 Normally, I'm the guy who makes the guide for how to build a PC, but today We're shaking things up. We're doing something different I will be following the guide to how to build a PC But not just any guide the most infamous guide in PC building history the one created by the Verge I don't know if I'm ready No, I'm ready. It's dangerous to go alone. Take this. The hell am I gonna do with this? This video is brought to you by Cable Mod. Cable Mod allows you to personalize the look of your PC with custom colored sleeved cables Try out their configurator and build your cables exactly how you want them with their realistic cable preview at the link down below Oh, this is hilarious. Oh actually need the tweezers. Oh, there's a screw stuck in it. Okay now now we're done with them step one Find the guide unfortunately the original upload is no longer there What's the story behind that there were some lawyers involved someone wanted to do a takedown notice of it? I didn't greenlight that and apparently that just made people angry but the original guide you're on the verge that's gone now The written portion is still up there. Yeah, is it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, essentially that's the script that was supposed to be turned into an hour long video. Maybe around three o'clock They're like you think we can finish up at four so you can hit out early I did not get to see it until 48 hours before it went live and that's on the next Friday So I can't tell my editors. I can't call Neelai. I can't tell anybody that this is crap goes up on Monday at 8 a.m That's it. All right, let's do it first. You need a tape first. You need a table. All right Yeah, a table we got a table. Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. I built my first computer on the floor Yeah, I did. I did I actually did the first computer I ever upgraded when I was four was Windows 2000 to XP and that was done on the floor on the carpet with my dad. Yeah. Okay, so you don't need a table That's fine a thermal paste applicator. Okay, and Allen wrench Some tweezers to tight up the wires a Swiss Army knife, which hopefully has a Phillips head screwdriver now this much better Unfortunately doesn't have a Phillips screwdriver on it, right? So but it cuts things but it'll cut it'll cut things It'll cut things. It'll work. You looked really nervous. Yeah at that point that was my fourth machine I was my first time doing it on camera, but these are not tweezers. They are not tweezers. Those are cable ties These are cable ties. He does know guys Last but not least an anti static bracelet. Okay Now this seems like it was just one of those things where you had a misunderstanding at some point or another Yeah, but those bracelets have no Anti-static functionality have to be yeah. So here give us the demo How do you use an actual anti-static bracelet? This housing is grounded as part of the design of this table So now we are grounded Also, we did a video recently with electro boom where we demonstrated that Actually, it's very difficult to kill your hardware Bottom line then what tools do you need to build a PC screwdriver? Cable ties a knife or a sharp edge some kind of cutting implement of some sort You might need an Allen key Yeah But odds are if you do it'll be included with whatever part requires it place items Into the case and make sure that they all fit and then start working. Okay. Now we've jumped ahead a little bit here Yeah So they were like can you do all of this stuff top down and then the portions where we're facing? Front of you like we'll do it normally but we're gonna do our best today to follow the guide cool. So Oh, apparently we need our case right and our power supply, right? So let's get that just trying to match the state of preparation of the case here. I've got this panel off I've got yeah accessory boxes removed, but the sleds are back in there I couldn't understand who it was geared towards We had this baby simple explanation of what a computer is at the beginning Yeah, and then the guide portion all of a sudden I'm going whoa. Whoa. Hey, whoa now hold on a second complex Yeah, what we're doing right now should have been in the original video. That's all cut out. Yeah This is an RM 850 rather than an HX 850, but hey close enough close enough Yeah, all right, and then in terms of fan placement now you did take some flack over this I'm not sure if it was entirely fair But I would recommend in a case like this that the fan be oriented to the outside of the case that way It's drawing in nice fresh air and then exhausting it out the back as kind of its own isolated thermal zone gray Oh, you know what? We might just need that Swiss Army knife here Okay, you know what nice Okay gorgeous And now we're really gonna start building and then we got this continuity error Yeah, power supplies over on the table Yeah, and screw in with confidence But also don't screw in too hard otherwise you could crack the board now the odds of cracking the board are pretty slim Unless you're really going ham in which case it's actually true that can happen The most common instances of cracking the motherboard though are when you've made another mistake Say for example you didn't install one of your motherboard standoffs, and I've seen this happen even with people who have built PCs before If you keep screwing when one of the standoffs is missing And there's no support a lot of the time that screw thread is actually the same as the threading on the motherboard tray itself And you can crank the motherboard down and crack it and also it has support for NVMe SSDs meaning you can get really fast SSDs that are really easy to install now that that parts a little awkward Let's get our power supply screwed in real quick here, and then we'll go from there by the way That's our new screwdriver that we're coming out with oh sweet, so