Yourself{AU}

Love the ROM and Battery! (I don't see why you hate the google now extra functions Linus; they're really useful)

Just a quick note, response times are NOT the same as input latency/lag. Response times are just how fast the pixels change from 'grey to grey' and while they can affect perceived input lag, it is not actually input lag itself. If you want to find out the combined perceived input lag, check out the display database: http://www.displaylag.com/display-database/

Console gamers who think they're top shit because their stuff is 'cheaper' People who buy crappy laptops at insane prices Alienware Rigid keyboards The deafening start-up noise of intel stock cpu Turtle beaches Beats by 'Dr.' Dre People who leak sound through apple earbuds on max volume because they think it's cool and don't know why they hear a constant ringing in their ears at night People who buy cheap, unreliable PSUs People who won't listen to logic and insist that things are different and more

Great for stalkers, I presume.

Hard drive cage? That's what you think of? I was going along the lines of super-portable gaming rig because of heavy parts of the case being much lighter.

All we need now is Half-Life 3. Jokes, there's no such thing.

I read about that too. Love the idea and it will add some interesting plays into research i.e. how to create a cheap and efficient power supply. Hopefully, they make gold the new bronze :)

Just hope they don't spill water on that stuff.

The thing I love about mATX motherboards is that it gives you a sensible ATX configuration (i.e. 2-way Xfire/SLI or 1 GPU and other x1 cards) while being surprisingly small! This would be my next case however, I like the Fractal a bit more. Sorry Corsair, silence wins for me this time :)

I don't want to live on this planet anymore...

Apologies good sir, it has now been amended to say that AMD platforms cannot support pcie 3.0. :)

