How to Build a Powerful Gaming PC

hey what's up guys hope you're doing well and today we're building a powerful high airflow gaming pc and i'm going to show you guys how to build it complete from start to finish this will be an all black mid tower build something that is absolutely no worries when it comes to hardware compatibility and also one where we're going to be sticking to air cooling only that being said this build is really flexible when it comes to the parts so if you have a different cpu gpu or cooling solution that you have in mind feel free to use those instead also a huge shout out to devi this is actually going to be his gaming pc that we're building today it's going to be extremely high end for 1080p gaming which is what he's going to be using it for so yeah big thanks to him for actually funding a huge chunk of the parts that we're actually going to be using so without further ado let's jump in and get things started [Music] all right so every pc build starts with the cpu and the motherboard now we'll get to the motherboard in just a second but as for the cpu that we're working with this is the i9 12900k from intel 16 cores that can boost all the way up to 5.2 gigahertz one of the highest performing cpu options at the moment definitely going to be no problem pairing this with a high performance gpu i will say that i did recently review this chip right here so this is the ryzen 7 5800x 3d it has amd's new 3d v cache technology which is surprisingly good i mean this is really really surprising when it comes to gaming performance only eight calls here so i guess if you don't need as many calls this is probably what i would recommend going with you can also use it with ddr4 memory which i guess some people might prefer but let's say you do need the extra cores for multi-threaded stuff and you do want to work with ddr5 instead well that's where the 12900k would be a better option and again i don't comment too much on like the unboxing experience for some stuff but yeah intel typically go quite over the top with their i9 chips so in this blue box looking thing we've got a silicon wafer object here which we twist open and then we have it the i9 12 900 k now in terms of motherboard options for the 12 900 k you're going to want to stick with z690 boards so the one that we've gone with here is a kind of mid to high end option it is the rog strix z690e gaming wi-fi so didn't really do a massive deep dive on the specs of this motherboard but you know taking a decent glance at it and also looking at some of the reviews it does look like a pretty solid option for what we need and yeah pretty decent looking motherboard i will say very clean looking you know just all black kind of suits the theme of our build the vrm is really overkill for what we're going to be using but i guess the price range of this board just fits with the rest of the build more importantly you know how you're actually going to be using this board when you take a look at the rear i o you've got an absolute mountain of usb ports which is really good for devi because he's also a streamer and he probably has a lot of stuff that he's going to be plugging in you've also got two usbc ports here wi-fi six which is built-in and of course for a motherboard of this spec you always want to see a bios flashback and a clear cmos button now for those that don't know what bios flashback and clear cmos do they're basically like life-saving buttons that you want to see on every high performance motherboard so clear cmos basically allows you to reset the motherboard bios uh you know without having to fiddle around and even access the system so let's say you have an overclocking profile that didn't work or a memory profile that didn't work and basically you can't boot the system well basically just click that clear cmos button and it'll reset everything and you'll have a nice clean slate bios to work with and then of course bios flashback which has been really popular for i guess amd's am4 platform because you have so much cpu support basically bios flashback allows you to update the motherboard's bios and support uh let's say future generation cpus without actually having a supported cpu in the motherboard so that's always really handy to see but my favorite part about this motherboard uh probably not even joking is this little button right here so you press that button and it releases the first memory slot that is so so cool to see actually the first motherboard that i've seen with this feature i was aware that it was a feature honestly i'm quite surprised at how well it works again just click that button and you're able to release that pcie slot and pull out and replace your gpu but other than that you know it's a pretty typical high performance z690 motherboard you've got a dual 8-pin power connector there for the cpu you've got some fan headers here you've got some rgb connectors here more fan headers and then you've got a usbc front panel connector which we will actually be using and then you've got a few m.2 slots with direct calling most notably that first one here has a heat pipe connected to it so that one there is probably going to be for our boot drive so really the first step of every build is to install the cpu into the motherboard now be very careful here just keep in mind if this is your first pc build 12th gen uh i guess z690 or lga 1700 sockets which is this socket right here you've got a bunch of delicate pins as soon as we lift up this latch so if you're holding something or if you haven't got the board you know on a nice flat surface just keep in mind that you could potentially damage that socket and that's not going to end very well most of the time retailers will not give you a replacement so keeping that in mind we're going to carefully lift up this socket here so we're going to push this lever downwards put it to the right there and