How To Build a Gaming PC in 2023 for $900 - Step-by-Step Guide

I have not done a proper how to build a PC  tutorial video since like 2020 so it is now time in 2023 to update things a little  bit have things changed when it comes to building your own PC maybe a little bit  but a lot of stuff is still the same today I'm going to be building a system with  the parts I have here the total cost is about 900 and this goes along with the year  around 1250-ish dollar full system setup that I started off the year with this is also  a tutorial designed for beginners

so I'm going to be walking you through the build  process step by step so let's get started today's video is brought to you by Micro Center  this is one of my favorite places to buy PC parts so if you're building or upgrading your PC  I highly recommend making your way down to one of their 25 retail stores in the US they have  consistently competitive prices and an excellent selection of PC hardware and other Tech goodies  and they have a custom PC Builder on the Micro Center website use it to s

pec out your rig and  it will show you Parts in store at your nearest location while ensuring compatibility then  you can pick up in store or have their Pros assemble it for you so click the sponsor Link  in the description to find a Micro Center near you so with my PC build guides I often say that  all you need is a screwdriver and that is still mostly true but there are a few other things  that I'm assuming you're bringing to the party today one is that you have already watched my part  one vi

deo where I explain all the different parts of a computer we're going to be working with the  seven core components doing a budget build today but I'm going to be spending a little bit less  time explaining what each part is and more time explaining how the parts actually fit together  I'm also assuming that you have chosen the parts for your PC and purchase them and have them on  hand and if you're still looking to check out my monthly parts list videos where I give suggestions  for parts that

I would choose if building your own system the only other things that you should  need for this project are about one to four hours of time depending on how fast you work and  how complex your build actually is a nice open workspace preferably something that's high enough  to keep it out of the reach of animals and small children something to protect the surface you're  working on like a large mouse mat is a good idea some scissors or a cutting tool to open up your  boxes and of course a screwdr

iver and you will want a Phillips head version although a Phillips  head and a slot screwdriver are good to have and you don't need a super fancy screwdriver like the  LTT ones you can totally get away with a basic one but you might also consider both a normal sized  and a small or teeny tiny screwdriver as I like to call them mine came from my iFixit kit that is  for mounting some of the smallest components in the build like our little m.2 drive over there and  that pretty much sums up our prep

aration checklist one last thing to note is that I am building  an am4 system which is last generation for the AMD processors that are out there but if you're  doing a build on one of the newer platform forms like am5 for AMD or LGA 1700 for Intel I will be  showing you how to do the installation for those CPUs too let's quickly run down the parts I will  be building with today I already covered these in my build guide video but just to point out  we have a ryzen 5 5600 CPU that's going to run y

ou about 130 and this also comes with a stock  heatsink fan a stock cooler as it's known so we will not need to be adding that on as an eighth  item I'm recommending a 350 to 400 GPU for this budget range and today I'll be building with the  RTX 3060 TI this is the Asus tough gaming version of that card of course if you're still considering  products you should also consider the Radeon RX 6700 XT which can be found in the same price range  and will give a little bit better performance in terms o

f frame rates so those are the two main  components of the build that most affect our performance everything else is just making sure  that those can work properly our power supply is a cooler master master watt 750 bronze I caught this  one on sale for this build because it's partially modular 80 plus bronze rated and again so 750  watts which means if I didn't want to upgrade the graphics card in the future I could without  needing to swap in a more powerful power supply and the PSU in this bu

dget range is going to cost  70 to 80 dollars our motherboard is the gigabyte b550 gaming xv2 and part of the reason we're  building on am4 even though it is last generation is because you can still find reasonably priced  motherboards and you should be spending around 120 to 150 dollars for a reasonable b550 board  if you're building with am5 or Intel's latest platform the motherboard is probably going to run  you closer to 200 at minimum here's our memory 16 gigs total two 18 gigabyte sticks o

f ddr4 memory  we went with this kit because it cost around 45 dollars which is a great bang for the buck and  do note that if you're building on am5 you need a ddr5 memory not ddr4 and if you're building on  Intel LGA 1700 your motherboard will actually determine whether you're using ddr4 or ddr5 so  double check that I have once again spent an extra 10 to 20 on the case this is the NZXT h510  flow and this is going to run you around 90. some sometimes it goes on sale for a little bit less  tha

n that but it has good airflow pre-installed fans a nice big tempered glass panel and a USB 3.2  Gen 2 front panel connector for USB type-c which is nice to have and rounding things out with  our storage we have the Kingston nv2 this is a great bang for the buck it's a one terabyte drive  for about fifty dollars maybe a few dollars more than that and no it is not the fastest nvme drive  that's out there but it's way faster than a SATA drive I have now taken a few minutes to get all of  the compo

nents out of their retail boxes hopefully you guys don't need to walk through for that it  is one of the very entertaining parts of building a new pc especially if you're opening brand new  parts which is really satisfying but other than the case which I'll get to in a moment because  we're going to do what's known as an outside the box build first to make sure that our components  are functional before we go to the trouble of installing them into the case so I've grabbed  each part and the acce

ssories that you might need so we have our CPU and the heatsink fan that  came installed in the box we have our nvme m.2 SSD right here we don't actually need this for this  part but since we're doing all the motherboard set up anyway we might as well drop it into we're  gonna need our memory kit of course we're going to need our motherboard screwdrivers yes we got the  big and the small Phillips head I always like to have my motherboard manual handy while doing a  build because there are often

things that you're like oh I gotta check the manual for that and for  this specific build that's all you should need because this motherboard has a fixed I O Shield  here on the side which is nice and we just have a single m.2 nvme drive to install however not all  motherboards have a fixed I O Shield so you're going to want to grab that out of your motherboard  box too we will be using this when we install the board into the case unless of course you have a  fixed IO shield in which case you wo

n't need to do that and then if you'll be adding additional  storage besides your m.2 drive to your build so if you have any 2.5 inch ssds or 3.5 inch hard  drives that use a SATA connector for data and that also require a separate power connector  you'll want to grab a SATA cable out of your motherboards box for each drive that you plan to  connect now again you do not need to connect your storage for the outside the box test build that  we're going to do right now but I just wanted to make sur

