 We are kicking off a very exciting episode of Linus Tech Tips. Today we have the one and only Seth Curry. Now tell me something, have you ever done a celebrity PC build before? I have not, man. I'm excited about it. I'm excited about it. I'm kind of stepping out to a different world. Something I know nothing about. And if it goes well, maybe someday you'll get to do one with someone really cool, like Jay's Two Cents. Yeah. Tell me something, we are going to build a top of the line gaming rig today. Why do you even need something that crazy? So I'm a big time gamer. I'm growing into space. I know last year during the pandemic and in the bubble, I got into PC gaming. I just want to learn more about it. You know what I'm saying? Have you ever even installed a graphics card before or is this it? I haven't. Like I said, I'm a rookie. Hopefully I learn a lot and get better today. Maybe I can do it on my own. So what have you done to train for this build today? I got to be honest, man. I'm not too prepared. Like I said, I know I got an expert here that's going to walk me through it, teach me the ways. I'm going to have some questions for you as we go. But I'm as rookie in as they come. So many people want to get into PC gaming, but they have no idea where to start. And they feel like they're going to ask a stupid question and someone's going to hate on them or whatever. But that's your job today, isn't it? Yeah, that's one of the reasons I'm here. That's why I'm doing it. I want to get to know the finite details. So you got to find your motherboard. The box here that says motherboard on it. So I'm assuming it's that one. Real quick, real quick. What tools do I need before we get started? Like the basic screwdriver? I love this. He's asking all the right questions already. OK, yes. Pretty much all you're going to need is a screwdriver. If you want to get into cable management, stuff like that, you might need some side cutters to clip off your zip ties. An anti-static wrist or ankle strap is kind of recommended. So I got to be careful messing around. I got to do anything. My watch off. What? Like you kind of scare me a little. No, you're good with your watch. Your power supply is over on your left. And it's the one that says 1000 watts on the front and very shiny hollow foil. There you go. Got it right here. Fantastic. So start by opening that sucker up. All the ASUS gifts and the stickers and all that come included. This is not the right one. Oh, they took it out. Oh, wait, what? They took the power supply out. Yeah, it's just cool. I was a little confused when I opened those cords. OK, here we go. They robbed you of the unboxing experience. I know. All right. I want you to find the power cord that goes into that three pin plug. Yep, that's the one. Yeah. So we're just going to plug this power supply into the wall as though we were going to power up the system. OK, but we're not going to power up the system. Hopefully there's a power outlet somewhere kind of nearby. I would assume. Yeah, I hope so. There's one down here, but I might need an extension cord. That's the hmm. They got this. That's OK. In the meantime, why don't I walk you through some of the cables you're going to plug into the other side? OK, you've got what's called a modular power supply, and it's good for cooling. It's good for cable management and it's good for just having a really clean, nice looking build. Yeah, that is key. Can I just say I'm having so much fun already. It's early and we're kicking it off with a bang. You are doing awesome. OK, you want to find the thickest one. Looks like this one here. That's your 24 pin connector. So go ahead and untie that guy. Got it. Every computer build needs one of those these days. So the one that splits apart, that one goes into the power supply. PC manufacturers are smart like that. They mostly make it so you can't screw it up too bad. OK. And they should have little like have little keys on them. And then in the back of the power supply there, there'll be like a little notch right there. Yep. Perfect. Yep. OK, we're in. It's so cool for other people, I think, to see someone who's so well coordinated, having exactly the same down struggles that we do, because the thing just won't go in the thing. I'm going to catch my rhythm and we're going to keep it going smooth one of these times. I've got all the exact same parts over here on my side. OK. So that I can really guide you here. Speaking of coaching, is it ever kind of tough having your father-in-law as a coach? I thought it would be, but it's usually harder on my wife than anything else. After a bad loss, if the next day coming over for dinner, it can get a little awkward here and there. So you're going to grab a couple of cables that are going to say PCIe on them. I got it. So the other end where it says PSU, that one's going to go into the power supply. Next to the one I plugged in? Yes. Yep. You can use that one. Fun fact, the state of California recently banned the shipment of systems with graphics cards this powerful into the state. Gee. OK, in this power supply, I ran out of room at the bottom. So now I go up top. You bet. You've got three connectors here that are labeled CPU slash VGA slash PCIe. I think they could label these better. I agree. You have built yourself a beautiful pitch black octopus there with red accents. Yeah. I love it. One way to make sure that you keep all your parts safe is to ground yourself. Stay grounded. I got good traction on my shoes, so. I wasn't worried about you slipping. You're saying for the case? For static electricity. Oh, so whenever you move