PC Building guide! Hint: Not The Verge Way!

INTRODUCTION

Having seen the "guide" from The Verge on YouTube (not going to link it for your own safety) I decided to make my own mini written guide so you can avoid some bad practices and/or make sure you fit everything as well as possible. Now I am aware that even my techniques can still be improved a lot and to be fair there is always something new to learn so while my way might not be the best way, it is a basic safe way to build your PC properly. This guide is meant to help those that have a basic ideea of what each part is and for those that usually take way too long to assemble it and end up with all the messy cables. Also I am not going to go into detail to what is wrong in the video from The Verge as there are already popular YouTubers that covered it. You can check Science Studio's video or Bitwit's video to see what was wrong with that.

Required stuff 

- 1x Philips #1 screwdriver (or CR VPH1 screw head) for small screws (like m.2 ssd screw)

- 1x Philips #2 screwdriver (or CR VPH2 screw head) for all the screws

- Isopropyl Alcohol (good for CPU cleaning, more details below)

- Thermal Compound (optional, if you want to make sure you put something better than what the cooling comes with)

- Paper Towels (prefferably some higher quality ones since they're very good for cleaning thermal compound)

- [Optional] [Recommended] Even though I have my ways it's good to get an anti-static bracelet.

From left to right: Isopropyl Alcohol, Thermal Compound, long and slim Philips #2 screwdriver for harder to reach screws, Multi-head screwdriver with CR-VPH1 and CR-VPH2 heads and some random paper towels.

Actual Guide 

[TIP] Always plan your case air intake to be on the front and below and the air exhaust on the back and on the top as hot air rises. (Science bit, when you heat air or any gas for that matter it expands making it less dense than the air around and thus it rises).

1. Get all your screws and screwdriver handy, Sort them for each part.

2. Take your computer case, take off the side panels and remove every drive bay/holder and removable parts from it. Leave it bare bones only to have where to put your motherboard . You will add what you need from them later on as you assemble it.

3.a. If you went with air cooling for the CPU then you can already install your front fan(fans). They don't usually make installing other parts more difficult.

3.b [Situational] If you go the All-In-One way for the CPU and you want to install it to the front then don't do it! You will do it later.

4. Check case manual and see where you would need stand-offs, depending on your motherboard size then screw them in.

5. Insert I/O shield in the back, you will hate yourself later if you forget about it and install the motherboard(or everything)

stand-offs, I/O shield and front fans installed. Kinda bare bones eh?

6. Ignore the case for now and put the motherboard on it's box(best way to keep it until you install it inside the case.

7. Insert the CPU into it's slot on the motherboard according to manufacturer's instruction. If you handle an AMD CPU be very careful not to bend the pins since they're on the cpu and quite exposed.

8. [Situational] If you have an m.2 SSD you should install it now.

9. Insert the ram memory into the slots. Normally, if you have 4 slots, to enable the memory to work in dual-channel mode you have to insert them either into slots 1 and 3 or 2 and 4. Yet it's always best to check motherboard manual as it might be different.

Motherboard ready! Cpu, m.2 ssd and the memory sticks are all where they should be!

10. Time to get the motherboard into the case. Double check that the standoffs fit correctly and the I/O shield is inserted. after you fit it and make sure it's also aligned with the I/O Shield, start screwing it into place.

11. Connect all the case front panel stuff on the motherboard. Also, if you installed your front fans, you can also connect them to your motherboard. [Highly recommended] make sure you nicely route your cables through the back of the case as we want to avoid cluttering the visible area.

not that empty anymore eh?

12. [Situational]  Modular power supply. If you power supply is modular, attach all the necessary cables to the brick now. You need power cables for the motherboard, S-ATA Drives, GPU, Sound Card(if you have one), S-ATA for AIO(if applicable), etc.

13. Insert your power supply brick into the case and screw it in the back. If you got space for it to draw air from underneath make sure you place it with the fan on it, it's helpful in keeping it on it's own airflow. The downside is that it might draw more dust, especially if placed on the ground.

14. Route all your cables from the PSU now.

15. Install the 4/8 pin connector for the cpu on the top of the motherboard and the other cable on the side of the motherboard.

16. [Situational] Add rear fan or 120mm/140mm All In One cooling radiator.

17. Add required number of s-ata cables from the motherboard and route them to the back.

18. Insert the disk drives into their slots. That can range from case to case, having internal HDD racks that can be Installed, screwing SSDs on the case, irremovable drive bays etc. Of course if in doubt check case manual to see where's what.

19. Connect s-ata cables to the drives. Also connect the power s-ata cables to them.

Drives are fitted into place.

20. [Situational] Screw the AIO radiator on the case now if you have one and are planning to screw it on top or front. 

21.a. [Situational] If you prefer to use your own thermal compound(like me) clean your cooler of it's thermal paste and your cpu with isopropyl alcohol, let them dry then add just a small pea sized drop of the compound in the center of the cpu and do NOT spread it!

[TIP] even if it's the first application, always clean your cpu with isopropyl alcohol first just to make sure you remove any grease or dust.

How to apply thermal compound. I dropped a wee bit more than intended but it's okay!

21.b Now screw either your cooler or your AIO head over the CPU. If it has 4 screws in a square then always screw them bit by bit in an X pattern so it will spread the thermal compound evenly.

