Terry
i play games sometimes
In the Article “A Powerful Build For Around $1000” a few weeks go. James goes over the parts you need for an amazing performing machine for gaming. Now you have boxes everywhere because instead of getting the guy at Canada Computers to build your shiny new PC for you. You decide you want to build it yourself. There’s only one problem. You’ve never built a computer before. That’s why I’m here, today I’ll walk you through the step-by-step PC build guide.
Next taking the sticks of RAM out of its packaging and installing them on your board. Being a simple process, A few hiccups you may run into is what slot or the orientation to put them into. You might think it won’t don’t matter too much. But to take advantage of the performance, you’ll want to pay a little more attention here. On the board, there will be either 4 or 2 slots depending on your board that ram will go into. If you have 4 there will be a diagram on the board itself alternatively you can also reference your user manual.
In our case. Haha, get it? Case… because all of our parts are going in a… okay never mind, anyway moving on. Most boards will stagger the RAM where one will be installed with a one slot gap between them, to take advantage of dual-channel performance. Now if you look at the RAM you’ll notice that there are cutouts about halfway in the length of the stick. The reason for this is that you won’t install an incompatible stick of ram on your motherboard. Here we have DDR4 and it will only install in a board that’s compatible with DDR4. DDR4 and DDR3 are not backwards compatible with older or newer boards.
Pulling the tabs back on either side of the RAM slots you can now push the RAM sticks down into the slots once you have the cutouts aligned. Here it will require a decent amount of force. Push the RAM into the slot till you hear both tabs click letting you know the RAM is now installed securely. CONGRATULATIONS!!! Your RAM is installed. Have a drink on me. Although it is generally a good idea to wait after you’ve completed your build.
After your RAM comes to our All In One Liquid cooler. If you don’t have one. You’ll have a stock fan cooler. Usually, the thermal paste will be pre-applied. If you don’t have any. Purchase a tube of it. To apply you’ll need a pea or grain of rice size directly on the CPU.
Installation for the Stock cooler is straight forward. Line up the posts for the screws over the CPU. Begin fastening the screws in a cross pattern this is important as you don’t want to put too much downward pressure over the CPU. The cooler should be snug but not torqued down. Next, you’ll want to plug in the fan into the CPU fan Header typically found next to the CPU socket. Either with 4 pins or 3 pins depending on your board.
To install the AIO Liquid cooler is the same prosses of the stock cooler but with a couple of extra steps. That we will go over a little later.
With all of the groundwork done we can finally put the motherboard into our case. If you have a look into your Motherboard box. You’ll see an aluminum piece with some cut-outs. That goes into the large cut-out in the pc case. You will need to firmly press this aluminum piece into the hole provided. There are no tools involved, but it will take a considerable amount of force to get it into there.
Once that is done. Next is to install the motherboard standoffs. A lot of cases will have these preinstalled. But if you don’t there are fasteners hole spaced out in the case to fit various motherboards. Place your motherboard down gently and taking notice of where these holes line up with the holes in your board. Then install the standoffs accordingly.
Next, you’ll want to install your motherboard down into the pc case. This will require a bit of moving around and not a lot of force at all. If you need to force the board in something is wrong and you’ll risk damaging your board. If the cutouts don’t align with the ports on the board as well you’ll need to pop out the IO Sheild and re-install it properly. Don’t worry if you get this wrong on the first try. It took me three tries the first time I built my PC. After the board is sitting in its final resting spot. You’ll then need to fasten it down to the standoffs you installed earlier. You can do this with the included screws that came with your case.
After this is done. It’s a good idea to start installing fans if your case didn’t come with any. For fans, there are two ways to install them. Pushing or pulling air out or into the case. It is generally a good idea to place at least two pulling in fresh air into the case. To figure out which way the fans pull or push air, remember that the side with logo on the fan pulls and the manufacture information pushes air. Installing fans is one of the easier things you’ll do. Simply screw the fans to the case and you’ll good to go for now. A little later we’ll tackle pugging them in.
