How to assemble a computer 【step by step】 ⭐️

Assembling a computer can mean an expensive quest to choose components, and as you move up the performance scale between various models, prices can quickly exceed what you earn on the performance side.

While there may not be a huge price difference between a single component and the next highest in terms of quality, applying this logic across an entire set of components will cause the price to grow rapidly.

It's easy to get started with a PC component upgrade process at low cost and then end up with the conclusion that it's a common PC and it's on average for most.

A high-end gaming PC may not be practical for many people, and that's partly because PC parts can be expensive. Most importantly, there are many different interpretations of what "high end" really means.

The good thing about this guide is that beyond the budget that you have to have available, it is that the components are largely interchangeable: you can use practically everything, from the CPU and the motherboard to the memory and the graphics card of the version principal.

The box and cooler are the only potential trouble spots, but comparing and contrasting top-of-the-line and top options is a great way to find out what's best for you.

As for the monitors, those of 1440 pixels and 144 Hz are recommended as the best total value, potentially ultra wide if you prefer, and that's not part of the price.

However, the good thing is that this gaming PC will not be assembled exclusively for games, since with its maximum quality and 4K, you can also use it to be a YouTube streamer, software developer, CAD / CAM modeler or any other work that requires so much PC power as possible.

Index of contents

Advantages of riding your

Before you start building a gaming PC, you will need the components. The first thing you need to decide is how powerful you want your PC to be and how much you plan to spend.

Tools needed

All you need is:

• A standard Phillips screwdriver Discharge static electricity Very patient and want to do the assembly

Assembling your gaming PC

Once you have all the necessary components, it's time to get to the PC mount. Usually the first thing you should do is test the system out of the box to make sure that all parts work together smoothly.

Use the static bag and foam to carefully place the motherboard. Then add the memory, processor, heatsink, and video card. Connect the cables from the power supply. Turn it on once to make sure there are no errors. Then remove the video card to put everything in the box.

Memory installation

Memory is one of the easiest parts to install. We have chosen a kit that Aorus has sent us for the occasion, we have already reviewed it and it is beautiful. It also offers high performance for fat tasks and take advantage of its high speed.

How do I choose RAM? You can check the compatibility with the QVL list offered by the manufacturer of the motherboard, but if you choose the Intel platform all the memories have an XMP profile and we can set their values ​​with a few clicks in the BIOS. Features to consider when purchasing a RAM:

• Capacity: Choose a kit with 4, 8, 16 or 32 GB modules Format: It is not the same to mount a DDR4 or DDR3 RAM. If it is a laptop or a miniPC, possibly mount special SO-DIMM Memory ECC or Non-ECC. We will mount Non-ECC memories that are unregistered and are the cheapest. The ECC memory is normal to find them on servers or Workstation, yes, they are much more expensive. Speed: It is measured in MHz. For Gaming it is recommended to choose memories of + 3000 MHz Voltage: If they are new memories they usually have a voltage of 1.35 or 1.5v. If we go too high the voltage can burn

As we have mentioned, its installation is very simple. We first locate the RAM slots on our motherboard and it just starts by pressing to open the two tabs on either side of the slot. Check the manual that comes with the memory to see if you are at the right address.

Once the RAM is put into its sockets, we will push down hard. You can do it from below as well as on the sides, but both tabs must close and you hear a click. Once installed, repeat the steps for the second, third, or fourth additional memory.

In our case we have installed a kit of 4 16 GB Aorus RGB memory modules. Two of them have the capacity of 8 GB but the other two are false, since they only offer light. It is very important to insert the two good ones in the channel to make dual channel.

Microprocessor installation

Remove the microprocessor from its protective plastic. Do not touch the gold pins at the bottom, although most current microprocessors do not have pins (An exception is the AMD Ryzen from the AM4 socket). In fact, the connection pins are often found on the motherboard itself.

Always check the instructions provided by the motherboard and CPU for accuracy. In most cases, the CPU's metal bar is unlocked and the bracket is opened.