it's it's LTT It is there's a magnetic tip also of course nice only the finest for the LTT viewers It's not actually out yet, but it will be on LTT store.com gotcha Looks good now Stefan Did you study up at all for the build today? Yes, I watch a couple of your you did watch you did watch a couple of our videos And do you do you kind of realize now at this point that? Like there were definitely some things you could have done better. Yeah video, okay This is definitely one of them like the back plate for that motherboard is one Yeah, when I realized that I didn't put it on and I'd already screwed in the motherboard not cracking it though Thankfully, so I took it apart from this point. That's why there's a continuity error Yeah, the reason I never did a react video was because most of the mistakes that you made here were ones that I have made At some point or another including this one right if we're being honest with ourselves If you've built more than a dozen or a couple dozen PCs you might have accidentally put the motherboard into the case without installing the IO shield before and Truthfully the way Stefan is correcting his error here. You can actually see what he's doing with his hands He's unscrewed the motherboard Slid it back He's installing the IO shield and then obviously in order for the finished shots of the build to be completed The motherboard has been slid back into place and screwed in it's not wrong But it's not helpful to a beginner. Yeah is the issue here. Yeah Don't include that You know what actually let's include that I put this in upside down Oh, this is even though I have built probably hundreds of computers on camera So something people don't realize is when you're doing something for yourself You would turn it around and you'll be looking at it like this while you're working on it So it's a lot easier to line up where the holes are Yeah But when you're doing something to present to camera, especially if you're not used to it It can be very easy to make these sorts of mistakes and it's not worth Crucifying people over them. Although if I can speak frankly, of course, I think you probably could have avoided at least some of the backlash By just kind of going you know what I screwed up in the first place. Yeah, so Why didn't I why didn't you know? everyone at the verge is looking to me to leave that situation and it's sort of like either you back down and you let all these people steamroll you or You keep it up there and my original advice was to keep it up there and then now lawyers get involved And it gets taken down. I can tell you the advice you got was really bad. It was really bad Yeah, that was bad advice. I would not have given that advice I mean internally when we upload something that is clearly problematic Rectify we we fix it. Yeah once and for all this is your redemption story Stefan Go for it. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Yeah, there we go There we go. Okay. Thank you. This corner wants a little bit more I can see you have been watching some of my guides. He's holding the motherboard by the heat sink Yeah, he think yeah as someone who's built a lot of computers on camera I could at least relate to almost not all of the mistakes But a lot of the ones that were made in the video Yeah, it takes three times as long that's it I think we're in you always want to do a sanity check for where your standoffs are located Sometimes the case manufacturer installs them for you, but your motherboard manufacturer had other ideas So make sure all of them are visible through the holes. There's an empty one Yeah, this is the kind of thing that I would catch if I'm taking my time doing it properly Stefan and I have set aside about three and a half hours to shoot this build for you guys But it's something that can be easily missed if you're under pressure and you're being rushed and this can be a killer this right here Can short out the traces on the back of the board and fry it? So let's go ahead and get that removed now you guys see me kind of standing here supervising That's one of the reasons that again. I didn't get personal about what went up in that video and that's because to me it looked more like a systemic problem someone especially who has never done something before on camera should have an experienced supervisor making sure that they don't say or do anything dumb because It happens right and And that's the role that I'm playing here that was clearly completely absent at the verge how the Did that video ever get uploaded after that they told me that that would be their new policy moving forward well Evidently good how helpful is that for you right? All right? Let's get this screwed in actually hold on We should be following the guy yeah, we should be following the guy doesn't screw in the motherboard yet Yeah, pay close attention to the brace that goes at the okay You called it a brace and I oh you because there's no screw it really just has to go outside of the case and clasp Okay, yeah, that was done from outside should have been that was another one should be from the inside But I can see your hands you wouldn't have gotten it in if you were putting it in from the outside It's just yeah, you know it's the verbal equivalent of fat fingering So yeah, you know yeah, and this is very important because otherwise You can't align the motherboard correctly with the holes the reason It's important is because it acts as an EMI shield strictly speaking the computer will completely function fine without it It's a bit of an outdated Way of thinking now that we have so many computer cases that have glass or acrylic side panels How silly is it to think that these little gaps are where all the EMI is gonna get out? But that is their original purpose Those aren't the right screws nope, so this is the redemption moment show me the correct screws for