e as you're taking stuff out of the  retail boxes that you're grabbing all the stuff you might need for our power supply we will need  the AC cable the one that actually plugs into the wall and then if you have a modular power supply  it'll probably come with a bunch of modular cables like this and these are primarily Molex SATA and  PCI Express power connectors because this is a partially modular power supply so the connectors  that will always need the 24 pin and eight pin to plug into the mot

herboard are hardwired finally we  have our graphics card because we need a graphics card to get a video out signal if you're building  on an Intel platform that has an integrated GPU as part of the CPU or if you're building on the am5  platform where most of the CPUs have integrated Graphics as well you can actually get by without  the graphics card for the outside the box build although if you do that then you wouldn't be  testing your graphics card to make sure it works too also to complete o

ur testing we will need some  of the other components for our full setup monitor keyboard maybe a mouse if you want to grab it  right now and then when I come back for the part 4 setup video where we actually install Windows  and everything you will need another computer a laptop or otherwise to get that done that's really  just an FYI for now but something you will want to have on hand when we get to the setup phase  enough talking let's get this build underway I'm going to start off with the C

PU installation and  here is where I'm going to be showing you three different ways because we have the am4 socket  right here then I will show you am5 and then LGA 1700 for Intel so feel free to jump ahead to  the socket that you will be using yourself [Music] I've started off by using a Phillips head  screwdriver and I cheated because it's a powered one but you can use a manual one if  you want I'm just removing this top retention bracket and incidentally am5 and am4 are going  to be really si

milar in this respect M5 and am4 actually have the same dimensions here for CPU  coolers and they're actually intercompatible so if you have an am4 compatible CPU Cooler  it should work with am5 as well I recommend putting these brackets in a plastic baggie and  saving them with your motherboard because some aftermarket CPU coolers do use them we're  installing a stock heatsink fan and that uses the pre-installed back plate that aimed  for and am5 motherboards have just note that now that that b

racket is gone that back plate is  no longer stuck to the board also note that your stock heatsink fan will come with some thermal  paste pre-applied on the bottom you don't want to touch that or smudge it or mess it around at  all for this beginner's guide I'm assuming that you're going to be using the pre-applied  thermal paste there and in the follow-up part 3 video where I do a more advanced build  I will cover stuff like removing thermal paste that's already there or applying your own  we h

ave our CPU here we're going to install all to the CPU socket this is an am4 CPU which  means it has pins on the bottom these pins are fairly delicate so do your best not to bend them  or mash them at all and in fact you can kind of look down the side to double check and make sure  that you don't have any bent pins if you do have bent pins out of the box they are not impossible  to bend back and repair but it might mean that your CPU doesn't drop into the socket properly  now the orientation of

the CPU and the socket is very important it only goes in one way and while  there is a specific pin grid on the bottom that you can sort of align with the pin grid on the  socket there is an easier way and that's to look for the little gold triangle that's right on the  corner of the CPU it should be visible from the bottom of the CPU as well as from the top I do not  know why they have made these little triangles so very very tiny with the most recent generation  but this is fortunately Univers

al between AMD and Intel CPUs a small gold triangle very small  in some instances at the corner to show you which one lines up with the little triangle that's  on the actual socket once you've determined the proper orientation for am4 you just gotta pull  out and lift up this little side arm here that will release the socket and then the CPU should  drop straight in let me do that one more time just to show you guys how easily it should drop  straight into the socket this is known as a zif socke

t zero insertion Force I have zero insertion  Force t-shirts on my store if you're interested but if it doesn't drop straight in don't push it  down and try to force it pull it out and double check for bent pins then you just push this arm  down to lock it into place after that our cooler installation is fairly simple again assuming you  have pre-installed thermal paste so I'm just going to drop the cooler on top of the four mounting  points for the back plate and those four screws should line u

p there is a bit of a protrusion on  one side of the AMD stock cooler and that can go on either side but double check to make sure if  it's on this side that it's not blocking a ram slot and you'll also want to make sure that the  fan plug which is probably going to be a standard 4-pin pwm fan plug can reach over to the CPU fan  header on your motherboard and you do want to use a CPU fan header because your motherboard  will be monitoring that to make sure your CPU is being cooled and if it does

n't detect a fan  running on the CPU fan header it can sometimes throw an error I'm getting ahead of myself though  we should be mounting the CPU Cooler first so I'm just going to do a few twists on each of these  screws just to get it threaded onto the back plate and because we want that thermal paste  to spread evenly and we don't want to put too much pressure on one corner of  the CPU we're just going to go sort of in a crosswise pattern and give each of  these screws a couple twists at a tim

e and we'll keep going in that way  until they are all cinched down and there we have it our 5600 is installed  as well as our CPU Cooler but what if you're building on am5 here's a quick rundown of  am5 CPU installation on an am5 motherboard foreign once again we have two plastic brackets to  remove there are many similarities between am4 and am5 for the CPU coolers but here you may note  there is a protective cover on the socket and that's because am5 CPUs are LGA that is known  as land grid a

rray so they just have pads or contact points on the CPU itself and the pins are  actually on the motherboard side that makes the motherboard much more delicate which is why they  put protective covers over those and I'm going to recommend leaving that protective cover on for one  the protective cover also has a little triangle on the corner just like our CPU and I'm glad that  with the am5 ryzen 7000 CPUs AMD has gone back to a larger Golden Triangle in the corner and you  can see it there on t

he socket cover as well as on the socket itself the retention mechanism is  a lever over here that you push down and move out and then that will allow it to lift up that  releases a catch down at the bottom lets you lift up this retention plate and the CPU is going to go  under that again super delicate pins here do not touch or damage them at all if you can avoid it  so let's run through the installation the corner is aligned unfortunately with these they also just  make the text face up which

is cool we're going to lift the lever we're going to lift the retention  bracket all the way up we're going to gently drop the CPU down in the socket and here you can also  reality check because there are two notches in the actual PCB of this CPU and those should align with  two notches on the socket itself and those are a little bit off-center I'm just going to drop it  straight down into the socket and with LGA CPUs I like to give it just the lightest jiggle to  make sure it's settled there we