It is very important to note that it is placed in the correct direction (the arrows marked on both will help you align it), the support is closed and locked with the metal bar.

Once installed it will remain as we see in this image. The next step is to find a solution to refrigerate it properly. We continue!

Installing the heatsink

The mounting of the heatsink is also hardware dependent, but is generally connected through the 4 holes closest to the processor socket. The installation of this Aorus heatsink is not an easy task, and it is one of the most complicated we can find and we must follow the manual very well. If we do not, we will end up looking for it and using it.

As we can see in the previous images, it is a single tower heatsink with two 120 mm fans. It has a base of 3 copper heatpipes that will keep our i3-8100 well refrigerated, more than enough to last a lifetime.

This is usually done through screws or plastic locking pins. In our case we have had to install a small backplate in the rear area, then take it with various screws and nuts.

The next step is to spread with the help of an old credit card the thermal paste that the heatsink brings us. If you do not have you can leave a ball like a pea and install the heatsink.

Remember to connect the processor fan to the motherboard for power. There should be a fan connector near the processor. It is very important to orient the fans of the heatsink so that it releases the air out of the box, a very common mistake is not to conduct the air well. Fans usually have a small arrow that tells you which direction the air is blowing out.

Installing the motherboard

Remember, your motherboard is a huge circuit board that hates being scratched by metal, and there is a lot of metal inside your case. So it is important that you place it with the utmost care, aligning it with the I / O panel and screwing it in.

A good trick is to install the heatsink and RAM before installing it in the chassis. When we insert the motherboard in the chassis, I recommend that you bend it slightly, so that it fits perfectly with the back plate.

Once fitted, we will fix the 9 screws of the motherboard in our chassis. With this we will have 100% installed the motherboard We go to the next step! The worst is over chic @ s!

Install everything else

Once your motherboard is mounted, everything else is easy. To install the graphics card, be sure to remove all the expansion slot covers on the back to make room, insert it, tighten the screws, and connect all the cables.

The power supply is one of the most important components of a PC assembly. In our case we have chosen an 80 PLUS Bronze certified power supply and it does not have modular cables. But with a good organization we will hardly notice this lack. At the moment we leave it installed and a little later we will begin to connect the power cables.

Hard Drive Installation

Remove the hard drive bracket from the PC case. Secure it to the back of your hard drive. Then slide the bracket with the hard drive back into the drive bay. As we can see in the image, the connector on the left is the power supply and the connector on the right is the data cable. Plug it in and we have our main storage ready.

Installing the control panel

The most insignificant things are those that make the difference or we think that the PC does not work. The control panel can be one of them, in it we will connect the buttons and LED states of our chassis. The most common are:

• Power LED: It is the state LED of illumination of our chassis. It indicates that it is on. (important to look at the polarity, we can melt the LED) Power: It allows us to start the PC. (nothing happens if we can reverse polarity) Reset: It allows us to restart our PC. (nothing happens if we can reverse the polarity) HDD LED: (important to look at the polarity, we can melt the LED) Speaker: Already less used but extremely useful. With a few slight beeps we can identify what the problem is, the use of a DEBUG LED that quickly tells us what the problem is has been its successor in many mid and high-end motherboards.

Connecting the power cables

The video card will need power from the power source. The appropriate cables should already be at the source, if you do not use the adapter supplied with the video card box, the motherboard will send you a message that your graphics card is missing power, that is, it is 100% necessary and avoid using Molex thieves to PCI Express, buy a new power supply. The hard drive or SSD will also need a power cable as well as a SATA or data cable.

As motherboard power cables, two connectors are essential. The one we see above is the 24-pin ATX connector, this is 100% necessary to make it work, without it the current will not reach the motherboard.

It is also important to connect the EPS cable to the motherboard. Normally they have 4 or 8 power pins, on more base plates we can find two connections. You have to keep in mind that the PCI Express power connectors are not valid to connect it to this connection, you can create a short circuit. Your power supply must provide you with these cables, if it does not bring them, follow our guide to the best power supplies that you will find in the top menu.