then by lifting it up we're going to release that socket tension which means that we can pull back on this right here now this entire mechanism just keep in mind it is a very uh tight i guess there's a lot of tension is what i'm trying to say lga 1700 sockets and notorious for having a lot of closing pressure on them so just keep that in mind for when we're about to close it and then it's pretty much as simple as taking our cpu with the triangle on the heat spreader facing the bottom left-hand corner we're going to slowly and carefully place it into the socket and it should slot in there nice and easy and you can just do a little wiggle just to make sure it's seated properly then it's pretty much as simple as just doing the reverse of what we just did so we're going to lower the latch you can hold on to this little kind of metal part on the top left hand corner push the top part of the socket down the plastic cover should come off and then you can close the lever and secure it in the bottom right kind of hook that we have there and there we go cpu is installed that is the scary part over you would be really surprised by how many people managed to screw that section up but thankfully if you've gone this far we can continue with the rest of the build now this motherboard only supports ddr5 memory and the one that we've gone with here is from g-skill this is their trident z5 and it's clocked at 6000 megahertz with cl36 so pretty high performance option and i will note that at this point in the z690 i guess lifespan it's been out for a little bit now most of the ddr5 kind of kinks and quirks have been ironed out you will still find some memory kits which aren't kind of you know compatible and rated for the full speeds on some motherboards which is quite surprising but does still happen i will also mention that i have checked the qvl list of this memory kit on this motherboard for those that don't know what a qvl list is it's basically just a giant list of different memory kits that have been tested and validated on a specific motherboard and the memory qvl list for this motherboard does check out for this kit it does say it can run at 6000 megahertz at cl36 no problem and that's something that i just honestly wouldn't do a lot of the time but i guess for ddr5 and z690 is just a little bit of extra step of caution that you can take so these are the memory modules right here pretty clean overall uh no rgb you can go for rgb if you prefer but i guess all black just suits the build theme here a little bit better so going ahead and installing them we basically just pop the second slot and the fourth slot here so we've got some tabs here we're simply just going to unlock them some motherboards also have tabs down the bottom here but this one does not and then simply lining up the notch of the memory module with the notch that you've got here on the motherboard and then just popping that in like so and then just pushing down with two hands you should hear a nice satisfying two clicks so again just lining up this little notch here with the notch on the motherboard sliding it into the slot and then equal pressure across the module and there we go installed easy enough you can double check that those tabs are in fact closed which they are and man these all black modules look super super clean we'll definitely keep this in mind for future builds but the next order of business here is the storage now the days of three and a half inch drives and two and a half inch drives are completely over in my opinion at least especially if you're building something with under you know around two terabytes of storage m.2 nvme drives are just the way to go in terms of speed and simplicity this is really what you want to be going with and the ones that we've gone with here are from crucial these are their p2 nvme drives they are only gen 3 but man you really can't beat these when it comes to price and performance and just the amount of value that you're getting they're also just really reliable drives i've used these in just a million pc builds at this point never had a problem with them and you just generally get really good performance out of them for the money now this motherboard does support gen 4 nvme drives uh and by all means you can go that route if you do have the budget for it so for example the asu pc build for those that remember that i did go for gen 4 drives there they were the samsung 980 pros but honestly for the build that we're going with here this is a much better solution much more of a sensible solution in terms of budget and it's probably the way to go for a lot more people as well sticking to gen 3 drives that is over gen 4. i will also mention that we do have two of these so one terabyte each one for the boot drive and one for your games and your media and all of your other storage and stuff like that that's typically just how i prefer to set things up that way if you do have to do like a fresh reinstall of windows for whatever reason you don't have to also wipe all of your games and your media and stuff like that it also just kind of makes sense when you've got this many you know m.2 slots on the motherboard you know why not go ahead and use them i will also mention that this motherboard comes with this thing which is an extra two m.2 slots one here and one here that's if the three on this motherboard aren't enough for you so if you literally run out of m.2 storage you can throw this thing in here plug it into one of the pcie slots and there you go you've got a bunch more storage to work with and yeah i definitely have a little bit of a soft spot for these add-in cards i mean this thing just looks super super sick it's like full metal uh you know dedicated cooling for these m.2 drives don't think uh this will see much use for devi's build but i mean hey something to keep in mind if he does run out of storage by any