After your fans, you can now pull the gorgeous Video card out of its box and bask in its glory. No, I’m kidding, time to install your GPU. There are also two ways for this, depend on your case. The first and most common way is to simply plug it into your PCI-e slot on your board. Or in this case (hehe see what I did there?) you can also mount the GPU vertically with a GPU riser cable. For installation directly into the PCI-e slot, you firmly press the card into the slot till you hear a click. Then you’re done. Don’t forget to screw In the GPU’s mounting point to the case as well. For vertical mounting. Plug the GPU riser cable into the PCI-e slot again till you hear a click. Take the other end and plug the PGU into the cable once again till you hear the click. Then place the card into the vertical mount. Don’t forget to plug the PCI-e cable on the top right of the card to get power to the GPU. Finally, screw into the mounting points and that’s your GPU installed and ready to go.
Okay so now everything is installed. Next up is to plug everything in. first, you’ll take the 24pin connector. It’s the long one with 24 pins. Go ahead and count them if you’re unsure like I was my very first time. And route the cable around the back of the case. Feed it through the hole next to the 24 pin slot on the board, usually found on the right side of the RAM and CPU. Firmly press it in till you hear a click.
Next is HD Audio, on the bottom and further most left on the board. It will be the audio header. All you’ll need to do is plug it in. be gentle here, a bent pin will ruin your day. Press firmly till the plug has seated fully down on the pins.
After HD Audio. USB is the two others you’ll need to do next. USB 2.0 will have the same connector as your HD Audio. With 10 pin layout but with 9 pins being used. There will be 5 on the lower and 4 on the upper portion. Making it difficult to plug in the wrong if you’re paying attention.
For USB 3.0 it’ll be the larger 20pin connector with the socket being directly below the 24 pin power connector. Same with the USB 2.0 be gentle here. Bent pins are bad. Once aligned, push down. You should hear a click.
Coming up next is the hard drives and Solid State Drive. These are simple. For the drives. Find a mounting point on the case. Use four screws to fasten them to the included position in the case. For the connection, you’ll need two types per drive.
Once the drive has power and data. Take the SATA DATA and locate the SATA DATA sockets on the board. Generally, you can find them on the right side near the bottom. Plug them in and you’re good to go.
We’re almost done, just a few more things to check off. Remember the AIO? Here we complete the install. Okay, there two things you’ll need to the plugin. USB and POWER. The first USB, plug one end into the AIO pump route the other end up and behind the case through the bottom of the other side again and plug the USB into any available USB headers on the board.
Second, you’ll need power, route the mini USB into the pump, again routing that up and behind the board. Finding an available SATA Power cable. And plugging into that like your hard drives you did a few minutes ago. Finally, that’s the AIO done.
home stretch time, fans are next. Bet you forgot about those, did you? By this time they may be mounted if not. Take the time to do that. For the fans, there are two ways to plug them in. the first way is to plug them into the board directly. There are usually one or two fan headers for system fans. Plug them in there and you can call it a day. However, if you have fans like I do, you’ll need a fan controller that will come included with aftermarket fan kits. Route the fan cables to the back of the case. And plug the fans into the controller. Once that is complete finding an available SATA Power connector, plug it in. now your build is complete.
The very last step you’ll need to do if you don’t already have Windows 10. Load Windows 10 install file on a USB stick. And plug it into a USB slot. And boot from the USB and install Windows. Follow the on-screen steps. Then finally you’ll be 100% complete your new PC.
This concludes our step-by-step build guide. In the comments let us know what parts you’ve gone with and why.