the motherboard Another thing that can be tricky for inexperienced builders is that you can actually have Multiple types of screws with the same threading included with your parts for example I'm holding an m3 button head that would be intended for something like screwing your motherboard into your standoffs as well as an M3 countersunk screw that would be intended for installing an SSD onto a tray so that the button head wouldn't stick out and Cause interference as you slide it in and out and in many cases these could be used interchangeably They're just not supposed to I noticed you were using a countersunk screw and that's one of the things people got very mad about It's pretty fast ram. It's 2666 megahertz I believe people were really mad about the speed of the ram 2666 megahertz being not not fast enough. I don't entirely disagree though with the choice of the ram at that time I think the gaming community was just coming around again to the idea of Fast memory being really important for gaming performance. The main thing is that you were a little behind the times Yeah, I see why people were mad. I also see how the mistake happened It also had to do with the budget of the build but yeah, I get it Where did the budget come from? The budget was not my idea. That was an editorial idea They were like, let's make this approachable for most people. Let's set a budget and I was like, okay $3,000 They're like no, that's too high. I was like, well then it's gonna have to be two and that's where that came from Got it. So it was just kind of arbitrary. It's arbitrary It was it had nothing to do with anything if I wanted to use the best parts I could have open the slots first and just aligning the stick with the middle of the strip Not with the end and just lining that up with the logo That is not the best explanation I've ever heard for how to align memory. Why don't you take another crack at this one for me? Let's do it. We found some vengeance RGB 2666 CL 16. Okay Why don't we grab those ballistics sticks over there? So you want to keep these slots open? Otherwise you can't put the RAM stick in and you want to align that with the center partition so that once you press down You'll hear a click Yeah, this is the reality of building computer in front of a camera ever tried to put in a USB port while you're you know Not facing it. It's kind of like that. There we go. Oh, I see There was actually another error here. You were installing your sticks in the slots closest to the CPU Which almost always are the less preferred slots? So once you hear that solid clasp and you don't see the gold connectors on the side now, that's interesting here It's in the correct slot. What happened there probably like photos not paying attention in that moment We're going to install the hard drive or in this case the NVMe SSD using hard drive Colloquially to describe an SSD is bad is about like calling a tower a CPU It's kind of boomer terminology and it's only held down by one screw and the latch so it's really simple and really straightforward I'm gonna get you to install this SSD the way you did it there. Okay, where'd our little screw go? Good question in a better place Okay, all right one of the big problems with this portion of the video is That while Stefan is actually installing the m.2 drive correctly You can't see a thing that he's doing because it's often not Practical to lower the table enough that the camera operator can see down into the case. So that's why Sometimes they got to get a little bit high When you're installing an m.2 SSD usually either on the box or on the drive itself You'll see a little code says m.2 22 and then some other number this one says 2280 So that tells us where to install the threaded standoff so that we can correctly install the drive You can actually see it labeled right on the drive. You can see it labeled right on the motherboard See that verbal slip up. I said see it labeled right on the drive I was holding a drive now something you could point out as an error in today's video is that we've put a PCI express Gen 3 drive in a PCI express Gen 4 capable slot But if we're not spending the extra for a Gen 4 drive I would still recommend doing it this way and then if you upgrade to a Gen 4 drive down the road You can always move this down to one of the one of the beta Slots nothing prevents you from doing that step four. We're going to install the graphics card. Okay This is very out of order because so far we've got not a whole lot of actual computer built yet And we're gonna go put the graphics card in it's gonna get in our way. Yes huge Do you want to go for the 1080 again? Or do you want to upgrade it? Um, I want to upgrade it cuz about the time that the 20 series came out I upgraded it and that's how I benchmarked and did the whole review but no one knew it was built on that computer So you want me to install it now? I mean, yeah, okay. I guess that's what you said to do, right? Now which lane you choose depends entirely on what other parts you're gonna put in the system I'm just gonna pick the top one because the SSD is at the bottom and I don't want to cover it I just think it looks nice click down take your remaining brackets and just put them in the spots that you haven't used I think what probably happened is you pulled off all the brackets at some point during the preparation for a video and Then forgot that they're all included and you don't have to take them out and put them back in the other Whoops Show us how it's done then As for which PCI Express slot to install it in Stefan got it, right? But for the wrong reason wrong reasons the top one is correct, but not because it looks nice It's because that slot has its full complement of 16 lanes connected directly to the CPU So your graphics card being one of the most bandwidth hungry components in your system Wants as many