slim chance uh he can go ahead and chuck this in so installing the m.2 drives now we've got our primary slot off the top here and then we've got two slots down the bottom so starting with our top slot we've got one screw that we need to unlock right here and we've got another one on the right here pretty typical that little m.2 heatsink should start loosening up and then you can remove it first thing you'll want to do of course is actually peel the thermal pad our protective skin off that way we actually get some cooling performance out of this heatsink you'll be surprised how many people actually forget that step and don't forget to peel the one on the bottom here as well pretty simple enough should look something like that and then in the case of this motherboard as well we also have this like little foam insert which i've never seen before but that's pretty easy to remove and then going ahead and installing our m.2 drive again pretty simple just like the memory modules you've got the notch here in the pcie slot and that's going to just slide in [Music] and then basically just repeating the same steps for the secondary drive right here and you'll find the secondary slot at the bottom [Music] so that's actually most of the work done for our motherboard we've got our cpu installed we've got our two ram modules and we've also got the two storage drives as well no problem next order of business is the cpu cooler and for that we're going to be using the noctua nhg d15 this absolutely massive chunk of metal that we have right here uh six copper heat pipes feeding a dual tower uh fin array here we've got two fans one is included in the box which we haven't strapped on just yet but we can put that once we've installed onto the motherboard yeah really premium air cooling solution the heatsink here weighs like a kilo by itself so quite a lot of cooling potential noctua are pretty uh vague i'll say when it comes to like what this can actually call in terms of tdp and whatnot we could potentially go with liquid cooling for the 12 900k but i do want to give this air cooler a chance i haven't really done an air cooled build in a long time and i think for gaming loads which is what this build will primarily be used for i think the nhd15 will be fine with the 12900k so of course grabbing the mounting hardware which you'll find in the box of the noctual cooler we are after the lga 1700 bracket which you'll find right here and of course always always refer to the user manual that's included when you've got a cpu core that supports you know this socket that socket so for example for the lga 1700 socket we have the blue spaces uh you don't want to be using different height spaces for this socket because that could result in completely different mounting pressure for the cpu so we take our mounting bracket here which goes on the back of the motherboard we take the push through kind of screws that we've got here and we simply push those through one side and then we take these little uh clips here and just lock that in like so also important to note that for the lga 1700 socket it's like a triangle shape and you want the triangle facing the outside of the bracket so triangle facing outside of the bracket for this socket that we're working with and not towards the inside and then just going ahead and repeating that for the other two pins then just flipping the motherboard around just face down carefully on the table and then just sliding that mounting bracket through the mounting holes around the socket and then just carefully holding the bracket as you flip it back around and there we go pretty easy now we can install the rest of the brackets so again using the blue spacers here these just slide over the screws that we just installed and then just going ahead and installing the final mounting brackets over those screws also just double check that the screw is coming through the middle of the mounting bracket and not sitting like off axis like that for example otherwise you're going to get kind of uneven pressure across the cpu and then just using these thumb screws here to tighten down those brackets and basically complete this mounting setup just hand tighten them at first you know it doesn't need to be anything too crazy and then we can go ahead and just tighten them up a little bit extra with a screwdriver doesn't need to be too tight definitely don't be like over cranking them that's how you end up with broken pc parts so again just something reasonably firm and that'll pretty much do now at this point we'll usually take the cpu cooler and then go ahead and mount it onto our motherboard but because this thing is just so ginormous i mean it's just absolutely huge it actually gets in the way of some of the stuff that we need to do next like plug in our cables and you know just work around the motherboard actually screw in the motherboard if we go ahead and install this cooler now uh trust me it's just going to make things a lot more difficult and it's something that we can do after these next few steps something that we can do now though and something that is kind of satisfying is just going ahead and peeling off some of these protective films and surprise surprise we're going with the nzxt h510 this is the flow edition though so we do have that extra bit of airflow going through the front panel which is mesh as opposed to say steel or tempered glass but yeah this is just a timeless pc case i think it's a really great option for a nice compact mid tower and even when you're using you know pretty high end components you can make it work in this case and still have a really nice tidy clean build by the end it's really just become this default pick for me at this point for a compact mid tower because yeah i actually do like it quite a lot that might surprise people because it's a pretty affordable pc case it's also made of steel