So you've built your first pc nice or maybe you've built dozens of PCs by this point
also nice you know what your pc is pretty much useless before setting a few things up including
installing an operating system and in this short or maybe not so short video we'll show you how to
do exactly that and while we're at it i'm also going to show you how you can activate windows
for a little over 10 us dollars thanks to our sponsor vip scd key now assuming you've built
your pc correctly everything should fire up for the first time without issue you should see all of
your LEDs all of your fans should turn save maybe the graphics card if it's idle and that's how you
know that nothing is inherently broken well maybe something's still broken but at least you know
things are receiving power so your power supply is not screwed up anyway you'll probably be prompted
into your bios for the first time if you don't have an operating system already installed and
while we're in here we can optimize performance and sound but we'll circle back to this once we're
ready to install windows now despite what you'll hear Microsoft windows is by far the most popular
operating system for desktop and laptop computers not only is it relatively attainable and easy to
set up with most hardware it also sports a widely understood user interface with a very shallow
learning curve relatively speaking windows 8 is kind of the only exception but windows 8
was like mega horrible so i you know exception but according to stat counter windows 10 has blown up
as the most popular operating system for desktop computers on the planet surpassing windows 7
as of january 2018 and becoming the os of choice for 77 of windows users in 2020
so we'll be showing you how to install the latest version of windows 10 in this video to get started
you'll need access to another computer with a usb port and internet access i know it seems
a bit redundant to need a second computer to set your first computer up but that's just how it is
so maybe a laptop or something like a school computer those are fairly easy to access
from there click on the link in this video description titled windows media creation tool
this link will take you to microsoft.com you can click the blue download tool now button and then
save that file i'd like to save things like that just to my desktop because i know where they go
then you want to open it allow it to set a few things up and accept the license terms now again
wait a few seconds then select the create installation media the recommended settings
should be fine click next then ensure that the usb flash drive option is selected then click
next again and at this point you'll want a thumb drive preferably eight gigs or higher this is a
cheap 16 gig drive from team group and i've used it for dozens of windows installs but we'll assume
for the sake of demonstration that nothing is currently on it connect it to your system and
click the blue refresh drive list button at this point you should be able to see the flash drive
if you don't see it you probably need to reformat it fat32 is the way to go go ahead and select it
and click next now the tool will begin downloading windows 10 and installing files on the drive which
will take several minutes and by the time it does finish you should see this window here confirming
that the flash drive is ready to use select finish safely remove the thumb drive and connect it into
a usb port at the back of your freshly built pc now some motherboards will automatically boot
into the thumb drive if they can detect any other connected boot device but just for good measure
i like to hop into my bios and at this point maybe tweak a few things including boot order
that's one of the things we're definitely going to want to make sure is correct so when you push
your computer's power button and it starts up for the first time just start spamming the delete key
when the splash page pops up and you should very quickly boot into something that looks like this
here this is your bios if you're new to the bios uh yeah bios meet viewer from here you can confirm
that your storage drives are detected in the boot tab and select our usb drive as our primary boot
device for now you can calibrate your fan curves in the hardware monitor tab by choosing from
any of these presets or manually defining an rpm range for a given cpu temperature i also recommend
enabling xmp profile assuming your cpu doesn't activate finicky when it is enabled and this
can usually be done via the main tab it will give your system a bit of added performance especially
in ryzen's case and will push your ram to rated frequencies well above the 2133 base for ddr4
keep in mind that this ui and the accompanying nomenclature will vary between motherboard vendors
but the general points i'm outlining here should still stand next let's click save and exit confirm
our choices and click again to reboot now at this point you should see something similar to
this here followed by a bluish screen and a windows install prompt select next and
then the install now button now at this point you'll be prompted to enter an activation key
i want to stress though that it is not required and you could totally click this button here
if you prefer to enter one later now you don't even need to enter one at all windows will still
run just fine but if you don't want to see an activation watermark and you don't want to pay
outrageous sums of cash for a retail key consider using an OEM Key from our sponsor in this video
scdkey these oem keys are considerably cheaper and will activate your windows version without a hitch
people seem to occasionally doubt the validity of these but i've used them for years without
issue i wouldn't promote something that didn't work and many others have told me that they're
they're thankful that they were introduced to the sponsor you can buy keys via the link in
this video description can be the top link and you can use a secure payment method like paypal
and use this video's unique offer code this one's important skgs for a 25 discount that's the lowest
price of the year for this OEM key then input said key into this box here this will activate
the applicable windows 10 version once you've established an internet connection at which
point you may proceed with the os install accept the license terms then select the custom install
option this will list all available storage drives connected to your pc in our case we only have one
but it has multiple partitions because it was it previously had a windows operating system on it so
i'm going to delete each of these to retain a fully unallocated volume onto which i can
install windows if your storage drive is brand new it should already look something like this
and if you have multiple drives make sure you select the one you want as your primary boot
device before it moving forward you don't want to install this on like a super slow
hard disk drive say this will typically be the fastest drive in your system that you select when
the unallocated volume is highlighted click next and at this point windows 10 will begin installing
this could take several minutes depending on the speeds of both the drives connected to your system
as well as the ports being used but once things wrap up your system should automatically reboot
you'll see your post page yet again maybe like an Asus or gigabyte logo something like that
and then a few spinning circles when you see this that's a good sign things will get ready
for a few minutes and you may notice a reboot or two do not interrupt this process finally
you'll see this screen here running through these prompts is pretty self-explanatory i'm not gonna
you know hold your hand through these but once you've finished you should end up on your a nice
empty desktop by the way if you haven't already activated you can always retroactively do so by
hopping into settings clicking this button here then this button here and entering your product
key if the key is for a different version of windows you'll be prompted to update the
os but this shouldn't harm any of your files so that's it that's it's really that simple i mean
sure it's a bit time consuming but uh navigating through the steps is something that you really
shouldn't be afraid of it's not a reason why you shouldn't jump into building your first pc
so hopefully if you're new to pc building this video has clarified any concerns you've had and
if none of this is news to you then i especially appreciate you watching this far end of the video
nothing like a quick refresher i'd again like to thank our video sponsor scd keys for supporting us
on this one and be sure to check out their oem windows keys via the top link in this video's
description and remember don't forget to use our offer code skgs for 25 off of that oem key
if you guys enjoyed this one or found it helpful consider giving it a thumbs up i would appreciate
that click that subscribe button if you haven't already and i'll catch you in the next one my
name is greg thanks for learning with me people seem to occasionally doubt the validity people
people seem to occasionally people seem to occasionally doubt the validity of these
people seem to occasionally doubt the validity of these i've had to tell so select the unallocated
so select the amount select the allocated so select the analogy when the unallocated
volume is highlighted click next when the unallocated volume is highlighted click next