I hope Linus sees that :D

Beginner’s Guide to Building a PC So, you’ve decided to come to the highly popular (and potentially scary) world of custom PC building. You decide to check things out on the vast and mighty expanse of the internet and your mind clogs up with scary words like “SATA”, “GHz” and the dreaded “Over-clocking”. Oh dear, maybe you should just buy an Alienwa- HALT! Who are you? I AM THE MIGHTY CAPS LOCK MAN TO SAVE YOU FROM YOUR TROUBLES YOUNG FELLOW/FELLOWETTE! Ok, but where do I start? I want to build my own PC but I have no idea how. WELL THEN, YOU’VE COME TO THE RIGHT PLACE! FOLLOW ON TO THE INTRODUCTION AND WE’LL BEGIN OUR JOURNEY INTO THE BELLY OF THE BEAST! The what? NEVERMIND! FORWARD! Disclaimer: Caps lock man is a figment of the author’s imagination and any attempt to contact him will be met with a horde of sharp PCB shrapnel to the forehead. Also, I take no responsibility if you screw up your rig and/or get ripped off. This is merely advice and is still in progress. Use this as a guideline and at your own discretion. Step 1: Evaluation and Planning. This step is the most important and the longest one so grab a coffee/tea/water/beer/vodka/orphan-tear/drink of choice and get comfy. It determines what components suit you based on your needs, budget and foreseeable use in terms of the future. First, we need to clear up a few things. 1. DO NOT TRUST RRP! They are the prices at launch and are ALWAYS WRONG! There are actual ‘street prices’ for when the components get older and drop in value. 2. Future-proof your PC. This means spending that little extra money to get the better models and thus increasing the life span of your rig. It is dependent on the component and price-performance however, ask around the forum or read some reviews before deciding what model you want. 3. REMOVE ANY BIAS OR LOYALTY TO COMPANIES!!! This is the downfall of the budget-conscious builder as it lulls the consumer into a #YOLO state of mind. You have to do the hard work of searching for reviews from reputable sources. 4. READ UP! If you’re picking parts, always read the reviews first!!! Go to reputable sources like Anandtech and Overclock3D. Now that that’s out of the way, we can move on to the basic list of parts that make up a typical rig. You can skip this part if you’ve already done your research and have the general gist on hardware in the market and components. This part is intended to explain the use and importance as well as some general guidelines to picking parts. (inb4 tl;dr and China wants their wall back) • CPU/APU: You’ve probably heard of a CPU (Central Processing Unit) and this is Intel’s dub on their processors. APU stands for Actual Processing Unit and serves the same function but it is manufactured by AMD. These are the only 2 companies in the desktop processor market and there should not be any bias here. • Memory/RAM: This is basically where your PC caches files for temporary use and is vital to the system. Typically, 8gb of it will do any job except for the most intensive video editing. If you are confused about numbers like 1333MHz or 9-9-9-24, don’t be. 1333MHz is just the ‘speed’ your RAM kit runs at and you can usually disregard the second set of numbers. Despite rumours, overclocking RAM does not provide any noticeable performance benefit beyond ~1800MHz or even 1333MHz. Just stick with a 1600MHz kit and you’ll be fine. Note: Do NOT mix and match RAM sticks unless you know what you’re doing. It will royally screw up your system’s stability. • Motherboard: Arguably the most important component, the motherboard houses all your components. The main thing to look out for is the CPU socket support and the chipset. The socket will be something like 1155 or 2011 and have no other meaning than this CPU fits here. Right now, you should be looking at the 1155 socket. The chipset will be something like Z77 or X79. This determines the number of features to come with the board like native USB 3.0 or SATA 6GB/s. Another important thing to note is the size of the motherboard. There are currently 5 common sizes. These are, from smallest to largest, ITX or Mini ITX, mATX or uATX, ATX, eATX or XL-ATX and HPTX or HP ATX. If you’re confused, just go for the most recent edition as it’s not going to make much of a difference in terms of price. All the vendors are on equal ground (except for Intel) but ASUS and Gigabyte are the big players in the market. • Storage: There are 2 types of storage on the market: HDD and SSD. Hard Disk Drives are mechanical drives that spin disks to store data. These have heaps of storage and are good for budget systems however; they are ‘slow’ and degrade easily over time when neglected. Solid State Drives are based on Flash memory and have no moving parts other than the electrons inside them. It is because of this that they are much faster in terms of read and write speeds however, they are lower in capacity and cost more per GB. Choosing whether you want one or the other or both can be an ordeal. You’re on your own for this one. As well as all the other ones. • Graphics Card/GPU (Optional): This component basically handles all graphically-intensive tasks like games and rendering. This is unnecessary if you’re just playing Facebook games or in the mood for some Minecraft but is vital if you want to play Triple-A games in 1080p. The 2 vendors are Nvidia and AMD (previously ATI) and both are still competing for market share. It doesn’t make much of a difference which one you pick unless you’re going for maximum price-performance. Also, if you’re going with an AMD platform, you cannot use PCI-e 3.0, although