which is not the most premium finish although i do actually like it quite a lot by all means if you want to you know build your pc in this big tempered glass rgb aquarium you can go ahead and do that but i prefer my pcs to be a little bit more reserved a little bit more sensible and compact and that's pretty much exactly what the nzxt h510 flow is so for the front intakes we can install two 140mm fans there so here we have the noctua na14 pwm chrome axes and then for the two 120 mils for the rear exhaust we have the legendary nf a12 by 25 chromax i can't tell you how long i have waited to see this fan in the flesh because it's something that was like probably two years in the waiting honestly not sure what took knock to us so long to finally make these black from their default brown color that it is what it is we finally have them here really happy that they're finally available in a all black variant and this is what they look like with the black anti-vibration pads installed every chromax fan comes with different colored pads of course for this build we're going to be sticking to black and we've also gone and installed the rear gasket anti-vibration pad on the back of the fan because that's actually how we're going to be mounting it with the rear of the fan pretty much pressing up against the case and then pretty much the same thing for the 140mm fans just grab those black anti-vibration pads chuck those on the back and yeah we'll get to the mounting next now before that we do actually need to flip the case over onto this side because we actually have some cable management that we need to undo here these kind of little cable ties that we need to remove because otherwise we can't actually remove those fans and then you've got this bunch of cables which is probably pretty confusing if this is your first pc build but essentially these are just the cables that connect your power button your audio jack and your front usb ports on the case to your motherboard to actually get them functioning uh we'll deal with these once we install the motherboard so just put these off to the side for now and then down here you'll find the screws for your motherboard case fans and our audio splitter jack and stuff like that definitely a good time to remove that now and then put that off to the side and then at this point we can go ahead and install the fans which is pretty straightforward [Music] so [Music] all right so all four fans are now installed we've got the two phone intake and the two rear exhaust but something really crazy here is that if we just take these cables and plug them into our motherboard we can only control them via the cpu temperature and the system temperature which is not actually what we want for a powerful gaming pc what's actually more important is the gpu temperature we want these fans to spin up as the gpu starts heating up we can only do that though with an external fan controller or with some third-party software so to make things really simple i've just gone for a fan controller from ntxt we're just gonna double sided tape that right here hook our fans up and then once we actually get the pc up and running i'll show you what that looks like on the software side so typically this is a pretty good location to put it you just need to remove the two and a half inch drive slot here and pretty much any double-sided tape will do uh the ntxt fan controller is really lightweight so yeah basically just peel that off that seems like a pretty decent spot for it press it down a little bit and yeah that should pretty much do us so the fan controller comes with three channels essentially so we're only going to be using two here one for the front intake fans and then one for the two exhaust fans it also comes with this neat little splitter here actually three of them and that makes it nice and easy just to get things hooked up so first channel done that's pretty straightforward don't worry too much about the cable management just yet we'll kind of handle that at the end and then the second channel here just plug that in and there we go now we can actually control these fans based off of the temperature of our gpu which just makes a lot more sense for a powerful gaming system i will note though for these fan splitters that are included you've got three fan connectors two of them are three pin connections and one of them is a four pin connection if you're connecting only two fans out like we are here make sure that you are at least using that four pin connection for one of them otherwise you won't actually be able to control them all right so i'll be honest uh most of the boring stuff is over now is where it gets really exciting and we can actually start putting this pc together most of the parts uh you know leading up to this point has been kind of like preparation and stuff like that i think most of us will agree next up we are going to install the motherboard so what we need of course is a screwdriver and the screws that say 632 screw flat on the front and of course the motherboard that we prepared earlier so pretty straightforward to install this we want to kind of angle it in this way just mined that top fan that we just installed and overall pretty easy the cables from the fans might get in the way just move those off to the side so that's looking pretty good uh motherboard is nice and seated you can see that it's sitting on the standoffs of the motherboard tray which is nice and the rear i o is lined up perfectly with the case as well so now we can start our screwing it down all right so there we go that is truly not going anywhere and that is looking pretty clean as well uh three screws at the bottom there is another two in the middle and then another three at the top so eight in total next up is the power supply now let's be honest power supplies are pretty boring but this one here from be quiet is kind of