When in doubt, check your motherboard manual if you need more power or you can always ask us. Some need an additional cable. It is also a good time to connect any remaining fans or LEDs.

Turn on the gaming PC

Once everything is plugged in and held down, press the power button. Install the operating system CD or USB and follow the instructions on the screen to install it. Once you are inside the OS desktop, install a game to celebrate that you have just built an impressive gaming PC.

Our PC at the moment looks this good. What do you think? ?

Error messages?

Your gaming PC will notify you if something is disconnected, such as the hard drive or keyboard. So be on the lookout for messages or check your motherboard manual in case your card has LED warning lights or a noise associated with the missing item. Most of the time you just need to turn it off, fix what's causing the problem, and turn it on again.

Components for the gaming PC that we have assembled

CPU: Intel Core i3-8100

The Core i3-8100 has a very good clock speed. It has a total of four cores and 4 threads of execution. With this we get a great increase in overall processing power compared to early Kaby Lake processors.

Compared to the refreshment of the new generation of Intel processors. The giant has not chosen to refresh the i3 in the ninth edition (at least the model without an integrated graphics card is not for sale). If we want to improve performance and have something longer, we recommend buying an Intel Core i9-9900k or an Intel Core i7-9700K.

The AMD Ryzen 5 and AMD Ryzen 7 also give great performance at a lower cost. Also motherboards are cheaper and allow us to overclock. It is a very attractive alternative for many users these days.

Other higher-end microprocessor options

While you can usually get everything you need from a Core i5 / i7 or Ryzen 5/7 CPU, there are a few ways these models fall short.

First, it is the number of cores and threads. The processors with 6 cores and 12 threads have existed since 2010, but currently we already have processors with 10 cores and 20 threads, which is what the Intel i9-7900X can offer us, for example, but you can also choose the i9-7920X, i9-7940X, i9-7960X or i9-7980XE. Actually, it's just about how much you're willing to spend.

Intel's Core i9 processors more than double the number of PCIe slots in the CPU, providing room for future growth.

How about the AMD Threadripper 2950X, which will give you 16 cores and 32 threads for the same price as the i9-7900X? It's a viable option for professional work, but when it comes to gaming, Ryzen's added latency and slower core performance sometimes don't appeal. Although we will soon carry out its analysis, after acquiring one to get the most out of it.

If you really want to buy a pair of RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards, try buying Intel processors. Perhaps Ryzen 2 will correct the deficiencies next year, but for now Intel is still the best gaming micros company. It is time to wait for the third generation of AMD Ryzen. We'll be alert!

Motherboard: H370 Aorus Gaming 3 Wifi

8 + 2 power phases, compatibility with 8th generation Intel Core processors, four 2666 MHz DDR4 RAM memory slots and with a maximum capacity of 64 GB in dual channel.

One of the most important advantages of this H370 motherboard, remember that it does not allow overclocking, is that it incorporates two NVMe PCI Express slots for solid state drives. One of them has a heatsink that will dramatically lower temperatures.

If you want to upgrade to an i7 or i9 processor in the future and overclock, we recommend using the Z390 chipset. With this we are cured in health and usually they bring better components: Phases of feeding, refrigeration, more storage connections, etc…

Another option: Gigabyte X299 Aorus Gaming 9

Getting 4.5 GHz performance across all 10 cores is great, and 4.7 GHz with good cooling is also possible. The X299 Aorus Gaming 9 motherboard also includes three M.2 slots, WiFi 802.11ac, dual Gigabit Ethernet, RGB lighting, five x16 ruggedized PCIe slots, and much more.

Aorus also offer multiple X299 boards at various prices, so you will have several interesting options in this component category.

RAM memory: 16 GB Aorus DDR4 3200 MHz

RAM can often be a question mark when building a gaming PC. Should you go for the clock speed or the number of gigabytes?

While quantity may be a factor to some degree, going beyond 16GB requires very specific workloads before you can really benefit from it. As such, it is most reasonable to go after a well-known brand memory: Corsair, Kingston, G.Skill or the new Aorus, which has extremely tight latency parameters.