can then lower the lid make sure the catch is catching there  and then if we pop this down the cover should come right off and our CPU is installed and again  because of the similarities with am4 you can just go ahead and install your CPU Cooler from there  following the same steps that I used with the am4 installation and here's our Intel CPU with an LGA  1700 socket which is what Intel is currently on for their 12th and 13th gen CPUs physically there  is not really a difference between them b

ut again just like with am5 we're working with an LGA CPU  so we have contact pads on the CPU and pins on the motherboard socket and again just like with  am5 the installation is fairly similar we have a retention lever on the side that hooks onto a  catch right there we have a retention bracket that lifts up from the top this time not from the  bottom and again delicate pins on the motherboard that we want to be careful not to damage so  we'll leave the cover on again Intel CPUs have a triangle

on the corner very very small there's  also a triangle on the corner of the cover that triangle should be etched into the bracket as  well and again we have some physical notches on the CPU two on the top two on the bottom that you  can use to reality check that you're lining stuff up correctly and so here's our installation we  will lift up the retention arm we will flip back the protective cover we carefully and gently drop  the CPU into the socket aligning with the notches on the top and the

bottom give it a bit of a light  jiggle to make sure it's settled and then I would like to close this side and do the same thing  that we did with am5 but it doesn't work quite as well with LGA 1700 so I'm just going to pop this  bracket off myself and then close this so that the retention arm can properly engage from here again  stick into Basics we can install our Intel stock heatsink fan you might have gotten one that looks  kind of like this I do not have thermal paste on this one so I'm ju

st using it as a demonstration  but double check that you have thermal paste pre-applied on the bottom of yours and it's going  to use four retention pins on the Four Corners that can be a little bit finicky so just keep in  mind Lefty Loosey so you want to make sure these are all twisted to the left that should disengage  them and then when you push down it's going to do this and pop out those little prongs on the bottom  to catch the bottom of the motherboard and then if you twist it to the ri

ght it should lock it in  place so it can't pop out twist it back to the left that will allow it to pop off to disengage  if you ever need to remove this and of course we again have a CPU fan plug that we're going to need  to plug into the CPU fan header on the motherboard making sure all four of these pins are twisted  to the left and disengaged again in a real world situation you would have thermal paste down there  and then we just line up to the four pins these pins are either on or off so y

ou can't really  ease it down by the four corner method like we did before just make sure the bottom of the pin  is done through the motherboard then push and turn and that should lock it into place now we'll do  the other four corners and if you did it right the bottom of the motherboard all four of the pin  should look like that being gently pushed aside by that center pin so they stay in place all right  and that's how you install CPU and stock heatsink fan for the current three platforms on

the market  let's move on with the setup of the rest of the motherboard another nice thing about having the  CPU installed is that that's probably one of the more complex Parts especially for beginners of  building a new pc next we're going to move on to memory which is much simpler especially if you  already have the right kind of memory for your motherboard so again ddr4 and ddr5 are the current  standards ddr4 is a little bit older ddr5 will always be the memory you use for am5 and then it's 

going to be up to the motherboard for LGA 1700 on Intel's current platform do note that they are not  intercompatible and in fact the notch that's there to help guide it into the socket and make sure  you don't install it improperly is not in the same spot on ddr4 and ddr5 so that should be yet  another thing that prevents you from accidentally installing it the wrong way but which slots should  you install your memory to some motherboards only have two dim slots or dual inline memory module  s

lots and in that case just install your two sticks to the two slots but many motherboards  like this one will have four slots which is nice because you can add more memory in the future if  you want to fairly easily you do want to populate the Right Slots though to make sure you're setting  up your memory in dual Channel mode and for most motherboards out there it's going to be every  other slot for dual Channel mode and usually they want you to start populating the two slots that  are further a

way from the CPU versus the two that are closer this gigabyte motherboard actually  has it labeled right there on the board itself which two slots to populate but you can also  double check your motherboard's manual to get their guidance on which slots get memory first  and the installation is simple and satisfying release the catches there's usually catches on at  least one side sometimes this side does not have a catch and some motherboards have both make sure  you're aligning the notch on the

memory with the ridge that sticks up in the center or slightly off  center of the motherboard socket and apply firm downward pressure to snap it into place you'll  also often find that the sticker with the stats for your memory will face inside and that gives  sort of a nicer aesthetic look to the exterior of your RAM but that is not Universal here's one more  and now our Ram is installed pops into place with a satisfying click and lastly for the motherboard  setup we have our little m.2 SSD ri

ght here which is kind of like a stick of gum I'm going to talk  a little bit more about m.2 ssds and the various flavors they come in as well as the heatsink  options for them in the part 3 video and just like memory you might have more than one place that you  can install one we have two m.2 slots here on the motherboard one here and one here and those might  be connected in different ways some are wired up directly to the CPU some are wired up so they  pass through the chipset first some migh

t be PCI Express Gen 4 some might be PCI Express Gen 5 and  again here's where your motherboard manual will help elucidate some of that information and since  it's the am5 CPUs that have a bit more crossover between Gen 4 and gen 5. I'll talk a little bit  more about it in that build video our motherboard again has them labeled pretty clearly we have  m.2 CPU and m.2 SB which stands for Southbridge which refers to the chipset so to get the best  performance out of our m.2 SSD we're going to inst

all to the top slot right here closest to  the CPU m.2 devices can actually be different lengths so this is the slot where it connects  down here but there is a 2242 2260 and 2280 and 2280 retention mechanism the vast majority of  m.2 drives that you will experience in the present day are going to be 2280 that's 22 millimeters  wide and 80 millimeters long which is why this motherboard already has its standoff mounted right  here so we're just going to remove the teeny tiny screw from that note