The Build
For today’s build guide here are the specs. Although your parts may differ this guide can be applied to most builds.Specs
Intel i7 8700 NZXT Kraken X53 AIO Liquid Cooler MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon 16GB G.Skill Trident Z RGB RAM MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Gaming X 6GB Gamdias Aeolus M1 120R RGB case and Radiator fans Gigabyte G750H 80+ Gold Modular Power Supply NZXT H510i case To start the build. You’ll want to remove your Motherboard out of the box and place it on top of the box. Then probably the scariest part. Mounting the CPU. This part you will need to be very careful. Because a drop here could spell disaster and ruin your day. On the CPU there will be a gold triangle usually in the bottom left. On the motherboard, there will also be the same triangle again typically in the same place. After lifting the tension arm carefully place to CPU in the socket. You won’t need any pressure, it simply drops in place. After lowering the retention arm, that’s it. You now have installed your first CPU.
Next taking the sticks of RAM out of its packaging and installing them on your board. Being a simple process, A few hiccups you may run into is what slot or the orientation to put them into. You might think it won’t don’t matter too much. But to take advantage of the performance, you’ll want to pay a little more attention here. On the board, there will be either 4 or 2 slots depending on your board that ram will go into. If you have 4 there will be a diagram on the board itself alternatively you can also reference your user manual.
In our case. Haha, get it? Case… because all of our parts are going in a… okay never mind, anyway moving on. Most boards will stagger the RAM where one will be installed with a one slot gap between them, to take advantage of dual-channel performance. Now if you look at the RAM you’ll notice that there are cutouts about halfway in the length of the stick. The reason for this is that you won’t install an incompatible stick of ram on your motherboard. Here we have DDR4 and it will only install in a board that’s compatible with DDR4. DDR4 and DDR3 are not backwards compatible with older or newer boards.
Pulling the tabs back on either side of the RAM slots you can now push the RAM sticks down into the slots once you have the cutouts aligned. Here it will require a decent amount of force. Push the RAM into the slot till you hear both tabs click letting you know the RAM is now installed securely. CONGRATULATIONS!!! Your RAM is installed. Have a drink on me. Although it is generally a good idea to wait after you’ve completed your build.
After your RAM comes to our All In One Liquid cooler. If you don’t have one. You’ll have a stock fan cooler. Usually, the thermal paste will be pre-applied. If you don’t have any. Purchase a tube of it. To apply you’ll need a pea or grain of rice size directly on the CPU.
Installation for the Stock cooler is straight forward. Line up the posts for the screws over the CPU. Begin fastening the screws in a cross pattern this is important as you don’t want to put too much downward pressure over the CPU. The cooler should be snug but not torqued down. Next, you’ll want to plug in the fan into the CPU fan Header typically found next to the CPU socket. Either with 4 pins or 3 pins depending on your board.
To install the AIO Liquid cooler is the same prosses of the stock cooler but with a couple of extra steps. That we will go over a little later.
With all of the groundwork done we can finally put the motherboard into our case. If you have a look into your Motherboard box. You’ll see an aluminum piece with some cut-outs. That goes into the large cut-out in the pc case. You will need to firmly press this aluminum piece into the hole provided. There are no tools involved, but it will take a considerable amount of force to get it into there.
Once that is done. Next is to install the motherboard standoffs. A lot of cases will have these preinstalled. But if you don’t there are fasteners hole spaced out in the case to fit various motherboards. Place your motherboard down gently and taking notice of where these holes line up with the holes in your board. Then install the standoffs accordingly.
Next, you’ll want to install your motherboard down into the pc case. This will require a bit of moving around and not a lot of force at all. If you need to force the board in something is wrong and you’ll risk damaging your board. If the cutouts don’t align with the ports on the board as well you’ll need to pop out the IO Sheild and re-install it properly. Don’t worry if you get this wrong on the first try. It took me three tries the first time I built my PC. After the board is sitting in its final resting spot. You’ll then need to fasten it down to the standoffs you installed earlier. You can do this with the included screws that came with your case.