lanes as it can get this bracket has been bent a little bit. Yeah, just yeah just gonna rough arm it Yeah, yeah in there. Yeah, this is an old PC builder trick What's up? If you've only got a fraction of a hole exposed What you do is you get the screw on there as long as you have a nice magnetic screwdriver to work It's kind of mmm. You just kind of lever it over right and then you can screw it in screwed in gotcha I'm geeking out more about this and PC. That's good because it's just really really useful. What not a Swiss Army knife. Nope. I Would once ask for food recommendations and I would lead with I already tried the thermal paste It does not taste good. By the way, don't don't Please I was gonna it's in the same category as Tide Pods. Don't do it now that we've challenged them You know, no, no, no, no Always be sure to try to place it in the system first before you install it because you can see it takes up a lot Of space that's a fair point. But in this case, no pun intended It fits in perfectly and we're gonna start screwing it in and there's nothing special about this screwing in process They're just really long screws because they go through the entire frame of the cooler So what happens if you do that well you could possibly puncture the lines and that would be pretty bad Yeah the causal leak especially in a case where the radiator is above the motherboard and above the GP most modern radiators are actually Designed so that the tubes these flattened tubes. That's where the water actually passes through it are Offset from the screw holes so many people have made this mistake over the years that they've changed the way the design radiators to account for in fact Confession time I have an old thermo chill PA 120.3 that has a punctured tube, although I fixed it still works to this day. That's dope Oh, we're a little wide actually. I'm gonna try to squeeze it in from an angle maybe Oh, oh did we misconfigure the system? Hmm. This is the kind of thing we'd normally like to gloss over in the edit now in the old days cases used to come apart And it made it a lot easier to do stuff like you know what you might be able to take that top part Oh, I think the top panel actually comes off this case the verge guide has not yet told us to plug in the 8-pin CPU power connector But I'm gonna do that now because that thing is gonna be darn near impossible to get at once we have this radiator installed We made another significant mistake. Oh boy. We didn't put our CPU mounting plate back plate Yeah, yeah, we didn't put the back plate on this is the perfect merging of the verges PC building skills and Linus tech Tips PC building skills where I'm gonna show you guys how to jankily undo the mistakes you made because you use the verges guides You can see that once you've undone three of the screws That's actually a fair bit of play in the motherboard here Um fits the Thing in my boob or there, and I'm just gonna bend the motherboard a little bit. Yeah, you got it threaded in yep Okay, great. I'll try to line up the rest of them See I told him we were gonna do like you know a totally right one I let the team down the difference is I'm out here sharing the bullet. You know what I need. What's up? Tweezers get some tweezers in there. Oh, yeah, Stephon is that lined up. Yes. It is Yeah, it is. Oh my gosh That following the verge PC build guide would result in result in errors errors And go down this way that might actually be how they intended for you to do it. It's a tight squeeze. That's really tight God every power supply is gonna come with a big bag of velcro cables more like braided Yeah, braided sleeving yeah, and only modular power supplies come with a bag of cables The next step is we're connecting the power supply to the motherboard with the 24 pin cable all right Want to get us a 24 pin here see where oh? There you go So our 24 pin end goes here And then I'll get Stefan to show you the other end on the other side right the next few additions will be for the GPU For any specific ports of the case has for any lighting that the case has the CPU cooler We already did our 8 pin for the CPU. That's up here So next what we're gonna. Do is let's get our Case front panel headers connected this is made a little bit more difficult by the fact that we have already installed our GPU And we're gonna start with our USB 3 so can you pull this through for me on the other end the flat one? Yeah, you got to watch out for this guy Very fragile, but it only goes in one way so as long as you're gentle Shouldn't be a problem there. We go all right sweet front USB 2 right there boom Front audio I'm not even gonna try to Do much better than that you know I gotta say I'm actually pretty surprised that not only did you agree to come and do this With me, but that you reached out to me the reason why I didn't get to talk to you at all was contract stuff So I was like if it's not gonna be done right the first time it's gotta be done right at some point Now we're gonna do our front panel switches and LEDs so the power switch goes You know what let's do the power switch last Power LED this one positive negative does matter because your LED won't work if you do it wrong But you won't actually damage anything by putting it on the wrong way So we're gonna go ahead and plug it in oh wow this case has two different spots to put the power LED That's a little bit confusing for first-time builders So it's at the top left corner here with the positive one at the very top left Then we're gonna take our reset switch We're gonna put it in the next two pins over here We're gonna put it in the next two pins over on the bottom And then we're gonna do our power switch right above the reset switch And then I'm gonna get you to pull the extra slack for all of these through to the other side Perfect sweet that's great now We can use a single cable