that our m.2 drive is keyed  that should line up with the socket we push it in like so drop it down screw the teeny tiny screw  back in and then it should be held fairly securely some m.2 slots have heat sinks that mount on top  of them most m.2 drives don't get hot enough to require that but again I'll cover that a little  bit more in the advanced part 3 video here's a quick aside About Storage before we power on this  outside the box build m.2 nvme ssds like this one are super nice and conveni

ent but you might have  supplemental storage for your build as well such as a 2.5 inch SSD like this one or a a 3.5 inch  mechanical spinning hard drive like this one while an m.2 Drive mounts directly to the motherboard  and gets both power and data connectivity through this connector on the end 2.5 inch ssds and 3.5  inch hard drives have a SATA connector slightly older standard like this one and you might notice  that there are two plugs the shorter of those two plugs is for your data connect

ion and that has  a cable like this do note that these are keyed as well they are L-shaped so for each SATA drive  that you want to connect to your system you would need one SATA data cable like this and most  motherboards come with between two and six of these and the other end for data would plug into  one of these SATA ports on your motherboard but the drive also needs power and for that you will  need a plug that comes over from your power supply these are SATA power plugs a power supply wil

l  often have a daisy chain set of three or four of these coming off of one connector and while  they are bigger again they are L-shaped so just make sure that that is aligned and plug that  in as well so that your extra storage drives will have both a data connection and power but  again you do not need to set up and plug in your storage drives for this outside of the box build  but you can do that if you want to make sure that they're recognized by your motherboard so to test  these components

before we install them in the case all you're going to need is that motherboard  assembly that we just put together power supply and graphics card if you don't have integrated  Graphics in your seat view and if you're keeping count that's actually six of the seven parts we  have motherboard CPU memory storage over here power supply graphics card all that's left is  case but for this quick test we're going to use the motherboard box set our motherboard on top  of that we're going to install our

graphics card it has a full length PCI Express slot here on  this side the parts with the gold contacts are the actual connector that goes into the slot it  also has this extra bit that sticks off the end that acts as a catch to hold it in place if you  line up that PCI Express slot these two prongs will hang over the end and actually tuck behind  the motherboard and this will install a lot more firmly when you actually are installing it into  a case it will be a little bit wobbly from right now

but there is a little latch here at the other  end of the PCI Express slot and that should engage with a little bit of a click when it drops all  the way in from there we're going to connect up our power supply so we have two cables that are  going to plug into the motherboard the longer 24 pin main motherboard power connector and the  supplemental CPU power connector and this is typically an eight pin although it can be as few  as four for lower end boards that don't require as much power or f

or higher end boards that have  overclocking support and higher end power delivery you might have eight plus four or even eight plus  eight most discrete graphics card also require a direct power connection from the power supply for  that we have these plugs called Peg or PCI Express Graphics power connectors these are also eight pin  connectors and a block very similar to the CPU one but do note that while the CPU block splits into  two blocks of four the peg or PCI Express Graphics connector h

as a six pin and then a plus two pin  and again depending on the graphics card you're using you might have just the six pin you might  have an eight pin you might have eight plus six eight plus eight eight plus eight plus eight they  can get pretty power hungry there's also a new power connector called 12vh power that we're not  going to talk about today but I will talk about in the third video video where I build the higher end  system one final note is that the actual housing for each pin is a

lso keyed on these plugs so it  really does take a lot of work to plug it in the wrong way I'm not saying it's impossible but that  should give you a little bit more peace of mind while plugging these connectors in and you might  also note that they all have a latch on one side and that's a good way to help you with orientation  because there's going to be a catch on one side of each of these big connectors that you plug  in as well these can be a little bit stiff but if you start getting it plu

gged in you should be  able to just wiggle it a little bit side to side and you should hear that latch engage as well  one more with the PCI Express Graphics this one is a daisy chain connector so if you do have an  eight plus eight you can use both of these it's generally recommended to use one modular cable  per connector but you can use the daisy chain if necessary and since the graphics card isn't  being supported by the case right now I would say give it a bit of extra support with your oth

er  hand while you plug this connector in too from there we're just plugging a few more things in  we have a power cable here for our power supply I've connected up the keyboard just so  we can control when we boot into the UEFI and we've got an HDMI cable running over to  our monitor but now how do we turn it on some motherboards come with a surface mounted power  button that you can just push to turn it on but since this is more of a budget board it doesn't  have that feature we are going to d

o the same thing that would be done if you push the power  button on your case which is simply Bridge a connection for a split second that gives the  motherboard the signal to turn on for that we're going to reference our front panel power  connectors over here we're going to find the one that's labeled power in this case it has a  red background behind those two pins which makes it a little bit easier to find and we're just  going to bridge those two pins for a second using a flathead screwdriv

er after we turn our power  supply on of course so here we go and you should have a light fan spin the system should turn on  it's always nice when it's really quiet right off the bat it's probably going to take a minute we  have a splash on the screen with our gigabyte logo depending on what brand motherboard you have you  might see gigabyte Asus MSI ASRock and now it's saying hey we tried to boot into an operating  system like Windows and none was found because we haven't installed an operatin

g system onto our  storage device yet if you get to this point it's a pretty fair bet that you have functional hardware  and you can move on with the rest of the build to turn off you can just turn off the switch on the  power supply or bridge that power button again I'm going to reset real quick and tap the delete  button as the system boots up to get into the UEFI just so we can reality check that all our  Hardware is being recognized so by tapping the delete button while the motherboard is bo

oting  up we can access this this is officially the UEFI it's also sometimes known as the BIOS or  basic input output system which is a legacy name but it's still used frequently and again this is  something I'm going to go over in more detail in the part 4 video where I go over system setup  you might also be looking at a very different screen if you have a motherboard that's made by  a different manufacturer but here in Easy Mode we can quickly reality check that all the hardware  is being rec

ognized by the motherboard we can see the motherboard name the current BIOS version our  CPU that was installed the ryzen 5 5600 both of our 8 gigabyte ddr4 sticks and don't worry at the  speed that's shown there is not the speed that's referenced on your sticks you need to set that up  again we'll go over that in part four we can also see our nvme SSD that was installed and the single  fan for the CPU is currently spinning so now the outside the box build is complete we verified  that the hardw