Compared to the typical DDR4-2400 with CL15 latencies, Memories with speeds of + 3000 MHz already offer us a plus while we play and in high-performance jobs.

If you'd rather have more RAM instead of higher performance, get ready for a much bigger price increase, and the 32GB benefits are only available if you're running workloads that need more than 16GB. Applications like Adobe Photoshop or Premiere quickly “feed” on this volatile memory.

There is no single answer to the question of speed vs. capacity, but most users will see more benefits from faster RAM, at least once we're at the 16GB level.

RAM prices are still quite high right now, due to increased demand for DDR4 from both the PC sector and smartphone manufacturers.

The Aorus kit we've chosen is a great option, but if you're looking to keep prices under control, downgrading to DDR4-2666 memory isn't something you'll likely feel as much about performance as you imagine. On this motherboard it does not allow us to upload the memories beyond 2666 MHz, so we are wasting the plus that the Aorus (3200 MHz) offers.

Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti

The GTX 1050 Ti ranks high in top-tier graphics performance. Technically, the RTX Titan XP is the most powerful GPU in the world, but it comes with a very high price, so you shouldn't even consider it.

The 1080 Ti, meanwhile, is cheaper than the latter and offers a significant improvement over the GTX 1080. It is also substantially faster than anything AMD has created so far, as Vega 64 ended up being disappointing for consumption and Poor performance compared to Nvidia graphics cards.

What do you get from a GTX 1050 Ti? More than 60 fps at Full HD resolution (1920 x 1080p), and more importantly. Then there are graphics cards like the RTX 2080 or RTX 2080 Ti the card offers about 100 fps at 1440p. Pair it with a G-Sync 1440p 144Hz display and games will slide through it with no lag in sight.

A card like the 1050 Ti will also provide great value for money. Since we do not leave a kidney along the way and we can play with a monitor for 100 to 200 euros. The experience is highly recommended.

When choosing a graphics card, keep in mind that fans typically make noise outdoors, but help vent hot air out of the PC case. Some manufacturers offer longer warranties. But if none of these considerations are important to you, we recommend that you get the 1050 Ti that costs less, since otherwise the different models are all very similar. Gigabyte usually offers all of these features.

If you're looking for ways to keep the price as low as possible, the RTX 2080 Ti graphics card might seem like an extravagance, but a gaming PC in this price range just wouldn't feel good about not having the best card available. In this PC it can be installed perfectly but the i3 processor would make a bottleneck and we should go to the i7 or i9.

Overclocking is definitely possible with any of the 1050 Ti cards, and if you want to increase the clock speed, but it is already well squeezed as standard. Both the Nvidia generation 10 GTX and RTX.

Power supply: Gigabyte P650B

When it comes to power supplies, we must bear in mind what type of 80 Plus certificate it incorporates, what power capacity it can withstand, how its rails, refrigeration and a thousand other components are distributed. For this we recommend that you read our guide to the best power sources.

Let's be honest this power supply is not the best that we can buy today, regarding quality / price. But it more than meets what we ask for in this team and the guys from Gigabyte have offered it to us and we are delighted. A good alternative from the company is the Aorus AP850GM, which offers great performance, but costs much more.

Storage: Crucial BX 240GB

SSDs have always been more expensive than HDDs, and it may take a decade or two before that changes. However, the advent of the Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) protocol is another step beyond SATA drives, and the performance is high enough that you probably won't need an upgrade to your main drive for many years.

The Crucial BX 240 disk offers sequential read speeds and very good write speeds on the SATA interface (peak). Although the 240 GB seems few, it gives us to install various games, the operating system and our applications. It is recommended to buy another or a hard disk to save all the data.

Another option would be to choose a 500GB 970 Evo as your boot drive, and then use a more powerful hard drive like the ones mentioned above for archiving purposes, including games you're not actively playing.

Case: Aorus AC300W

Modularity is excellent, and good cable management with a separate PSU partition is almost necessary. Aorus AC300W is one of our favorite chassis for mounting a PC. Then there are other manufacturers that offer very good boxes at a great price. We also recommend that you look at our guides.

