Hey guys this is Austin and today I’m here with a tutorial showing you how to build my
latest gaming PC build, the Boson. Building the Boson is a great way to learn how to get
into building PCs as it doesn’t get much easier than this. Get a decent sized workspace,
grab yourself a Phillips screwdriver and you’re ready to jump right in. Start by unscrewing
the thumbscrews on the back of the case, two on each side. Pop off the rear side panel
as well as the one up front and you’ll have full access to the case. It comes with a fair
few things already installed and wired like the fans, front panel connectors as well as
the power supply but we do have to do some prep work before installing the parts. Unwrap
the power cable and hardware from inside the case and inside the bag of hardware pull out
six of these small brass standoffs. These will go in the top two points on the case
and the four holes directly below, just screw them in finger tight until you’ve got all
six in. This is how we’ll install the motherboard a bit later on. Before we do though let’s
prepare the board. It’s inside a static resistant bag so be gentle when removing it,
try not to touch the actual circuit board if you can and set it down on top of the motherboard
box while we work on it. It can be a bit intimidating but there are only a few things you need to
focus on. In the center you’ll find the gray processor socket which is where we’ll
be installing the APU. Off to the side of that are the DIMM slots for installing the
RAM. Wedged behind the DIMM slots is the 20+4 pin connector which is the main power for
the motherboard from the power supply. Up in the corner of the board is the 4 pin CPU
power connector which is also connected to the power supply. Right below the processor
socket are a pair of SATA ports for connecting hard drives or SSDs. On the bottom right of
the board you’ll find a series of small gold pins, these are for wiring up all of
the front panel connectors. Last but definitely not least is the PCI Express slot which runs
across the middle of the board, this is where you install the graphics card. Now grab your
APU, in this case the Athlon 5350. Inside you’ll find the APU itself as well as the
heatsink with fan already installed. Gently take the Athlon out of it’s plastic making
sure you only handle it by the edges. Around back you’ll see lots of little pins, these
are fragile and bending one is going to cause you a major headache. Come back over to the
socket on the motherboard and pull back the retention arm. If you look closely there’s
a small gold arrow on the edge of the APU, this lines up with a matching arrow on the
socket to show you which way everything should be aligned. Simply drop the Athlon into the
socket, it should rest easily in place without putting any pressure on it. There’s not
much more to it than that, just push the retention arm back down until it clicks into place and
you’ve got your APU installed. Next we’ve got the heatsink, if you flip it over you’ll
see the preapplied thermal paste. Also included in the box is the mounting hardware as for
this socket you’ve got to use a slightly different install method than usual. Slide
the pegs through the two holes on each corner of the motherboard socket and then firmly
place the heatsink onto the APU using the pegs as guides. This will spread the thermal
paste so wiggling the heatsink around just a bit isn’t a bad idea. Take the other half
of the mounting hardware and clip both pieces onto the pegs, making sure the heatsink is
properly aligned. Now grab the 4 pin connector from the fan and plug it into the CPU fan
header on the motherboard, a notch will only let you plug it in one way. There you go,
the APU is ready to go! The next step is installing the RAM which in this case is a single DIMM
of Crucial Ballistix Sport memory. This is simple to do, just look for a notch about
two thirds of the way along the gold pins on the bottom. This lines up with a corresponding
notch on the motherboard, just slide it into place until both clips snap and that's it.