are is working we can install it in the case and yes you could skip this step to  save some time and just install everything in the case I've done that often myself the failure  rate for PC Hardware is generally quite low but if you do happen to get a defective part finding  it out now versus installing everything in your case first is going to save you some time and  help you get that replacement process underway ASAP and with a brief transition we are now  continuing the build I've set aside t

he core components the outside of the box build that we  put together so we can get the case out of its box here's all you need to know to be a  professional computer case unboxer let me open the top flaps we flipped the entire  thing over do you know what the handle holes right here we want to reach in there and  pull these out then we Slide the Box off warning you're about to get a static  shock you should use your elbow and get shocked a computer case will almost always  shock you the first t

ime you take it out of the box but if you use your elbow it's a little bit  less intense than if you want to be dramatic oh the foot was cut that's fine  then if you want to be dramatic so computer cases can vary a lot in terms of  their layout their look the aesthetic how things are installed but there are some Basics that are  fairly Universal across most models that's part of the reason I chose this case is because it  has a fairly standard ATX layout and also some nice ease of use features l

ike captive thumb  screws if I just unscrewing this one we can pop off the tempered glass side panel this will  let us take a look at the internals of the case get a feel for the layout and if you have a  tempered glass panel like this or a Plexi one for that matter it's probably going to come with  some protective plastic over the top I recommend leaving that on until the build is complete to  protect it from fingerprints and stuff and you can store this in the box that the case came in  just s

o you know where it is and you can find it later by the way captive thumb screw t-shirts  available at pulsehardware.net this side has the main chamber of the case where the motherboard  and most of the components will go then on the opposite side we have two more thumb screws and  another panel that pops off this is where your cable management will happen and this is also  where you install your power supply down at the bottom but again generally speaking with most  cases you're going to have a

n intake area here at the front with intake fans that pull air into  the case you may often also have intake down here at the bottom there might be additional intake  fans or at the very least your power supply which is going to sit at the bottom of this case will  also be pulling air in from the bottom and a nice thing to look for in a case is going to be a dust  filter for wherever you have air intake coming in it's a filter dust from getting into the rest of  your build and it makes a little

bit easier to pop off and clean and again when it can just pop  off as easily as this one on the NZXT h510 flow it just makes all of our lives a little bit easier  likewise down here at the bottom in the back where the power supply is going to be there is also  a removable dust filter so if you're shopping for another case I recommend keeping an eye out  for dust filters but another thing that might be installed for an intake or possibly is an exhaust  along the top although this case doesn't ha

ve much support for radiators at the top does have support  for radiators at the front so if you're going for an almond liquid cooler or if you're going to go  all out with a custom liquid cooling Loop which we're not covering at all in this video but  I just wanted to mention it keep an app for radiator support but again that is one of the  nice features about this case even though it's a bit more on the budget side you can do two 120  millimeter fans here for a 240 millimeter setup and radiato

r support there as well or two 140  millimeter fans the size it's just slightly larger than the one here that it ships with which is why  you have these extra wider mounting holes here but that will allow you to do a 280 millimeter  radiator up the front there too other than the airflow where it's coming in where it's exhausting  going out that way and up through the top the main motherboard area is right here there is a big gap  there so that you can access the back side of the motherboard for

installing aftermarket coolers  typically done in the power supply basement you might have some extra trays for some 3.5 inch or  2.5 inch drives when the motherboard is installed the i o for the motherboard the inputs and outputs  will face the back right there and then these are expansion slots PCI expansion slots so when your  graphics card is installed that is where the video outs will go and if you add on other cards like  video capture card or otherwise you have access to more expansion pa

nels there meanwhile here on the  other side of the case they have added a couple more 2.5 inch Drive holders so for SATA drives  you can mount those right here they have some cable routing channels here with some tie downs  again a nice feature to have not something that will be included in all cases but something that  NZXT adds to make wiring up your cables a little bit easier you'll almost always have an accessory  kit of some kind that's going to include these screws you need to install eve

rything into the  case there's another look at that 3.5 inch Drive Bay at the bottom and then you're going to have  some pre-wired cables which in this particular case are coming down from the top you because  that's where your i o is which includes a power button USB a USBC and a mic headphone jack but  those need to be connected to your motherboard so that's what these cables are coming down here  for and they've tied and wrapped them up just to keep them protected until we do the installation

  and then in that little accessory box we have a manual that will walk you through installation  steps if there's anything I missed today and a baggie with the remainder of the accessories and  again this can vary depending on the case that you buy but another reason I like the NZXT cases is  because they individually bag all of your screws and they even label them for you which is very  convenient you also get a handful of zip ties which are great for cable management this is an  audio splitte

r cable since it's actually a combo Jack there at the front for mic and headphone  use so you can split that out to a actual mic and headphone jack if your headset doesn't have  this combo plug and then there's this for front panel header connection and front panel headers  or big pain in the butt so I'll talk about this a little bit more when we get to that part of  the installation we will now be installing our motherboard or our full motherboard assembly  with the CPU heatsink fan the m.2 the

memory into our case over here so I've again put some  some mouse mats down just to protect the wood underneath the case and the first thing that you  should always do when installing a motherboard is actually something that I don't have to do  today and this is one of the big differences between the last time I did a build tutorial and  now there are a lot more motherboards these days even more budget models like our gaming xv2 that  have a fixed I O Shield the i o Shield is attached to the mo

therboard but there are still some other  boards that use an i o Shield like this so really quickly if your motherboard has one of these you  will want to install it first so make sure that the orientation of the motherboard i o matches  the i o Shield usually you'll have these round ones for the audio down towards the bottom so  this is the orientation we're going for but we install it from the inside of the case this can  occasionally require some Brute Force but just line it up from the back

be careful if you have  one of these it has some bare metal edges because those can be sharp it should pop into place with  a bit of pressure but if it's finicky or if it's flexing back and forth just use the butt end  of your Screwdriver from the inside of the case and maybe just maybe ta-da we popped it in and  then when you install your motherboard the i o will pop through these little slots however  again we have a fixed I O Shield so we don't need that apart from the i o Shield you'll also 