Almost done!

22. Now pretty much all you should have left by now is the GPU and other PCI-E cards. check motherboard manual and see which slot is a PCI-E x16 slot as that is where you will install your GPU.

23. Remove the necessary back plates that align with the x16 slot where the gpu will be installed and install the GPU. then connect the necessary power supply cables from the back. 

24.[SITUATIONAL][HELPFUL] check the picture below on how to use two screws(tip learned from Jayz2Cents) to fix your gpu to prevent the gpu from wobbling. quite helpful when you got a big gpu!

Two small screws fitted in above the gpu "legs" that get inside the back of the case.

25. [SITUATIONAL] Install the remaining pci-e cards but make sure you leave the gpu enough room to breathe.

26. Now if you followed each step carefully everything should be in working order like in the picture below and all that will be left is to put back the side panels and connect everything to your PC.

Ready to go!

Budget/Starter Build (With Ryzen 3)

So, you've got a small budget but you want to build something able to game on? Below you will find my recommendation on a budget build along with explanations to why you should buy each of the parts.
  

CPU

AMD Ryzen 3 1200

GPU

ZOTAC GTX 1060 3GB Mini

RAM

1x8GB CORSAIR Vengeange LPX 2400Mhz

Motherboard

GIGABYTE GA-AB350-Gaming 3

Storage

Seagate Firecuda 1TB 7200rpm SSHD

Power Supply

SEASONIC M12II Evo 520W 80+ Bronze

Case

CORSAIR Spec-02

First of all click here to see the Pcpartpicker price for the build (at the moment of building the price was €639.50)

Now with the parts presented, it is time to explain more about why I suggest them.

 For the CPU I picked the Ryzen 3 1200 as the best Intel alternatives are still 2 core CPUs and for the coffee lake series there are only high-end motherboards available.  the 1200 should provide some overclocking room and decent gaming performance even though it loses in single threaded performance by a small margin but since most games use 4+ cores nowadays it makes it a better pick than an Pentium or an i3 Kaby Lakes which are 2c(4t at best)*. Also as a bonus, AMD promised 4 years of am4 socket support so you can upgrade the CPU to a newer generation without having to change the board.

 I picked the Zotac GTX 1060 3GB mini as the price for Zotac cards is usually lower but still offers a decent quality cooling and reliability. the GTX 1060 3GB should be enough to run modern games at ultra details at more respectable frames and should be quite good for a few years. An alternative would have been the AMD RX580 4gb but due to the summer mining hype the prices are still high and for trading blows with this card it is not worth the extra money.

Probably your question still is why I picked only 8GB of memory instead of 16GB. Well due to the steady increase in memory price, 16GB have ended up at around €200+/- and we're focusing on a budget build. You can always add another 8GB later as there are plenty of games that can still easily handle 8GB of memory. Ryzen usually benefits from higher frequency so if you find 3000Mhz(sweetspot) vengeance lpx sticks close to the price of the 2400mhz stick go for that as it will help you. There is one last thing I want to say about the memory and that is to stick to the vengeance LPX if possible as they usually offer the best compatibility with the am4 chips.

While usually a fan of ASUS motherboards, it is hard to pick anything else than the Gigabyte GA-AB350 motherboard in this price range. It's a quality board that can handle some good overclocking, a decent bios interface and overall where i checked a better price than ASUS/MSI equivalents. You can probably get an Asrock board at a similar price but they are not the most reliable brand in my opinion and experience. I could have gone for an A320 chipset but we would have lost the overclocking and this board should be good for switching to a Ryzen5 CPU and overclocking it as well.

Some of you might have been expecting to see an SSD for storage but trying to keep under €700 and also get some decent storage space made me pick the 1TB Firecuda hybrid. I've been using and recommending Seagate SSHDs for a while now as an alternative to HDDs. The reason is that you will still get a faster boot speed and faster load times to the most used applications while still having a lot of storage space to spare.

Where's the Corsair/Evga psu? Well plenty of reviews and forums later and a few situations from personal experience made me use Seasonic PSUs. They usually tend to perform better than their rating, the bronze ones have a 5year warranty and well this one while having some room for a future part upgrade, it's also fully modular. Need I say more?

And last but not least the Spec-02 case from Corsair. It has a solid build quality, it's a mid-tower with potential for high airflow. It only comes with 2 120mm fans but you can fit up to 2x 140mm fans in the front, one 120mm below, 2x120mm above and one 120mm behind. The case is quite spacious for its price and it allows you to fit a 120mm radiator as well. Of course if you can afford to spend 40euros more on a case I would recommend you to go for the 300r from corsair. They aren't the flashiest cases around but for their price they do offer more customization options on the inside.

As a bonus, for ~€40 you can get the Cooler Master Hyper 212 LED Turbo CPU Cooler that has out of the box AM4 compatibility(unlike the 212 EVO) and will cool your Ryzen CPU way better than the stock cooler,thing which would help you more if you want to overclock. I recommend it as it is a a fairly cheap cooler that really offers some great cooling for its value. I didn't include it as part of the main build as it is not mandatory, it's as I said, a bonus.


I hope this Build suggestion will help you pick your new computer under €700


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c-cores
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