Before installing the motherboard you’ll need to pop in the I/O shield that it comes
with. Make sure you line this up with the two round ports on top and pop it into place,
this can be a bit of a pain so feel free to use some force to make sure it snaps in. Now
it’s time to start installing hardware in our case! Flip the case on it’s side and
lower the assembled motherboard onto the standoffs we installed earlier, making sure that the
ports line up with the I/O shield and that all of the standoffs are visible through the
screw holes on the board. At this point go back to the bag of hardware that came with
the case and pull out six of these larger screws. It’s as simple as lightly screwing
the board in one by one, starting on one corner and then going to the opposite corner and
working your way around, double checking everything is lined up properly along the way. Once everything
is in and looking good come back around and tighten each screw down to make sure the board
is nice and secure. Next up we’ve got to install our hard drive. It’s simple enough
to do for this build, slide it into one of the free 3.5 inch bays up front until the
screw holes line up with the mounts in the case. Using the same type of screws we used
to install the motherboard screw the hard drive in with two screws on each side. Make
sure these are fairly tight to keep any vibrations to a minimum. We also need to install our
graphics card. This is a low profile single slot card which is super easy to get up and
running. Come around to the back of the case and you’ll need to pull out the top PCI
cover. You’ll have to bend it backward to pop it out so be careful. Then just line up
the graphics card with the open PCI cover and corresponding slot on the motherboard,
giving it just enough pressure to clip into place. Using yet another screw like for the
hard drive and motherboard attach the metal graphics card bracket and you’ve got everything
in the case! Now comes the fun part, wiring. First up grab the large 20+4 pin lead from
the power supply. This goes into the connector on the motherboard behind the memory and can
be a bit stiff, don’t be afraid to give it a little force to click it into place.
You should also see a 4+4 pin cable, just pop these apart as we only need a single 4
pin for the build. This goes in on the top left of the motherboard, again just push it
in until it clicks into place. Next you should find these long, thin cables which are for
powering SATA devices. They’re notched on one end so they only go in one way. Plug one
of these into the left connector on your hard drive, unlike most cables it won’t click
into place so just make sure it’s fully seated. Finally you’ll see a couple of these
larger Molex cables from the power supply. The front 120 milimeter fan has a normal 3
pin cable however the motherboard only has two fan headers so instead connect it using
the Molex lead. While we’re at it we can connect the rear fan which attaches directly
to the 4 pin connector on the motherboard. Next up we have the bundle of cables from
the front panel. These aren’t difficult but they can be a bit annoying to deal with.
Start with the USB cable which has a single pin knocked out to make sure you can’t put
it in backwards. Plug it into the USB 1 connector on the bottom of the motherboard. Next grab
the cable with the AC 97 and HD audio labels, these are for your audio jacks so ignore the
AC 97 lead and plug the HD audio in on the bottom left corner of the board, again there’s
a missing pin on the connector so it only goes in one way. You’ll also see a few smaller
cables, these are for things like the power button and front LEDs and go into the white
connectors on the bottom right of the motherboard which marks what goes where. It’s best to
work from the bottom up, keeping in mind that the colored wires are positive and the white
wires are negative. Don’t worry too much about getting something wrong here, worst
case you have to double check the connections. Come back to the bag of hardware you got with
the case and grab your case speaker. This is optional but by plugging it in beside your
front panel connectors you’ll be able to hear a warning tone if something goes wrong
which can be helpful for troubleshooting problems later on. The last thing we’ve got to wire
up is the hard drive using a SATA data cable that comes with the motherboard. Plug one
end into a SATA port on the board, they only go in one way and will click into place. Then
run the other end to the hard drive and snap it in, it’s as easy as that. Now it’s
time to fire the Boson up and make sure everything works. Plug the power cable into the back
of the supply and hit the power button. It should come right to life, if not double check
that the power supply is on and that all of your wiring is correct. You should see all
of the fans in the system spinning and video on your monitor. It will likely ask you to
insert boot media, just restart the PC and hit the Delete key to enter the BIOS. Here
you should see some info on the APU, memory and clock speeds, if everything looks good
here we’re almost done. Turn the Boson back off, unplug it and now it’s time to do a
little cable management. Grab some cable ties and tidy up as much of the wiring as you can.
All that’s left now is to install Windows. It’s straightforward but if you need a tutorial
you can check out my 2014 build guide where I go over it along with things like drivers.
Congratulations, you’ve built yourself a gaming computer! If you enjoyed definitely
be sure to subscribe to the channel for lots more videos like this and I will catch you
guys in the next one!