 🎵 Flames fill the sky 🎵 🎵 It's just your frame of mind 🎵 🎵 Strike the match 🎵 🎵 Night your life 🎵 🎵 Spread your wings in the night 🎵 🎵 Anticipate lonely roads 🎵 I could do PC build guides forever. I really could. With the millions of combinations of computer parts, I could make millions of these videos. And none of them would be the same as each other. Today, not the same is not good enough. And instead we'll be doing something really different from anything I've ever done before. Today's build guide is not about the expectation that you're going to watch it, buy these parts, and put one together at home just like it. But rather, about the sheer spectacle of a gaming PC made for one purpose. Wicked CPU overclocking. Welcome to the ultimate sub-zero PC build guide. Normally, once we start out to build at our safe, uncluttered, static-free workstation, the only thing we really need to build a PC is a multi-bit screwdriver. But today's a little bit different. You'll need some scissors. I would recommend getting an iFixit kit so you got some pokers and pratters, as well as a variety of more esoteric bits. And then a pair of side cutters, a pair of pliers. Those kinds of things will also come in handy. And the last one is you should probably grab a magnetic parts tray to keep all the little screws from getting lost. Now, as always, before you begin assembling the computer, I recommend plugging the components in together and powering the system up once outside of the case to ensure everything is working using the motherboard box as a handy-dandy test bench. For our CPU, the choice was obvious. The Core i7-4790K has a wicked 4 GHz clock speed out of the box without even factoring in turbo boost. Doesn't kick off a lot of heat, which is great for keeping temps cool, and is basically the top-tier CPU of choice for gamers everywhere who don't have any use for extra cores that can be had on the premium LGA 2011 III platform. Now, normally, I actually copy-paste these CPU installation instructions, you know? Not today. Forget about lift the retention arm. Put down the retention arm. No, really, forget about the retention arm. We're going to remove it. Use a size 20 Torx and remove these three screws from the front. Place the CPU into the socket to keep the pins safe while you're working, and then it's time to break out the kneaded or art eraser that we'll be using to insulate the CPU socket area. It's very important that there is as little air as possible around here, because where there's air, there's moisture, and where there's moisture, there's condensation as soon as it starts to get chilly, and as soon as there's condensation, there's water on motherboards, which, well, I'm sure you see where this is going. Build up a thin layer of art eraser around the outside of the socket, put the retention mechanism back on, then install the CPU again. Flip the board over and cover the backplate with art eraser, then run the CPU mount bolts through their steel backplate, one of the included neoprene insulating backplates, then through the motherboard. On each bolt, use a plastic washer, then a steel one, followed by a nut, and tighten them up nice. Now it's time to build up the art eraser on the front until we're almost even with the top of the CPU heat spreader. Go slow, focusing on eliminating pockets for air to get trapped in. You can use a small poking tool to fill gaps. Once that's done, apply a layer of ArmaFlex neoprene adhesive insulation, and you're pretty much good to go. Now, there are a lot of different schools of thought when it comes to socket insulation, and this technique is not actually the best one, but should be fine for the temperatures we're aiming for. If I was doing something more extreme, like a two-stage or even three-stage phase cooler, or dry ice or liquid nitrogen, I would add some shop towels between the eraser and neoprene, direct some airflow at the socket, and even consider filling the socket pins with dielectric grease, something that's gone out of fashion lately due to RMA concerns, it's almost impossible to clean out, but that undoubtedly improves safety at extremely cold temperatures. Memory was an easy choice for this build. The theme is white, like frost or something like that, so I reached out to our friends at HyperX who hooked us up with a massive 32 gig kit of their Fury White DDR3 1866 RAM for our system. With that selection finished, all that's required is to pull back the tabs on the memory slots, align each module according to the notch in the bottom of the socket, and press firmly on both sides until the latch closes. Fill the further sets of color-coordinated slots before the closer two if you're using only two sticks of RAM. Now, my original plan for this system was to just find some white case, slap a system in it, and call it a day. Then, I found this. The PC V10 phase change from LD Cooling. I mean, what's more white than a white case? A white case that makes it snow on your CPU. This bad boy features