After this is done. It’s a good idea to start installing fans if your case didn’t come with any. For fans, there are two ways to install them. Pushing or pulling air out or into the case. It is generally a good idea to place at least two pulling in fresh air into the case. To figure out which way the fans pull or push air, remember that the side with logo on the fan pulls and the manufacture information pushes air. Installing fans is one of the easier things you’ll do. Simply screw the fans to the case and you’ll good to go for now. A little later we’ll tackle pugging them in.
After your fans, you can now pull the gorgeous Video card out of its box and bask in its glory. No, I’m kidding, time to install your GPU. There are also two ways for this, depend on your case. The first and most common way is to simply plug it into your PCI-e slot on your board. Or in this case (hehe see what I did there?) you can also mount the GPU vertically with a GPU riser cable. For installation directly into the PCI-e slot, you firmly press the card into the slot till you hear a click. Then you’re done. Don’t forget to screw In the GPU’s mounting point to the case as well. For vertical mounting. Plug the GPU riser cable into the PCI-e slot again till you hear a click. Take the other end and plug the PGU into the cable once again till you hear the click. Then place the card into the vertical mount. Don’t forget to plug the PCI-e cable on the top right of the card to get power to the GPU. Finally, screw into the mounting points and that’s your GPU installed and ready to go.
Okay so now everything is installed. Next up is to plug everything in. first, you’ll take the 24pin connector. It’s the long one with 24 pins. Go ahead and count them if you’re unsure like I was my very first time. And route the cable around the back of the case. Feed it through the hole next to the 24 pin slot on the board, usually found on the right side of the RAM and CPU. Firmly press it in till you hear a click.
Next is HD Audio, on the bottom and further most left on the board. It will be the audio header. All you’ll need to do is plug it in. be gentle here, a bent pin will ruin your day. Press firmly till the plug has seated fully down on the pins.
After HD Audio. USB is the two others you’ll need to do next. USB 2.0 will have the same connector as your HD Audio. With 10 pin layout but with 9 pins being used. There will be 5 on the lower and 4 on the upper portion. Making it difficult to plug in the wrong if you’re paying attention.
For USB 3.0 it’ll be the larger 20pin connector with the socket being directly below the 24 pin power connector. Same with the USB 2.0 be gentle here. Bent pins are bad. Once aligned, push down. You should hear a click.
Coming up next is the hard drives and Solid State Drive. These are simple. For the drives. Find a mounting point on the case. Use four screws to fasten them to the included position in the case. For the connection, you’ll need two types per drive.
-
SATA DATA
-
SATA POWER
Once the drive has power and data. Take the SATA DATA and locate the SATA DATA sockets on the board. Generally, you can find them on the right side near the bottom. Plug them in and you’re good to go.
We’re almost done, just a few more things to check off. Remember the AIO? Here we complete the install. Okay, there two things you’ll need to the plugin. USB and POWER. The first USB, plug one end into the AIO pump route the other end up and behind the case through the bottom of the other side again and plug the USB into any available USB headers on the board.
Second, you’ll need power, route the mini USB into the pump, again routing that up and behind the board. Finding an available SATA Power cable. And plugging into that like your hard drives you did a few minutes ago. Finally, that’s the AIO done.
home stretch time, fans are next. Bet you forgot about those, did you? By this time they may be mounted if not. Take the time to do that. For the fans, there are two ways to plug them in. the first way is to plug them into the board directly. There are usually one or two fan headers for system fans. Plug them in there and you can call it a day. However, if you have fans like I do, you’ll need a fan controller that will come included with aftermarket fan kits. Route the fan cables to the back of the case. And plug the fans into the controller. Once that is complete finding an available SATA Power connector, plug it in. now your build is complete.
The very last step you’ll need to do if you don’t already have Windows 10. Load Windows 10 install file on a USB stick. And plug it into a USB slot. And boot from the USB and install Windows. Follow the on-screen steps. Then finally you’ll be 100% complete your new PC.
This concludes our step-by-step build guide. In the comments let us know what parts you’ve gone with and why.
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