New Game, New PC – Putting it Together

The PC is built and ready for Cyberpunk 2077. See you in Night City!

We’ve got all the parts and now it’s time to put it all together! If this is your first build, it may be a bit daunting, but watch some tutorials on YouTube to get a feel for how it’s done first and then give it a shot. It’s really not too difficult, sort of like putting together a Lego set– everything snaps into place and only fits one way. With that said, let’s start by installing the CPU, RAM, and heatsink/fan onto the motherboard before we do anything else. 

The CPU installation is pretty simple: lift up the lever, match up the little triangles on the corner and drop in the chip. It only fits one way and it should drop right into place. Lower the lever and you’ve just installed the CPU. Easy peasy. Next, let’s put the RAM in place.

RAM is another easy install. If you’re using two sticks of RAM, make sure the sticks are in the correct slots, for my board slots 1 and 3 were the ones to use. Check out your motherboard manual for the correct configuration for your particular board. There’s a little notch in the RAM stick that will line up with the one in the slot. Make sure you open the levers on the side and press the stick into place until it clicks into place. Do the same with any remaining sticks of RAM. You’re done! Now, let’s move onto the heatsink/fan.

Installing the HSF (heatsink/fan) looked like a bit of a challenge, but in the end it was just a little bit more difficult than dropping in the CPU. I watched a few install videos and took the advice to install it outside of the case to make it easier. I’m glad I did. With the Gammmaxx 400, you will need to first install the correct bracket for your CPU socket. After that, it’s time for the thermal paste. Put a pea-sized dab on top of the CPU and install the HSF. The dab of thermal paste will spread out as you press it on and install it. If you’re nervous about installing it like I was at first, watch a few videos to get the hang of things, and when you’re confident, go for it and install it. I thought it seemed to require a little bit more pressure to install than I was expecting but overall the install was pretty easy considering this was my first tower-style cooler I’ve installed (I’ve always just used the stock box coolers in my previous builds).

Next, grab your case and open it up. Take a look and get an idea of where the motherboard will live in the case. Make sure the standoffs are in the proper place for your motherboard screws. My case had them preinstalled for a standard ATX motherboard so all I had to do was press in the I/O shield and slide in the motherboard. Make sure all the ports line up with the I/O shield before you attach any screws and secure the motherboard with the screws that came with your motherboard or case, there should be about nine for a standard ATX motherboard. 

Next you can put in the storage drives. These are pretty simple to install. The setup of these depends on your case, the manual that came with the case should give you an idea of how these fit in. Grab the SATA cable and attach it to your motherboard and drive and put it into place. Done. Now to put in the PSU and power it up!

I had quite an adventure with the PSU. But before we get into that, let’s get the PSU installed. There are three types of PSUs that I came across: Modular, Semi-modular, and non-modular. I decided to go for the modular, which means you can detach any of the cables you don’t need for better cable management. The main cables you’ll need to power your PC are the MB, CPU, PCI-E, SATA, and if you have a lot of fans you’ll want to add the ACC cable as well. Find the connections on your motherboard, attach the cables to their respective pieces of hardware and secure the PSU with the screws. Attaching the cables before installation is much easier than installing the PSU first and installing the cables. After the PSU is secured and the cables are all attached, (double check the connections to be sure!)  it’s time to power up your PC for the first time! Wait! I forgot– make sure all your case jumpers (Power button, Reset, front USB, etc.) are attached to the motherboard as well! Now, let’s fire it up!

Now, it’s important that you know where the power button is on your case. I didn’t know where the power button was at first, so I kept pressing the reset button without any result. I tried different power cables, re-attached cables and still no power. I even picked up a spare power supply and got the same result. Then, I realized with a facepalm, I was pressing the reset button instead of the power button. I thought the power button was just a Cooler Master logo on the top of my case. Derp, oh well. It fired up fine with the spare I picked up and I was pumped! But, I had to troubleshoot my original PSU and see what was up. I tested it again later on and still nothing. I knew it had to be an issue related to the PSU so I ended up filing an RMA with EVGA. My motherboard just doesn’t seem to like the EVGA PSU, and soon enough I’ll have an answer for this mystery.