this only makes minimal difference (about 1-3%). This is a fact and is not meant to spark flame wars (*wink*). The graphics market is changing constantly so you’ll have to read reviews and ask around. It is true that a bad processor can bottleneck a GPU but if you have a $500 graphics card paired with an i3, it’s really your fault. • Sound Card (Very Optional): This is only for audiophiles or those who hate on-board sound. If you know what a sound card is, chances are you’ve made up your mind already. Your motherboard’s sound should suffice. • PSU: Your power supply unit SHOULD NOT BE OVERLOOKED!!! It is on par with the motherboard in terms of performance and supplies the lovely volts to your parts. If you get a suspicious, el cheapo $50 PSU, your system will FRY and your power bill will blow your roof off. Allocate at least $90 to your power supply and please, for the love of god, get an efficient power supply. I’m not talking 80+ bronze, I’m talking 80+ gold up. Why spend so much on a power supply? First, a good one WILL last you AT LEAST 7 years. Look for one with a 7 year warranty. Corsair make some very high quality PSU’s, but for a price (inb4 sellout). If you’re within Newegg’s region, Rosewill will also do the job nicely. Other brands will also suffice but read the reviews first. Wattages are also important. 500W should do for a lower-end rig but if you’re going for Graphics grunt and want 2 or more GPU’s, you’ll want at least 750W. Anything above 1000W is just plain overcompensating unless you have a metric f*@ktonne of parts. • Case: This is THE MOST disputed section of PC building. Forget AMD vs Nvidia, this is outright war between cases. You will hear the following brands over and over: Fractal Design, Cooler Master, Antec, BitFenix, Corsair, Caselabs, Thermal Take, Silverstone, Lian Li, Generic brand, Nanoxia, Rosewill and many more. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ guide. It all comes down to personal preference here. If you don’t care for aesthetics, go for the cheapest, $10 case on eBay. If you want extreme water-cooling options, Corsair and Caselabs. This is not to say other brands are not good. This is to point out the ludicrous nature of the case market. Look for popular choices like BitFenix Shinobi, Corsair 350D, Antec Three Hundred V2, Fractal Design R4, Cooler Master HAF, Bitfenix Prodigy etc. If you’re still unsure of what to do, read a lot of reviews. It doesn’t matter how old they are, just read them and you’ll come across some terms you haven’t heard of and then you’ll Google them and all will be well. Alright, so you’ve picked your parts, now what? Open up Excel or something similar like Google’s spreadsheet. Now make a list of components from CPU to Case and leave about 6 cells space to write in. Make a column at the end of this and label it ‘Price’. Now go online to Newegg or search up a good vendor for your country (I’m actually lucky enough to have the cheapest vendor in Australia within 10 minutes from my house). Pick your parts based on your newfound knowledge, taking care as to rigorously searching each brand and scouring through reviews. Find the best price, whack the part name onto the spreadsheet and take note of the price as well. Also take into account that prices change constantly on a monthly basis (roughly). At the end, add the shipping cost and do a SUM function to add up your parts. That is how much your rig will cost. The observant reader will notice that I haven’t actually given pointers to budget rigs or high-end rigs. This is to make the end user’s experience as enjoyable as possible because nothing beats the feeling of picking your own parts, sending them in and putting it together. This step does not need to be done within a time limit, it can be done when you have free time over the course of a month. If there’s something coming out within 3-6 months, WAIT FOR IT!!! Nothing feels worse than to have just built your rig and something better coming out for similar pricing. Finally, we have completed step 1. Step 2: Buying the actual parts. You’ve most likely got all the parts in your cart online and you’re confident that you can enter your credit card details and click that wonderful button. There are a few little things that you can buy/prepare to aid you on your adventures such as: • Anti-static wrist strap: Buy one of these for $5 and protect your parts. Watch Techquickie’s explanation. On that note, watch EVERYTHING on Techquickie’s channel on YouTube (Lovely Linus explains everything in his deep, manly voice. Morgan Freeman ain’t got nothin’ on Linus). • Screwdriver: This is something you should already have anyway. Get a Phillips head screwdriver for those tight thumbscrews on your case. • Pliers: A small one for tightening up the motherboard risers and for general use. Do not use on nipples, they hurt. • WD-40: CAPS LOCK MAN ALWAYS RECOMMENDS CARRYING AT LEAST 2 CANS OF WD-40 ON THE PERSON AT ALL TIMES!!! On a more serious note, you can loosen up stubborn, frequently used thumbscrews on your case as well as making your case smell of MAN! (We take no responsibility for misuse of WD-40 on PC components) • A piece of paper: When you’re screwing in stuff, the last thing you want to happen is for a screw to fall into the PSU fan. Place the piece of paper over the fan to prevent shaking the PSU madly to get the screw out. • Gloves: If your case has a nice, aluminium (I’m Australian) finish on it, you don’t want to stain it with dirty hand grease. Use gloves to handle the metal bits. • Multimeter: To look extra-professional when working, grab one of these and