quad 120mm radiator support on the top, a single 120mm support on the back, motherboard support for XLATX, EATX, ATX, pretty much any ATX you could want, and is made of pure white powder-coated aluminum with the exception of the steel base to support the integrated single-stage phase change cooler. In the front down there is the condenser, which cools the gas that then gets sent through the insulated line up to the evaporator head where the rapid evaporation of the liquid inside, an endothermic process, cools the CPU and the resulting vapor is recycled back to the large black Danfoss compressor that compresses it and then pumps it to the condenser where it all starts again. This is the same principle that's used in your refrigerator at home, with the key difference being the strength and rated duty cycle of the compressor. Please don't try to cool your computer with a fridge. You're not the first person to think of that. It's not designed to handle a constant heat load, and it will die. There's some other secret sauce in here as well. LD Cooling has included their own USB controller board that uses a Type-K thermal probe in the evap head to display temps on the built-in display in the front, delay systems start up until the phase system is up and running, and to automatically shut down your cooler once the system is powered down. They've got some more stuff planned too, like fan control, for example. They've put a lot of work into developing this puppy. Alright, so start by removing the two top side panels and the left side bottom one with a hex head screwdriver and stash them somewhere safe. Use four screws or anti-vibration mounts to install a rear 120mm cooling fan, and install your nine motherboard standoffs here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Our motherboard choice was another no-brainer. ASUS's Sabertooth Z97 Mark S Sobranko board looks sick, features all the latest and greatest TUF series tech, so lots of controllable fan headers and temp sensors, slot covers, a reinforcing backplate, a five-year warranty, and of course, ASUS's legendary build quality and BIOS layout. Press firmly on all four corners of the I.O. shield at the back of the case until they snap into place. Hold the board in place. Laying fridges on their sides isn't recommended, so I'm not tipping this guy over as a precaution. While you screw in the middle standoff, then do the other eight in these locations. While we have easy access to the board, plug these two included cables into the power switch and the check 12-volt spots on the USB controller, then run the other ends to your power switch header and a fan header on your motherboard like so. You'll also need to plug in the reset switch and your LEDs at this time. This case has no front USB audio or anything else like that, though, so... that's it. So I was going to choose a power supply that comes in white by default, and then I was like, Gahhh! We have the Corsair AXI version of those, like, awesome individually-sleeved cable mod cables, so I gave Corsair a call and got their excellent 80-plus platinum AX860i power supply put in the mail for me. It arrived, I took that sucker apart immediately, painted her white, and put her back together. Now, with all of that said, for most users, I would strongly recommend just buying away power supplies, since the internals of computer power supplies can be extremely dangerous and even kill you, but man, you cannot deny how nice the results look. Put the power supply in on the little pedestal in the basement, fan side up, and install four screws like this into the back of it. Plug the 8-pin connector into the top of the motherboard and run it down the backside of the motherboard tray to the power supply, then do the same for the 24-pin connector. You can also plug in a two-connector SATA cable at this time, and two PCIe cables for the graphics card. Our drive selection for this system is two Intel 730 series SSDs running in RAID 0. SSD RAID continues to be the weapon of choice for enthusiasts who want more than a single SSD can offer, but aren't willing to pay the premium for PCI Express or M.2-based solutions, and 730s are excellent for RAID operation thanks to their exceptional performance consistency. Now this case's native 2.5-inch drive support is mostly done by screwing in through the front of the motherboard, a solution that isn't that elegant, but fortunately it also includes a dual-drive 3.5-inch adapter. So we're going to use two of these screws per side, per drive, to secure them to the adapter, then use these rubber grommets to slide our adapter into the bottom-most 3.5-inch bay at the front. Now we can run SATA data cables as well as SATA power cables, and... that's pretty much it. Now I realize this is becoming a bit of a pattern here, but the video card was yet another super-duper obvious choice. I mean, hmm, what video card is white enough to go with our white-themed build? I guess maybe the GTX 980 Hall of Fame from Galax. The only real