That’s it! You built a PC! All that is left is to install an OS: Windows 10 or any of the various flavors of Linux should work fine. Fire it up, run benchmarks, be productive! Or join the fun in Night City and play some Cyberpunk 2077! I’ll see you there! 

New Game, New PC – Selecting Parts – Part II

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The guts of the build. Is it enough for Cyberpunk 2077? We’ll soon see.

The easy part is over, and now it’s time to go over the rest of the build: the GPU, case, storage, and finally the PSU to power it all! Let’s go over the case and storage first:

The case I chose was pretty basic: the CoolerMaster NR600 Masterbox. It’s your basic case with a tempered glass side panel. It has plenty of room for fans and enough room to move your hands around without banging around too much. I also purchased some extra fans for cooling. The Masterbox comes with a couple installed already but I added 3 more for added airflow. My last case was a CoolerMaster as well and this one is a nice choice for the price. 

Nowadays, your options for storage are varied. There’s M.2 drives that are superfast, SSDs that are becoming more affordable, and the old reliable HDDs available for data storage on your PC. I really wanted to stretch my budget for a M.2 drive, but I opted for a 240 GB SSD for the OS and frequently used apps and paired it with a good old 2 TB HDD for general storage. I know, HDDs are kind of old tech, but that much storage for under $100 is a great value. Plus, there’s always room to upgrade to one of those M.2 drives in the future. 

Finding a GPU at a decent price was an adventure. First, I had to ask myself: “AMD or Nvidia?” In the past, I used a Radeon card in my PC but for my new build I wanted to try an Nvidia card. I wanted something that would be powerful enough to play AAA games on Ultra settings at 1080p with at least 60 FPS. I used the Logical Increments guide and at first I was looking to get a RTX 1660 Ti for the build. GPUs were tough to find all around. Out of stock at retailers and overpriced by scalpers. I looked for another card, something a bit more powerful but still within my budget, which I extended since I saved a few bucks on some of the other parts. The 2060 Super sounded like a great deal if there were one to be found at a decent price. Most offerings were at least $100 over regular retail. Heck, most of the GPU prices were boosted $50-$100 beyond their regular retail. At first, I figured I’d wait for stocks to refill and prices to normalize until I did a little research on the subject. Prices and stock sounded like they’d be iffy for a while, so I jumped on it and went for a vanilla 2060: the MSI Ventus XS. I was also eyeing the Phoenix edition, it had a compact design but only one fan, and the reviews noted that it gets a little warm under load, so I opted for the Ventus for the GPU. The price wasn’t terrible (I think it was about $30 over regular price) and it was more than enough to power the games I was looking to play. If you’re building a PC right now, think about getting a lower end card now, and upgrade next summer when the GPU situation is resolved. 

Finally, there’s the PSU to power it all. I did a bit of research (maybe not enough) and read some articles on what to look for in a PSU. I’m actually not sure if the research helped (more on that in my next article) but I ended up going for an EVGA Supernova 650 GT modular PSU. It’s a brand I’ve heard of, it had at least 600W which gives ample overhead for upgrades, and it had a 80+ Gold rating. I’m still at a bit of a loss on what these ratings actually mean, but I figured it looked like a quality PSU with Japanese capacitors. Keep in mind your power needs when buying a PSU, there are several calculators out there to estimate these numbers to help you select a unit that will be adequate for your needs.

That’s it for today! The parts are acquired and the build is ready! The next and final part will be putting it together and firing it up! After that, I go into my long descent into Night City for a while, so stay tuned!

New Game, New PC – Selecting Parts

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New game, New PC. Will my PC have the guts to play Cyberpunk 2077?

The last time I built a PC from scratch was way back before 2010, probably around 2006 or so. It wasn’t terribly difficult, I had some guidance from a knowledgeable person from some message boards I frequented. It was fun and gave me the satisfaction of having a custom machine. Since then I’ve replaced the mobo and graphics card, but this is the first time since then that I’ve built a PC from scratch, so it was a new adventure being over 10 years since I’ve been familiar with PC hardware, and let me tell you, this build was an adventure indeed. Let’s jump into the build.