need to install standoffs to the case and you'll notice that they've included one in a baggie here  labeled standoff this is the standoff right here this is just so nothing include for tightening  the standoffs and the reason there's only one here is because again with this case they come  pre-installed so generally speaking for an ATX layout motherboard you will have nine standoffs  three at the top one two three three across the middle four five and six and three more along  the bottom seven

eight and nine note that even though this is an ATX case you can install smaller  motherboards to it although it will look kind of awkward because you'll have some open blank space  but that is also why these are labeled a for ATX U for Micro ATX and I for ITX so that's how you  know for example that you do not need a standoff in this u-mount here because that is for Micro  ATX boards but you do want one installed here because that's a mounting point for both ATX Micro  ATX and mini it exports a

lso note that the center standoff here is actually a stud that sticks up  versus this standoff over here which is actually a screw hole for screwing a screw into if you  determine based on your case's layout and based on Reality Checking your motherboard itself where  again we should be able to count one two three four five six seven eight nine mounting points  but if you need a standoff for your motherboard somewhere where there is not one like sometimes  they'll add a Micro ATX mounting point

right here and you you don't have to use that but you  could but if you did need to mount an additional standoff just choose the mounting point where  you need it you can hand thread it in and then you can use the included nut to tighten that down  either by hand or with the aid of a screwdriver and for installing standoffs I actually recommend  tightening these down pretty tight because you don't want them to back out if you're uninstalling  a motherboard speaking of uninstalling I already ment

ioned that we do not need a screw right here  so that is something else that you should be double checking the reason we use standoffs is so  that the motherboard doesn't touch this conductive metal that's beneath it so likewise if we have a  standoff mounted somewhere where there is not an actual mounting point on the motherboard we would  want to remove that so we don't short the board with the standoff situation sorted we're now ready  to install our motherboard into the case so we're just go

ing to drop it down angling the i o towards  the back of the case where the i o needs to go I haven't reach through there just to grab it  and sort of guide it into place and again the nice thing about that Center stud Mount from the  standoffs is if you pop it onto that stud then the rest of the standoff mounts should line up fairly  well now we need to secure the motherboard but another one of the funny quirks about PC Building  is that there are two standards for the screws that are typically

used one is an imperial  standard which is UNC 632 and then there's a metric standard which is M3 you might be able to  tell that the M3 screws have much finer threading whereas the 632 screws are a bit rougher a bit  wider spaced for the threading it likely tells you which of these you should use in the manual but  a really easy way to reality check that is just to use the standoff that came also in the baggie  the unused one and just to thread one end and make sure it threads in properly and

incidentally  they want you to use the 632s for this and not the M3s it is really really convenient to  have a magnetic tip Phillips head screwdriver for this particular part you might need to shift  the motherboard over just a little bit to line up the standoff and then this part should be as easy  as screwing in nine screws you want to get them snug but again don't over tighten them because  you don't want to over tighten them to the point where if you ever remove the screw it's going to  unsc

rew the standoff beneath it as well foreign screws are screwed in that's nine standoff points  with the stud in the middle and our motherboard is secured in the case and since we did the outside  of the box build we actually only have a few more things left to do we need to connect our two fans  up to the motherboard so the fans will spin up in half power we need to install our power supply  of course and wire up the motherboard with power I will install a SATA SSD just to show you guys  how tha

t is done and then lastly we will install our graphics card power supply installation is  next and I've already talked about this being a partially modular power supply plugged in one  of the modular cables so that we can power the graphics card when we did the outside of  the box build so here we're just going to make sure that we have all the cables plugged  into the power supply that we're going to need before we install the power supply in the case  and that includes the CPU 8 plus 8 Pin hea

der that we used in the outside the box build that  is hardwired to this power supply also the 24 pin main motherboard power connector the pcie  connector for the graphics card and then what else might we need because fans will often plug  directly into the motherboard which is typically the way I recommend going about it because then  you can use your mother other board software or UEFI interface to set their speeds or a silent  profile for example some cases will have a built-in Fan Hub so tak

e a look and see if you  have any of these plugs this is a four pin plug and this is typically called a Molex plug these  are becoming slightly less common this is one of the older plugs in PC Building and it's a bit  more common these days to see a SATA power plug Serial ATA for power and this is the one that I'm  pointing at right here you will need one Serial ATA power plug like this one for each drive that  you add that is a 3.5 inch or 2.5 inch SATA drive and then again there might be extra

things in your  case like a fan controller or RGB controller and those can sometimes have SATA power plugs too so  if you have a non-modular power supply then you'll probably have a bunch of cables connected up here  and you can fish through those to see if you have SATA power plugs Molex power plugs or whatever  you need funny thing about this build at least the most budget level of it where you're just going  with a single storage Drive is you don't need any of these and in fact we could get

away with just  the power cables that we connected for our outside of the box build but since lots of people will  still be using SATA drives like this one or 3.5 inch mechanical drives I'm going to be installing  one today so we're going to need one of these modular cables which has a single proprietary  plug on the end that will plug into the power supply and do note you should never try to use  these between different power supply models they often change even from the same brand that is a  w

ay that you can damage the parts in your computer so only use the modular cables that come with your  power supply and then you'll often have maybe two to four SATA power plugs on the other end or if  you do need a Molex plug or even this other one on the end which is actually an old school floppy  power connector and these are actually very rare but they often and still include them on the power  supply in case it's needed but this power supply comes with one combo cable it has a SATA power  pl

ug Molex power and that floppy drive so this can be convenient if you need more than one type  of connector for this build I just need that one SATA connector though so double check the labeling  here on the back these will often be keyed so you can't accidentally plug one in the wrong way these  are all labeled HDD SATA so we'll plug that in and now we can install our power Supply remember  the fans on a power supply you're almost always going to be an intake so we want to face that  down so it

will align with that dust filter we will slide the PSU in from the side here turn our  case we can see the mounting points at the back the bracket for most power supply mounts will  actually have eight mounting points because it's made so you can flip the power supply over  and mount it either way if you want we are again going to use the 632 screws but we have a  separate baggie here of these screws which are a little bit beefier than the other ones we use for  the motherboard Mount and again

it's very common to find a set of these screws both included  with the case and also with the power supply all right now the power supply is installed  too and now we get to go about plugging stuff in and there's several groups here I'm going  to try to do that a couple groups at a time we're going to start with the main motherboard  power connectors that 24 pin and the eight pin and we're also getting started with cable  management here now don't be afraid to have messy cables especially if you