different it's the dark power pro 12 this is the 1200 watt model which should run nice and quiet and you know plenty of headroom for future generations of gpus straight away the build quality on this thing is just absolutely insane like i think this is the first aluminium power supply that i've seen super thick aluminium across the entire shell which most of them are made of just thin kind of steel which is just not that nice to look at you've also got this mesh across the front of the fan which is really nice but yeah 1200 watts 80 plus titanium superb build quality like this is by far the nicest looking power supply that i've ever seen let's take a look at the cables because i actually don't know what we're working with here and so yeah we do actually get sleeved cables as well which is pretty nice to see and the build quality on the cables pretty much the same as like what you'll get with the corsair platinum power supply or an asus 4 power supply for example so those are the cables that we need in terms of what we actually are going to be plugging in we have the motherboard 24 pin which is the beefiest cable of the bunch we have our solder power cable which you'll see is kind of like a flat cable connection then we have our cpu8 pin we have another cpu8 pin over here uh those are clearly labeled with cpu on the side and then the gpu cables which will be like a six pin with a two pin that's split off and we'll grab two of those for our gpu and it's a good idea to actually plug in the cables before we install it because after we've installed the power supply in the case it's going to be pretty much impossible to access these ports so that's where the motherboard cable goes we'll do our gpu cables next which are all the way to the right here labeled pcie and then we've got our two cpu eight pin cables which are labeled p8 on the power supply right here just double checking that every single cable is seated properly that could save you hours and hours of troubleshooting later on and then lastly just the sata power cable that we need for our fan controller and that is everything wired up and then just a little optional step here which i like to do especially for these sleeved cables because i think it'd be a bit of a shame not to just go ahead and tidy them up a little bit with some extra cable ties and you'll find some cable ties in the box of the power supply and also the ones that come with the case [Music] so there we go power supply is installed looking pretty clean in there there is a little bit of room here for cable management and if you do need some more room you can remove this three and a half inch drive cage which is installed by default at the front here now the screws that i've used for the power supply are included in the box of screws with the nzxt case and if you're ever not sure on which ones to use you can always refer back to the user manual at this point though we have a bunch of cables that we now need to plug into our motherboard which i guess for a beginner this would be pretty daunting but you know don't let it get to you it's actually pretty simple big cable here this is your motherboard 24 pin we're going to route that towards the top here and then through this little cable management section then we have our two 8-pin cpu cables we're going to route that towards the top right of the motherboard tree which should take us right towards the 8-pin cpu plugs on the motherboard so just pushing them through that little section there now while we're here we can take the solder power connector from our fan controller go ahead and plug that in and we can also route the gpu power connectors uh through the same gap as our 24 pin motherboard cable what we need to do now is plug in some of these cables so motherboard 24 pin is always going to be towards the top right of your motherboard and then we've just got the two eight pin power cables for the cpu most motherboards will only use one eight pin but this specific board and most enthusiast boards will use two and these are a little bit harder to access but still manageable so you definitely do have to get in there a little bit for those cpu cables they are in quite deep and you do have to work around that top fan but again just be a little bit patient try and angle it in and you should be able to get it done and then we have these gpu cables here which we'll deal with in just a second all right so remember all of the front panel connectors that we push off to the side just a few minutes ago well we should probably deal with those now so let's grab the front panel connector and the hd audio connector and also the usb 2.0 connector from our fan controller and those are all going to be routed generally in the same direction for every motherboard which is right here towards the bottom and then just to give you an idea of what that looks like on the other side so we've routed these cables through this little pocket here underneath the motherboard we've got the front panel connector here we've got the usb 2.0 port right there and then we have the hd audio cable right over there pretty similar to what you'll see on most motherboards out there but again it's not going to be identical so definitely refer to your user manual if you get a little bit lost and then the final connectors that we need the big chunky usb 3.0 port connector and the front panel usb c connector which is kind of shaped like a capital i basically you can just route these in the same little gap that we routed our 24 pin motherboard cable and the connectors should be right underneath it [Music] alright so we're almost there i promise just a couple more things that we need to do now the next thing being installing the cpu cooler now i will note that i have actually rotated the mounting brackets that we installed earlier previously they were installed on the left and the right side of the cpu