stick the pointy bits somewhere on the motherboard gently and nod at the screen in approval. Turn the dial for extra effect. Do not do this when the system is on. • Muscle relaxants: If you’re building your first PC, you’ll find your hands shaking and jittering up and down, especially if it’s a cold day. Take some of these to stop the shaking. Take many if you like to flop around as your mode of transport. • Zip-ties: For cable management • Another Computer: This is extremely useful for when you don't have the manual for a component and need to look online for one. This has saved me more than once. Now comes the waiting game. Step 3: Assembly. Finally, your components have arrived and you’re itching to rip open the boxes, shove them into the case and play around with your new toy but you have to restrain yourself. Here are step-by-step instructions or if you like, you can just go onto YouTube and watch somebody else do it: 1. Find a suitable workstation, preferably a large desk or even a wooden floor. 2. Cut open the bottom of the box containing the case, flip it over and gently put it on the desk/floor. Now lift the box up and voila! That is your case. Remove the foam and stand the case up to admire it. Open the front side panel (the one on the left hand side from the front) and place the case with this side facing up so the motherboard tray lies flat. Retrieve the bag of screws from the inside of the case. 3. Grab your PSU and screw it in, fan facing into the case. There should only be 4 screws used in this step and they can be found in the bag of screws. 4. Lay out your components around the case and grab your motherboard box. Open it and put the motherboard on the box, not the anti-static bag. 5. Grab your CPU and be careful! Take out the stock fan and lift out the CPU in its molded plastic. 6. Open up the CPU clamp on the motherboard and put the CPU inside, making sure the notches line up as it says in your motherboard’s manual. Close and lock in the clamp. 7. Screw the motherboard risers into your case if they have any. Carefully line up the motherboard risers with the holes in your motherboard. Point the I/O slightly down first to make sure it goes into the I/O hole in your case. Double check your motherboard is lined up and screw the motherboard in. Don’t do the screws too tight. Just screw them in enough to hold the motherboard otherwise you’ll crack the PCB. 8. Grab your RAM kit, open it up and put it in the DIMM slots, careful not to touch the gold parts. Refer to your motherboard manual to find out where the best place is to place the modules if you haven’t occupied all the slots. 9. Install your cooler of choice. If you’re going with the stock cooler, line up the 4 pins to the 4 holes around your CPU and push it in until you hear 4 clicks, indicating they’ve locked in. Most likely, your case will have a motherboard cut-out so check it after you’re done to make sure they’re securely in. 10. If you have a graphics card or the like, remove the PCI brackets on your case and carefully plug in your graphics card with the fans facing down. Screw it in to the PCI brackets if your case does that and double check to see if it’s in all the way. This also applies to sound cards and other PCI-populating cards. 11. Stand your case back onto its feet and put a piece of paper on top of your PSU to prevent anything falling in. If your case has HDD trays, use those and pop in the HDD or SSD. If you’re using a cheaper case, you’ll have to screw in the HDD or SSD. 12. Run all your PSU cables to the back of the motherboard tray and start plugging them in to their respective components. The 24-pin goes into the motherboard on the right-hand side and the 8 pin CPU header goes into the top of the motherboard (consult your motherboard manual to make sure). Plug in the PCI-e headers into your graphics card if it has any and run SATA power connectors through to your HDD(s) or SSD(s) or Optical drive. Run your CPU cooler’s fan cable into the CPU fan header (consult manual for location) and run any case fans cables into your motherboard fan headers. Make sure you do some cable management not for looks, but for airflow to your components by using zip-ties. 13. Grab the SATA cables from your motherboard’s accessory pack and plug your storage solutions into your motherboard. Get the front I/O cables and plug them in to their respective ports. The big, blue-headed one is USB 3.0, the cable with small plastic bits on the end are for the front case LED’s (HDD activity, power on LED) and for the actual power button. Plug in your HD audio to your motherboard and again, consult your manual for all the ports. 14. Do a quick double check of everything, close up the side panels and plug in your PSU to the wall and your DVI/HDMI/Display Port cable to your monitor. If you have a graphics card, plug your cable into your graphics card, not your motherboard. Plug in speakers or headphones if you have them and boot up your rig! If your screen comes up with something, anything, it means it works. Get a Window’s install disk or whatever OS you want to use and install stuff. Now, admire your Brand new RIG! Look in the build logs section of the LinusTechTips forum to leer in jealousy. Just kidding. Please, if you have any suggestions or constructive criticism, reply and quote the offending parts and I’ll edit them. Also, I plan to insert pictures at a later date however, I’m pressed for time right now so yea. If there's another topic that's very similar to this and beats mine to the ground, you can report me for negligence and take this down. No flaming me pls, be nice :)