentially
a pre-overclocked profile for your memory.
So, for us, it's actually already set to 4,800 MHz,
but, generally speaking, you'll want to switch
between one of the XMP profiles.
For the exact details,
you can check it out in the motherboard manual
or anything like that,
but you'll usually wanna turn on XMP,
or DOCP if you're running an AMD processor.
We don't have an operating system installed,
which is where you're gonna want a copy of Windows.
Whether it be Windows 10, Windows 11,
or, of course, you could run Linux as well.
But, regardless, you need to get it on here somehow.
Now, if you buy a copy of Windows like this,
which has a USB key inside,
you just plug it in and you can install it that way.
Also, you can, if you have the digital code
or you have a DVD,
there's a tool online that Microsoft provide,
that allow you to create a USB,
which is what I always like to do
because it's always up to date, a Windows USB flash drive.
You plug it in. I brought it.
Don't you...
Jared.
I was prepared today.
I have a fully up-to-date Windows flash drive here.
And this is fully legal because what you really need
is the actual key that comes with this.
Plug this into our system.
And then you'll wanna make sure
that the boot priority is set correctly.
So, right now, it's gonna try
to boot off of one of our SSDs,
but there's no operating system.
Usually, when that's the case,
it'll work its way down to the USB hard disk,
but I'm gonna manually just move that up from here.
So, there, hit F10.
We're gonna hit "Enable."
And theoretically it will now
boot off of our Windows USB install,
and then we can actually get everything prepped and ready.
Easy! Congratulations.
You're a PC wizard, Harry.
So, after you go through
the very straightforward Windows prompts
and select the correct drive to install
Windows 10 or Windows 11 on, you will land on the desktop.
Now, the first thing you should do
is to download the regular Microsoft Windows updates.
It'll pull a lot of the stuff you need.
I would also highly recommend heading over
to your motherboard manufacturer's website.
So, in this case, we would go to MSI's site
and download the specific drivers for your motherboard.
Things like your ethernet drivers, your chipsets drivers,
that kind of stuff.
- [Ken] You're doing RGB, it'll also have those as well.
- Absolutely.
You wanna grab most of the stuff from the site,
all the utilities, and whatnot that you actually need.
Maybe not some of the ones that you don't.
On top of that, you definitely wanna
download your graphics drivers.
So, whether it's AMD or NVIDIA,
download the latest driver for your card
and then get it installed here.
On top of that, if you're at your
friendly local Micro Center,
you may also wanna pick up one of these,
a Microsoft 365 license,
which'll you give you tons of stuff,
including Office, Word, a terabyte of cloud storage,
that kind of stuff.
You can get all that stuff activated
alongside your Windows license.
Speaking of Windows licenses,
I recommend if you are running a 12th Gen Intel processor,
to use Windows 11.
You can buy a Windows 10 license and update it,
It's totally fine.
In fact, it's easier to find
Windows 10 keys than Windows 11,
but they work the same way regardless.
The reason for that is that Windows 11
has additional features built-in
specifically for these 12th Gen Intel CPUs,
that include better thread directing
for the efficiency and the performance cores.
It'll totally work on Windows 10, 100%
But, for me, I recommend going with Windows 11
to get the absolute most of the efficiency
and specifically the responsiveness
out of your 12th generation Intel Core processor.
But with that, my friends,
you've successfully built yourself a gaming PC.
Spent some time tweaking your RGB,
doing your cable management,
getting the whole system buttoned-up,
let it finish downloading all the updates.
But from here, congratulations.
If you found this tutorial helpful,
definitely be sure to subscribe to the channel.
And of course, if you'd like to check out
any of the components we used,
as well as all the various different things you can find
at your very conveniently placed Micro Centers
that are hopefully very close to your house,
the links will all be in the description below.
Thank you very much for watching,
and I will see you again for the next one.
And I'll see you again next year for our 2023 PC tutorial,
where we're going to be building inside of a tank.