Now, the first thing you should ask yourself when you build a PC is “What am I going to use this PC for?” Are you going to use it for gaming? General purpose? Video editing? These important questions will be essential when you begin looking for parts. 

Now, the main reason I decided to build a new PC is a bit multifaceted. First off, my graphics card crapped out on me, (I think it may be because the games I was playing may have been too demanding for the card, I’ve also heard Radeon cards tend to run on the warm side). Next, the new consoles launched recently: The Xbox series X and S and the PS5. That means a bunch of new AAA games coming to the new consoles and PC! I’m definitely hyped for Cyberpunk 2077 and I somewhat modeled my build around the projected recommended system requirements. Finally, I wanted to take advantage of some new technologies: DDR4 RAM, Ryzen CPU, and Ray Tracing for the GPU, as well as having the option to upgrade, notably the M.2 drives I’ve been hearing and reading about that are superfast. So having a nice new motherboard was a must. Let’s jump into the core components: Motherboard, CPU, and RAM, heck, let’s throw the heatsink in there too.

For the CPU I wanted the best bang for my buck. After a bit of research, the Ryzen 5 3600 fit the bill. It has 6 cores running at a base clock of 3.6 GHz which is two more cores than the Phenom II I had in my old machine, and the reviews I’ve seen for it have been positive. This CPU is a great value, and at around $200 it will leave you extra room for a better GPU, extra RAM, or any other goodies you might want to add to your build. 

Next, the Motherboard. When you’re picking out a motherboard, it’s important to make sure it is compatible with the CPU socket of the chip you’re using in your build. The Ryzen 5 is an AM4 socket, so I needed a board with that socket type. I used the website Logical Increments to help pick out a lot of my parts for the build. I chose their recommended motherboard from the “Good” tier, the MSI X470 Gaming Plus Max. It’s also important to make sure your board is compatible with the RAM you’re going to be using so make sure to check out the motherboard manual of the board you choose before you lock in your purchase. It’ll save a lot of time and headaches in the end. 

Let’s check out the RAM situation. Generally, I don’t buy the least expensive option when I’m purchasing RAM. Look for brand names rather than off brands. Kingston, Crucial, G.Skill and Corsair are all good brands of RAM. I went for 16 GB of G.Skill Ripjaws V 3200 RAM which my motherboard supports. 16 GB of RAM seems to be the standard these days, 32 seems to be a bit overkill but is standard by some builders these days. You can get away with 8 GB at the minimum, but I do like to run VMs sometimes as well, so 16 GB was my number.

All of these components need to stay cool to run optimally, especially the CPU. Cooling is also a must if you want to overclock your CPU. There are a ton of options out there: Tower Coolers and AIO liquid cooling setups seem to be the most popular, but I know there are a ton of custom cooling setups out there as well. I was looking for a great value cooling solution and I did a bit of research on the recommendation from Logical Increments, the Deep Cool Gammaxx  400. The reviews are good on this one and at around $25-$30 it is a great value to keep your CPU cool. It comes with a blue LED to light up your case and fits the AM4 socket even though the box doesn’t indicate it. I was sold when I checked out this review of the Gammaxx 400. It kept the CPU 15 degrees C cooler than the stock cooler in the Prime 95 test. I’m not planning on overclocking my CPU (yet), but keeping your system cool reduces the stresses of excessive heat, and is a definite must if you are overclocking your CPU. 

Well, that’s all for part one. Part two will be the rest of the parts and part three will be putting it all together. I’m shooting to finish the series before the Cyberpunk 2077 launch, which is 6 PM CST, so let’s hope I don’t get too absorbed in the hype while I wait to play this game!

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The parts. Ryzen 5 3600. MSI X470 Gaming Plus Max. G.Skill Ripjaws V. DeepCool Gammaxx 400 HSF.