socket which would have meant that we had to install our cpu cooler like this which is not really ideal for this style of build maybe in different cases and whatnot but what we want to do is actually mount the cpu cooler like this so we have this horizontal kind of airflow fashion just going through the fin stack because the top and bottom of the heatsink are actually blocked so if we installed it like this we wouldn't actually be getting much airflow through the heatsink at all so to do this we do need to just relocate these mounting brackets at the bottom and the top of the cpu socket so let's go ahead and mount the cpu cooler onto the socket and the next thing that we need to do is apply some of the thermal paste on top of the cpu's heat spreader so just unscrew this a little bit this will be the exact same tube that's provided with the nhd15 as well and then we want just like a generous pea-sized amount on top of the heat spreader should look something like that and you know that might be a little bit extra compared to what some people would prefer but i would suggest applying just a little bit more than you think is necessary because if there is a little bit of extra it's just going to kind of spill off the sides of the heat spreader as opposed to there not being enough thermal paste and then well you're not getting the ideal thermal performance so taking our giant heatsink now and just lining it up with the mounting brackets and then you can take the provided little screwdriver and of course while doing this you kind of want to tighten one side a few turns go back to the other side tighten that up a little bit and then progress to the other side tighten that up a little bit more as opposed to just like completely tightening one side and then getting uneven pressure this way we can make sure that the heatsink is mounted pretty much perfectly even across both sides so the heatsink is installed and we also have our two fans here which we're about to clip onto the heatsink so we can actually get some cooling performance one which we removed earlier if you remember was in the middle and the other one here which was in the box of the nhd15 and i've just installed the clips here which is easy enough and that is also uh you'll find those in the box before we do that though we need to take the fan splitter from the cooler and connect it to the motherboard so that we can hook up our two fans and make sure that you're connecting this to the correct port on the motherboard and i know it's a little bit hard to see with the lighting here but our fan connector is uh to the right here just above this portion of the heatsink and again it's very important that you use that and not see a system fan header because in particular asus motherboards are very picky when you leave that cpu fan header not connected in some cases it won't actually let you boot past the bios and i'm actually going to go ahead and plug the fan in before we attach the fan because otherwise it's going to be pretty much impossible let's go ahead and do this one first so just sliding that on there and then clipping it onto the heatsink and if you want you can just carefully use a screwdriver to get that last clip into place i'm not actually sure if we can mount this second fan here due to the memory clearances yeah it looks like we are running into a bit of a height issue so this fan in particular is just sitting a little bit too high so if we go and put the uh tempered glass panel on it won't actually close even on this side on the right we can't actually mount it any lower than that because running into a bit of an issue looks like we're only able to install one of the uh 150mm fans here unfortunately um yeah i would have really liked to install two because i just think that looks a lot better and the cooling performance should be a bit better as well but i mean we do have quite a lot of airflow around these heatsinks hopefully it's going to be okay we will of course investigate what the thermal performance is like but for the time being this is going to be our air cooling solution for the cpu but now for the final step of you know creating this beast of a pc and that is of course installing the gpu so to do this we've got a couple of screws on the left here basically we just need to take off a couple of these pci expansion slots so we've got one screw here and then we've got another one down the bottom here we can then slide that cover up and then just re-tighten it a bit so it doesn't slide back down should look something like that and then we've got a couple of pci expansion slots that we need to remove and these expansion slots are always super super tight make sure you're using a nice beefy screwdriver in this case i'm using the one that comes with the cpu cooler that seems to be working fine so in this case we're removing the second and the third slot and of course don't forget we have that pci slot uh release button which i showed you earlier i think it's kind of funny i was just thinking about this before like i'm just so fascinated by this stupid little button which does the most trivial task when we have like a 16 core cpu and like an insane gpu but yeah this button is pretty cool though but yeah make sure you press that button that way the gpu can properly be installed and the one that we're going with here is the rtx 3080ti supreme x from msi it's an absolute huge cooler design i actually think this is their largest cooler i think it's around 330 mils long or so which i mean even in a mid tower you can see how much space that is occupying basically so much space that you wouldn't be able to even fit fans or an aio or anything like that at the front which is actually another reason here for this build which i forgot to mention why we opted for air cooling instead yeah this is an absolute beast i mean just take a look at the caller design on