Which screen do I choose?

It is a little known fact that the monitor can really have a great effect on how well your gaming PC can handle games. One of the main factors that can affect the amount of demand for your graphics card is the resolution of your monitor (number of pixels on the screen, for example 1920 x 1080).

Choosing the right monitor for gaming usually means looking for a fast refresh rate and the resolution you like to watch your games at.

If your video card has FreeSync or Gsync, try pairing them with a backup monitor. The setting right now is 2560 × 1440 resolution with 144Hz refresh rate, but these numbers are always on the rise.

If you try to play games with the highest resolution set on your screen, this can sometimes overload your graphics card. The good news, however, is that the resolution of your monitor can be adjusted.

All monitors will have a maximum resolution, however depending on the size of the monitor you can sometimes choose a smaller resolution with no noticeable visual difference but this change can make a big difference in the performance of the graphics card.

And the operating system? Windows 10 or earlier?

After spending so much time and money picking and buying all the hardware, it's easy to overlook the software. You'll need to purchase a Windows 10 Home or PRO product key for your gaming PC if you don't already have one.

You can buy a flash drive that has the operating system or pay to download Windows 10 instead. But through Amazon and other pages you can acquire a legal license for a very fair amount.

Mouse

There are many gaming mice, so you can find a comfortable one for your hand with buttons that you can press without having to think about it. Logitech, Razer, and Corsair are big mouse makers.

There are two important factors to consider when choosing a mouse: the technology used and the number of secondary buttons.

Optical mice tend to be cheaper and offer more than enough precision for a player's needs. Laser mice are more accurate and can work on any surface, including glass. However, in reality they may be more accurate than they should be, detecting minor and irrelevant details that end up causing unwanted instability. Furthermore, they are considerably more expensive than their optical counterparts.

As for the secondary buttons, a standard mouse has three buttons that you are probably familiar with: a left click, a right click, and a clickable scroll wheel.

Gamer mice, however, may include additional buttons that can be programmed to correspond to a variety of controls, whether in or out of a game. Having these programmable buttons can be quite useful, as they allow you to run complex macros at the push of a button.

WiFi card

Unless you have Ethernet ports on your gaming PC, you will need a WiFi card to connect it to the internet.

Some motherboards come with built-in WiFi connectivity, but they may not be very good, so getting a card with an extension antenna is a good idea.

Keyboard

The keyboard is also about comfort and feel. Many people use mechanical keys and LED lights to write in the dark.

The most important choice is whether you will have a regular membrane keyboard or a more advanced mechanical keyboard. The difference between these may be insignificant or it could mean the world, but that depends on the user.

Membrane keyboards are pretty simple: A key rests on a rubber dome, and when enough force is applied to the key, the dome collapses and the key makes contact with the circuit board.

Mechanical keyboards, on the other hand, are much more complex. In this case, a key rests on top of a switch, and does not need to be pushed fully before the mechanism is activated and the switch contacts the circuit board rather than the key as it does on a membrane keyboard. Also, there are several types of switches, although the MX Cherry are the most popular.

And do I need a Joysticks?

A large number of games are made for consoles first and are only transferred to the PC later. Because of this, it is not uncommon to see games that are poorly optimized for keyboard and mouse controls. But even if that's not the case, some games are just more fun to play with a joystick.

The best joysticks available right now are Sony DualShock 4 and Microsoft Xbox One Controller, although there are other options, too.

Final words and conclusion about how to build a computer

There has never been a better time to be a PC gamer. The gaming world scene is vibrant: The graphics powers that drive games are best seen on the PC, and it's a must-see first stop for independent developers creating creative and innovative games. Although some very expensive DDR4 memories during this year 2019, you do not feel like doing a migration if your computer has a time.

Ah! Another thing was missing, this PC that you have seen in images and that we have used to make this article we are going to raffle with the guys from Aorus. I recommend that you keep an eye on social networks, because it will be done soon. Good luck!