're building for the first  time it is really not that big of a deal it really does not affect your airflow all that much to  have a bit of a messy Cable Management situation and while some cases like this have  channels and velcro straps so you can really get your cables positioned  exactly where you want them to that's not always going to be the case with  every single case that's out there and really the main thing you want to make sure is done  is just that the cable itself is plugged in so

you're probably gonna have some pass-throughs  for those cables we have a line along this side depending on your motherboard layout you  might want to pass the cables through in different positions I'm just going to  feed the 24 pin through there foreign supplemental CPU power we typically have a  longer cable because that plug is usually at this top corner of the motherboard looking  at the back side of the motherboard from this angle so we're just going to feed the blocky  end of the plug thro

ugh the top there and then again Channel it down here as best we  can we've already plugged this plug in once before so again just pay attention to where  the latch is where the catch is on the plug and we're going to bend this around some so it  will line up with the plug itself and we'll go ahead and seat it in the plug-in we'll hear a  little snap when it latches into place same deal for our supplemental CPU power although you might  have a bit of a tight space to work with here in the corner

just got all the pins lined up and then  we can go ahead and seat this one as well and this if you have a fully modular power supply some  Builders will actually plug this side in first before the motherboard's installed just because  again it can be a little bit tough to work with up there in the corner now while we're working up  in this corner I'm actually going to plug in this rear exhaust fan as well the two fans that ship  with this case have three pin fan header plugs those work just as

fine as the four pin one that  we showed you with the CPU heatsink fan and I can show you the fan header that's up here on the  corner of the board but I know you're not going to be able to see me plugging this in right now so  here I'm going to plug in the front intake fan to this system fan three header note that it's a four  pin header there is a plastic tab behind three of those pins and that is the side that you want to  plug in a three pin fan header two if you're not using a four pin head

er the 4 foreign carries a  pwm signal so if you have a pwm enabled fan you'll have a 4 pin header three pin fans work just fine  as well though but do note that you will have an extra pin hanging out there that doesn't get  used since we plugged in our two case fans let's finish off the rest of the case connectors these  are typically known as front panel connectors because they are what enable the front panel plugs  like USB and power button let's start with these two here which are USB connec

tors this is a USB  3.0 connector slightly older these are not the favorite of a lot of PC Builders because they can  be a little bulky and the updated version of this connector is this one here which comes with  the cover this is a USB 3.2 Gen 2 front panel connector which can provide much higher bandwidths  5 to 10 gigabits per second and thankfully our motherboard does have one of these ports available  so we can enable That Type C port on the front of the case the other two connectors here a

re in a  block of 10 pins and they're both labeled one is f panel for front panel connectors and one is HD  audio for enabling that Miken headphone jack on top of the case now you may notice that the front  panel audio connector has one blocked pin that's to keep you from accidentally plugging one of  these into the other's header on the motherboard and honestly if you're going to skip one of these  connectors I'd say the HD audio is the one to skip front panel audio can be not the greatest if 

you do have a high quality headset or a pair of headphones you should plug those into the  connector on the back of the motherboard rather than using this front panel connectors on the  other hand are almost universally reviled amongst PC Builders but NZXT has been using this single  block for front panel connection for quite some time and you'll find this to be compatible  with the vast majority of motherboards on the market it's going to make it a lot easier to  connect those up but if your mo

therboard does not adhere to the same layout as these then you will  need to use this adapter and if you're building in a different case you might not have this front  panel block and instead you might have individual connectors for power LED positive and negative  power switch and hard drive LED you might also sometimes have a two pin connector here that  is a reset switch different motherboards have different layouts but most of the connectors for  for these are going to be along this Edge or

along the bottom edge of the motherboard oftentimes the  HD audio will be further down this side so check where your motherboard's connectors are and then  once again feed these from the rear of the case up through to the front of the case and  do note that if some of your cables are pre-managed you can undo that if you  need a little bit more cable length back here in the main chamber we are plugging  in our front panel connectors here's the USB 3.0 here's that USB 3.2 gen 2. you can double  ch

eck the manual to make sure where these are they should be labeled though and they should  also be the right shape for these plugs do note that these plugs are key there's a little  notch on the top of the USB 3.01 that should align with a little Gap in the in the housing  of the plug connector on the motherboard itself and then for the 3.2 Gen 2 connector uh it's it's  a bit wider on one side you should hopefully be able to tell but it's really difficult to plug  this in the wrong way it is dif

ficult to plug this in in a way that also shows it happening  on the camera though there we go okay plugged in down here we have our HD audio connector which  again is labeled there inside the plug audio and also keyed with one blank pin so here I  will wrap this around completely blocking the shot with my hand okay get that lined up and then  put the plug there we go and if there's a second reason to not plug in your front panel HD audio  connector it's because of the garish colors on the cable

but we'll leave it in for now and now  our front panel connectors a lot of PC Builders hate these because individual pin headers are kind  of difficult to plug in note that the power LED here is labeled with a positive and a negative  same goes for the hard drive LED for the light to work you gotta plug in the right positive and  negative points to the headers on the board and while the pinouts are labeled with a little grid  down there underneath this plug if you can't read those or just need

to double check then look in  your motherboard manual where it should label all of the pin outs and then on gigabyte boards they  also color code them which is convenient so we're going to cheat by using the NZXT block connector  which is only going to use the pinouts over on the left side here do note that there are a couple  of power LED connectors here there's one down here in the bottom right and also in the top left  so our block connector should still work [Music] we're nearly finished wit