question was, liquid cool it or leave the stock air cooler on it? And that question was answered for me when the only company that makes a block for it didn't have it ready in time for filming and didn't reply to my emails. So there you go. This case includes no PCI slot covers, although they can be purchased separately if you don't have any lying around. So this process is as simple as lining up the card over the top PCIe 16x slot, firmly pushing it into place, and installing two of the included fine threaded screws. Finally, plug in your two PCIe 8-pin power connectors from before. Now normally I do the CPU cooler much earlier in the building process, but in this case, well, I kind of wanted to save the best for last. Just for fun, I fired her up before actually putting her on the CPU to see the frost form on the evap and hear the boiling liquid inside, and, ah, man, this stuff geeks me out. So you're going to want to cut a length of the included insulation tubing and position it as a boot under the universal hold down plate like so. Apply thermal paste to the CPU, preferably Arctic cooling Ceramique. Put a plastic washer, followed by a metal one, followed by a spring, followed by another washer and the included thumb screws, and tighten down the cooler. Use your common sense as far as tightness is concerned. It needs to make good contact and, you know, compress the insulation that's around the CPU socket, but you also shouldn't be trying to break your motherboard in half. Finger-tight only, no tools. Normally at this point in the video I try to do some cable management and finishing touches and try to do a recommendation for a monitor and peripherals that kind of go with the theme of the build, but frankly, there's nothing left to do cable management wise other than plug in this fan that I completely forgot to do earlier. And then as far as peripherals go, well, white monitors are pretty hard to come by these days, so there's not a whole lot to say there. And as far as white peripherals go, well, if you eat as many Doritos as I do while you're gaming, I wouldn't really recommend white peripherals. Why don't you do yourself a favor, buy some RGB stuff and set the LEDs to white or something if you're into color matching. The linustechtips.com forum would be a good place to go if you want specific recommendations in your price range. At this point, you can power on the system by pressing the, you guessed it, power button on the front, and if the cooling system is already cold, you'll need to wait a few minutes for it to warm up, and once that's done, the PC itself will then power on and you'll need to press delete to get into the UEFI BIOS. Load optimized defaults, then switch to advanced mode in the BIOS by pressing F7, and make sure that the fan header your phase controller is connected to is not set up to run with any sort of a fan control curve at this time. We've actually got a full overclocking guide for this particular CPU, which you can watch here, but the key difference in this case is that we have the ability to push more voltage through the CPU without causing instability due to thermal limits and the inherently better overclockability of processors that are running at cooler temperatures. And I guess that's pretty much it. That's all, folks. I hope you enjoyed our phase change cooled whiteout build guide because I sure did. I was able to dial in a 5 GHz stable overclock at 1.4 volts with load temps in the single digits and low teens in a matter of seconds, and I hope this glam footage you guys are checking out of the system turns your nerd crank as much as it does mine, because as much as a system like this is beyond impractical, I mean, we're talking a few percent better performance in games and benchmarks in exchange for a lot of noise and extra heat being dumped into the room that the computer occupies. Boy, was it fun for me to play with something extreme like this for the first time in almost 10 years. The last time I went sub-zero was with a chilled liquid setup that I built from a torn down window air conditioning unit. So this is quite a lot more elegant. We've come a long way since then. I hope this was fun for you guys to watch. Thanks again for watching. Like it if you liked it, dislike it if you thought it sucked. Leave a comment at the link in the video description on the Linus Tech Tips forum. If you want to discuss this particular build or you have any questions about it, that's a great place to ask. Also linked in the video description, a place where you can buy a cool t-shirt like this one, give us a monthly contribution or change your Amazon bookmarks, one with our affiliate code, so we get a small kickback whenever you buy stuff on Amazon. That kind of thing helps us out a lot. Thanks one more time to you guys for watching. To, well, yeah, you guys for watching. Oh yeah, and the folks who worked really hard making this video happen, editing it, shooting it, and all that good stuff. See you again next time.