This will be a long "guide" on how to build a PC, kinda. My brother did it for me, so these are just my notes of observing what he was doing and what he told me. Let's jump in to it.
(don't worry I took lots of pics with my Note 9)
The first thing we did was take apart the case. Remove all the sides and even removing pieces of the shell I didn’t even know you could remove. I don’t know anything about building computers remember. This is why I’m documenting and he’s building. Cool fact about the case, it’s actually designed the way it is because it was built for watercooling and not fan cooling, but reading reviews fan cooling works great also for this case. So we will be using fans.
After we take apart the case we take out the power supply and motherboard; the power supply is 750 watt and 80 plus gold which means its 80% efficient is how I understood it.
The processor is an AMD Ryzen 7 3800x. I know that is powerful but no idea what that means. What’s cool about this processor is it comes with a fan, but with me doing a lot of 4k video and photo editing we have a second (pretty beefy) fan to help keep everything cool.
Important details about installing the Processor, you don’t press down on it after placing it on the motherboard; you risk bending the little prongs. How to test if it’s in place, you just lay it down, and then gentle wiggle the edges and you’ll know if its in place or not. Also do not touch the bottom when taking it out of the packaging.
Now that the processor chip (CPU) is in place, he will place the motherboard in the case. Line up the USB/HDMI etc slots to the I/O shield. When you screw the motherboard in, screw diagonally so you don’t warp it.
Next up is the SSD. We have a 1TB SSD but this is no ordinary SSD, it’s a M.2 which is the fastest of the fast. That Lightning Gen black bar you see in the middle - remove that and the tiny little 1TB SSD goes in there and then place that cover back on top. (remove the tape over the thermal paste on this bracket, don’t want any melted plastic in there)
Next step is the RAM. Installing RAM is pretty simple, and depending on your motherboard things will be slightly different but my motherboard has 4 RAM slots. We’ll be installing two 8GB RAMS. The weird part is you have slots 1A, 2A 1B and 2B and you install them in 2A and 2B if you’re only using 2. Hmm. odd. But okay. Just line up the RAM (stick?) and press firmly down until you feel it click in and boom you’re done. I can definitely upgrade my RAM and install it on my own in the future.
Now we have to install the backplate around the CPU so we can install the fan. Sometimes you need it sometimes you don’t, depends on the fan you have. I keep saying we, but really I’m just sitting here asking questions, writing down the process and drinking a beer - as if 3 plates at Thanksgiving wasn’t enough carbs already. He’s doing all the heavy work.
Screwing in the fan is similar to the motherboard, you screw in diagonally. This time however, instead of screwing one in all the way, you partially screw it in, then the diagonal screw partial, and keep rotating around tightening little by little until they’re all in tightened down.
Well, we encountered our first problem. Have to expect this right? The super fan doesn’t fit. He thought it might be sticking out too far and so I decided, well let’s just try and put the glass panel on and see if it fits. It doesn’t fit. No worries, more annoying work for him, we just use the fan the CPU came with instead of the one he bought. Unfortunately, I put a tiny scratch on my glass panel in the process of trying to make it fit. Oh well.
After a delay because some thermo-paste spilled over on the motherboard (not anything major) we needed to buy isopropyl alcohol, but it was 11pm and all the stores were closed.
Fast forward to the next day, its now 10am and we’re back to work. The new fan is installed, the thermo-paste has been cleaned off and now we’re installing the power supply. On the power supply you want the fan towards the exterior of the case. You’ll want to plug in the wires first and get them organized before hand just to make your life easier before the power supply goes in. The power supply box comes with a bunch of cables (more than you’ll need) but they’re all labeled and the inside of the power supply has labels as well to make it easy to figure out which cables go where.
Graphics card took a little finagling to hook up but with a text message to his friend we were able to figure out how to place it in. The harddrive slot was getting in the way, I was too busy editing photos on my laptop but he ended up figuring it out and it was an easy solution. Apparently the M.2 shield was getting in the way, so we removed it and that seemed to fix the problem. The shield is just for looks so we’re not missing anything important by not having it in there.
Then we hooked up the hard drive and plugged everything up, connected all the cables to where they needed to go and boom. We have a computer.
We quickly tested it in with a wall outlet just to make sure everything worked; everything seems to turn on and nothing caught on fire so I’d say that’s a success.
If you're looking to build a PC, let me know. This is the third one my brother has built so he could do it for you.
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