h this build we're  going to quickly talk about installing extra storage drives like 2.5 inch SATA drives or  3.5 inch mechanical drives 3.5 inch drives have mounting points on the bottom they also  have mounting points along the side and there are a variety of methods for installing those  into a case and keeping them secure I've even seen rubber bands used at certain points a lot  of cases will have trays that you can remove and then mount to the drive and then the drive  slides into a tray fo

r this case you actually have to remove the tray from the bottom with some  screws and then you can pull this tray out then you can mount the drives to it and then reinstall  so again reference your cases manual for 3.5 inch drive installation I'm going to focus on 2.5 inch  drives today because those are a bit more common 2.5 inch drives also have multiple ways to mount  them and set them up with a case has anyone been able to tell that this is one of my ssds where  I have a steam Library anywa

y there are mounting points on the side there are also mounting  points on the bottom and different cases might have different trays or mounting methods for those  but this one mounts through those four screw holes from the bottom and here's one of the places we'll  be using those M3 screws the ones are a little bit finer threading and you can easily get away  with just a couple screws for an SSD there are no moving parts inside so not a big deal for spinning  mechanical drives it's a bit more i

mportant to get all your mounting points mounted with screws so  for the sake of being thorough we'll go ahead and use all four for this one and then before we  reinstall it on the case we should plug it in and make sure it's functional so for that once again  we need SATA power and for that we're going to use the long SATA power plug that we already pre-wired  over from our power supply and then you will need a SATA data cable and this should come with your  motherboard and both of these plug t

ypes are keyed with an L shape so it's very very difficult to  plug them in the wrong way and occasionally your plug will have a little catch that sometimes  catches effectively and sometimes doesn't like I said there are no moving Parts with ssds so  as long as it's plugged in it should stay plugged in and these trays have five little points that  sort of snap into place and then we can secure it at the top with one more screw oh yeah and don't  forget to plug the other end of your SATA data ca

ble into your motherboard and we'll grab it  through here for that this motherboard has four connection points for SATA data cables two are up  here and tour down here that are angled 90 degrees I'm going to go ahead and use these lower ones  because they're a little bit more low profile you used to have to sort of double check which  SATA connector you were using because some were slower than others but fortunately for more  recent generations of PC Hardware the SATA ports have topped up at six

gigabit per second  and all of them should conform to that standard and we are now on to the final step in this  build the installation of the graphics card and again we already tested the graphics card  so you know it works we're practically speaking for installation we're just going to need  to line up this PCI Express Edge connector with the slot on the motherboard and we need to  remove a couple of those expansion slot covers because they're going to be replaced by this  back I O panel on t

he graphics card this is a two slot card one bracket and two brackets and  there are some higher end cards that use three sometimes even four with the RTX 40 series  so we actually won't be starting with this top one we're going to start with the second  one down you can tell that by sort of visually aligning with the bracket itself or by sort of  positioning the card kind of where it's going to be but for this case to save a little space  the removal actually happens on the exterior first we lo

osen these two thumb screws and that  lets us pull this little slider back a little bit that's slightly awkward but that's okay then  we can use our Phillips head to remove these two screws sometimes the bracket just conveniently  falls out for you when you get the screw off here they are and you can store these in your  motherboard box in case you ever need them in the future and now we can install the graphics  card align the i o on the back with those two panels you just removed line up that

edge  connector with the slot some firm pressure it should snap into place and one  more time that catch at the end of the motherboard's PCI Express bracket  should snap into place and secure the card but we're going to secure it a bit  further by reinstalling these screws and then we can slide this bracket  cover back into place as well and we'll tighten up this thumb screw to  make sure this doesn't slide around and yes it's okay to use a screwdriver on a  thumb screw sometimes actually hold o

n this case has an extra little pass-through  point right there I'm going to use that and we've done this before but one more  time we're using these six plus two pin PCI Express Graphics power or Peg connector  latches on top catches on top do note that some graphics cards flip those so  the catch is on the bottom [Music] I'm doing one really quick aesthetic  Touch by tying down the daisy chain connector here with a zip tie just so it's  not hanging loose and now we plug this one in snap and wi

th that our graphics card is installed  and indeed our system is assembled so at this point I and hopefully you as well have now  completed your first ever gaming PC build well it's not my first ever I've done this once  or twice before but we can be fairly confident since we did the outside the box build that this  system should power on I'm going to turn on the power switch on the back I'm going to press  the power switch up here fans are spinning maybe things that have lights on them are goin

g  to light up and from here we can move on to the next steps of installing the operating system and  getting the system set up appropriately to game on or do lots of other tasks I have a couple existing  videos on that I will link those down in the video description if you're watching this video close  to when I first publish it but in a week or two I'm going to have a follow-up refresher to that  showing you how to get windows installed and do all those setup things as well now we have the  fi

nal build fun things to do and if you're a superstitious PC Builder you typically leave these  for last or at least until after you've verified that the system has Baseline functionality  back in goes our tempered glass panel secure that with the thumb screw and now the peel foreign why don't they put this sticker  on the outside of the plastic okay but guys that's going to wrap it up for  this part two video in my how to build a PC in 2023 series part three is going to be  coming soon where I w

ill build a high-end system with RGB lighting and fancy other things  in there that might take a little bit more work to get installed and then in part four we'll be  going over system setup getting windows installed and getting everything ready to go for gaming  streaming and doing a bit of testing to make sure the hardware works as advertised speaking  of advertising if you enjoyed this video and you want to help support my channel check out my  store at paulshardware.net where I have Shirts M

ugs pint glasses and all manner of memorabilia  with Paul's Hardware thumb screw logos attached including this shirt that has all the parts of  the PC now that you know what they are wear a shirt with them on it I will also include a ton  of links in the video subscription to the hardware that I use today to other videos in my tutorial  series that will help you get everything up and running just the way you like it and the playlist  for the entire beginner's guide to building a PC series thank

you guys so much again for watching  this video If you enjoyed it hit the thumbs up button on your way out consider subscribing to  my channel as well because this is not the only piece see Bill I have coming at you this month  no I have another one coming real soon that's not even part of this build Series so stay tuned  for more and we'll see you all in the next video