for this one with two eight pin connectors with a little kind of daisy chain loop But some builders are preferring these days especially with higher powered GPUs to put two separate eight pins in It's not likely to cause any sort of problem to plug both of these in But particularly if you have a power supply that is a multi rail design you can overwhelm the overcurrent protection on a single port especially if you have a super power hungry graphics card and the efficiency of using separate cables because they won't heat up as much is Marginally higher so here you go. I'm passing these through to you Roger that I want them under the 24 pin the amount of Backlash and the number of memes that were generated from that original video probably actually taught More people from your mistake Yeah, then if the video had just gone up and been correct the last thing our wonderful guide asked us to plug in all at once Is here we go the RGB and power connectors for our fans and we're gonna go number four and And Number hello number four right we got to do these two SATA power connectors for our Fan hub as well as our our juby hub this just goes anywhere it fits Just like the rest of the power supply connectors these you just got to watch out They got the little L shape on the end there make sure they go in such as they go in let's continue shall we? Okura i7 hexa core CPU. Yeah, we've got one. We've got one, too Okay, you won't have seen one of these before these are little 3d printed holders that we make for our CPUs. Okay, just And this just flies right off this comes right off and this will make it easier for us to apply it to the motherboard Yeah, not really and then apply a CPU cooler on top Yeah, and we're just gonna carefully lean it down into the system and make sure that everything lines up And we're gonna clasp down on it and we'll be good to go All right So we're about to apply thermal paste to the CPU Every CPU cooler actually comes with a bit of thermal paste already neatly applied and is not everyone but many do And if you have it pre-applied It's enough that's enough practice to have a little bit extra and layer it on top of that's way too much with that said Steve from gamers nexus actually did a video proving that you cannot put too much thermal paste on a CPU The worst you can do is make a mess So you're gonna see that there are four brackets or rather like screws in I can tell this is attempt number two By the fact that the paste is already kind of spread out now our cooler because it's been used before it does not have any pre-applied thermal compound, so Stefan yes, we do need to apply thermal paste. Why don't you show us how it's done? I'm just trying to make sure it doesn't all come out at once. There we go. There they go. That's all we need So now we take our cooler and oh no, I didn't think of this beforehand Well, that's probably appropriate that the Corsair logo is upside down. This is the distressed PC Now This is another order of operations thing. It might have been a little bit nicer to do this Earlier in the process. That's not the end of the world though. You know what? I've got an idea This is one of my favorite little tips. Undo one screw on the motherboard so cram something under it They can just kind of tuck in there. Okay. I'm a tuck in computer Okay, I'm a tuck in expert. Nice. There we go Whoo, not my finest cable management work, but no one will ever see it now We'll see it it is bad. Gibi's to close up the side panel of a computer and not close the front Oh, they're both plugged in. Yeah, they're good. We're ready to go. Yeah, let's freakin do it. Let's try to post Virg PC build 2.0 test 1.0 Oh crap we didn't turn on the power supply very build 2.0 test 2.0 Got lights we got lights, but do we have we have camera we have action come on action It wouldn't be funny if they sabotaged us gave us some broken hardware right now. We're good We're alright 7-eleven 700 K 16 gigs memory two keyboards two mice two hubs ladies and gentlemen That's right. We've got it Thanks a lot man No, thank you. This was this was an absolute blast. Thank you for coming and putting up with my with my jokes Thank you for coming out and just owning it. No problem. I mean, yeah, I love it That's a that's a redemption story if I have ever seen one So where can they find you if they want to get tips on maybe not building PCs? But if you want to keep up with anything I'm writing on anything I'm working on at Stefan Etienne on Twitter which I'm sure a lot of you already know where to find me and LaptopMemo.com the tech blog I ran since I was like 12 I update that every so often with cool stuff that I find like grow lights or like grow boxes or tech like this and computers Cool, and you guys know where to find our sponsor Ting Mobile has new rates that make it easier than ever to see how much you can save by switching They've got unlimited talk and text for just 10 bucks data plans starting at 30 Plus data plans starting at 15 dollars a month with their new set 12 plan Which has 12 gigs of data for 35 dollars and unlimited data for 45 dollars a month And if you like their previous pay for only what you use plans, they're still there They're called ting mobile's flex plans now and they charge just five dollars a gig One cool thing about the flex plans is data can be shared if you have a family plan So you can connect more phones to save more You'll still get nationwide coverage in the us and award-winning customer service and pretty much any phone will work with ting mobile Just head to linus.ting.com and you can get a 25 credit in addition to your other savings I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you did maybe check out I don't know linus reacts to xqc's pc build. It was actually more cringe worthy than this one for sure I'd ended up looking pretty pretty fly. That looks pretty good