this thing uh but let's go ahead and install this into the case so expansion slots removed pcie slot just double check that that has been pressed and released then we can slowly angle this thing in of course you want to go left side down first then of course you can line up the slot on the gpu with the slot on the motherboard and then just press down even pressure on the gpu you should hear that little latch on the slot close and yeah there we go the gpu is now installed then we just take the two screws that we removed earlier from the left here and then just use that to tighten down the gpu and you can just angle the gpu a certain way if it's not sitting properly but with the case like this it should be sitting quite fine then we can go ahead and just close this little slot here that we opened earlier and then on to the final step which is actually plugging in the gpu when i say final step this time i really mean it i promise this is the actual last step and man we really have built a super clean pc here so three eight pin cables uh they're all the same doesn't matter which order you plug them in uh just one by one and make sure they're seated properly should look something like that and i mean we'll get a cable tie there to get that looking a little bit neater and same with the cable management around the back of the pc we'll definitely get that looking a little bit cleaner but in terms of the entire pc build i mean it is done it is all done i think it looks absolutely sick just this all black look uh now we can go ahead install windows do some updates and yeah see what the performance is like and i mean what an ultra clean looking pc there's just something so satisfying about an all black aesthetic with those little hints of rgb here and there it's pretty understated overall you know it doesn't look like anything too crazy but then you look a little bit closer you see the details and then you know that this thing was built for performance now to get this actually up and running though you will need to update the motherboard's bios then go ahead and install windows 11. as for the bios simply download the latest version from the motherboard's product page put that on a usb boot into the bios by restarting the pc and spamming the delete key and then go to the section where you can update it then as for the windows 11 installation there are plenty of videos online where you can follow how to do that there's nothing important to note on my end and it is pretty straightforward [Music] now for the important stuff though if you remember we actually set up our case fans using a fan controller from nzxt so let's go ahead and get that up and running here i've got the heaven 4.0 gpu benchmark running in the background i've got hardware info running on the side here which gives us detailed monitoring of everything that's going on with our pc and then we have nzxt cam running off to the left i've labeled our two fan channels that we plugged in earlier the front intake fans and the rear exhaust fans and you basically just want to adjust the fan speed until you're happy with the temperatures that you're getting and of course the noise of your system so for example here i've got the rear exhaust fan sitting at about 1250 rpm and the front intake fan sitting at about a thousand pretty happy with how that sounds and looks in terms of temperatures so i'm going to go ahead and set a fan curve where that's kind of going to be the top part of the curve so essentially low fan speeds until the gpu starts heating up and then it tops out at about those speeds again without this fan controller you'd be stuck with fan speeds only being controlled by cpu temperature which just doesn't make sense for a gaming pc at all it's kind of crazy that we're in 2022 and we still can't do this without a fan controller once you're happy with the fan curve simply save it as a profile and then you can go into the settings and set ndxt cam to start up as minimized and so yeah thermals for this system are pretty decent overall at full load the 3080 ti is pulling around 400 watts and with those fan speeds that we said earlier it's comfortably sitting at around 72 degrees with the room temperature at about 21. and i will mention this was after two hours of constant load so you know pretty much what you can expect well into a decent gaming session cpu temperatures as well absolutely fine definitely no problem while under gaming loads which is what this system is primarily going to be used for and when we consider that this build is actually going to be used at 1080p temperatures for the gpu are even better with fan speeds and noise levels of course a little bit lower as well so performance wise really great to see definitely the mountain of airflow that we set out to achieve now i will mention that if we do throw that 12-900k into some really heavy stuff like cinebench with all 16 cores at full load it does get a little bit toasty but still within a safe range even after 10 minutes there was no sign of the cpu reaching its throttling point and again this isn't what the system is going to be used for but it's nice to know it can handle that type of load now of course if this is the kind of stuff you're going to be doing like daily cpu rendering and stuff like that liquid cooling would be recommended but at that point you'll also need a larger pc case in the end though pretty happy with the finished result and hopefully you found this build guide and the wonga format video nice and helpful as always a huge thanks for watching and i'll see you all in the next one

Channel: optimum

Views: 774,443

Keywords: how to build a pc, pc build, how to build a gaming pc, gaming pc guide, full pc build, pc build walkthrough, cpu installation, optimum tech, intel vs amd

Id: _jjTmRPUay8

Length: 39min 36sec (2376 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 17 2022