around, you just want to touch that power supply anywhere on the metal part of it, and that's going to ground you. We're going to go ahead and we're going to grab the motherboard, which was over on your right. Perfect. Oh, man, dude, it's a natural. So you're going to go ahead and put it down on top of the box. And that's it. Cardboard does not conduct electricity. OK. So that's a safe place to put a motherboard. Here's one of the biggest challenges of PC building. You got to install the CPU. So you play play a fair bit of Warzone is my understanding. Is that right? I do. That's the normal go to game right now. This thing is going to slay Warzone for you. So you're going to be running a Core i9 11900K. OK. Oh, this little guy right here. That's the one. There's one corner of that CPU that's got a little golden triangle on it. I want you to try and find that for me. Golden triangle. I see it. I see it. I see it. You're going to look at your motherboard and on that little black piece on the top. So on there, there's going to be a little imprint of a black triangle. Yes. OK, that's the orientation that we're going to want. OK. So now we got to actually install it, though. My mouth's like cotton. I believe in you, though. We're going to get it done. Trust me. So there's a little metal arm. You want to pull that out to the side, to the side towards the memory slots there. Perfect. Now, you see those little pins in there? I do. So if one of those pins gets bent, that's it. Dead compute. OK. So you want to hold the CPU by the edges and try to lower it kind of perfectly in place with those two triangles aligned. He even gave it the little wiggle without me prompting him. That's that's amazing. I'm going to go ahead and ground myself real quick. I love it. Yeah, there you go. Just with confidence, go forward, pull it out and then hook it under the thing. And that black piece should pop off the top. OK. That's out of here. OK, I thought I broke it for a second. OK. That was the hardest part. Oh, it's going to be easy peasy then. Next thing we're going to need is our memory. We've got some Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB. Got all the shiny lights on it. This looks pretty cool right here. 64 gigs. That's kind of overkill, but it's a little much. See those four slots that are kind of right in front of you there? You hear? Got it. There's some little tabs there. Yeah. You want to pull those back. Yeah. Perfect. Now, which way should it? OK. Yeah. You were right the first time you got it. You're going to have to push quite firmly and the tab will snap itself into place. Yep. Got the first one in. Nice. It's like sports. You catch the rhythm. You keep moving pretty smoothly. I don't really follow basketball very closely. And so one of my guys had to tell me this before the stream. But I heard you actually had a career best game in the playoffs this year. Yeah, I had a career year. I had a great series personally. I wish we would have won. You guys gave them a good fight, though. I mean, seven games. That's not exactly lying down and just letting them roll over you. It was a fun series for sure. But actually, what sports do you watch? Do you promise not to laugh? Let me hear it. I'm following Olympic badminton very closely. I'm a big badminton fan. Wow. I've been watching water polo. I'm not going to lie. So we're kind of in the same boat there. Yeah, those are both kind of uncool sports. But man, water polo. You got to respect those guys. You ever try and play water polo? I've never played it before. It is unreal. You know, imagine egg beater in yourself up waist high out of the water so you can make a shot like that. Like those guys are going. Yeah, the upper body strength is crazy. So you've got CPU and memory installed. Let's find your SSD. So it's Seagate Fire Cuda 520 is what you're looking for. This has got two terabytes of storage. You can throw a ton of games on here. And if you ever need more, you can actually add more. I think this motherboard's got two or maybe actually three M.2 slots on it. Four. I lied. So you're going to need your screwdriver. You'll need a number one Phillips head in it. I got the one. So do you see that piece that says hero? Yes. Hero. Got it right here. You're going to take off the two screws that are in that hero piece. This is what it's going to look like when it comes off. OK. There you go. I heard that click. That's a good clip. Yep. This is a little fella. Ha ha. Yet another evolutionary advantage for small people. We can handle computer screws. Big hands are not an advantage here. Now, would you consider yourself like a handyman? Like around the house? Like, are you pretty handy? Out of 10, I'll say I'm about a three. I can get enough done around the house to where my wife didn't yell at me. Well, that's kind of the bar, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. I've done builds with people before where they just they over torque that thing, because these are little tiny screws. So you could strip the threads off them. It's a subtle thing about being rough enough to get it in there, but not overdoing it. And I got a good little touch. Man, we're making really great progress here. Feeling good about you. You're a great teacher, man. I got to give you your flowers. Thank you. Thank you. I kind of lied to you before. The CPU is not really the hardest part. It's just the riskiest part in the very bottom corner of the motherboard. There's nine little pins sticking up labeled F panel. Yep. F panel. Right there. That is the hardest part. OK. I call it F panel because when you're working on it, it makes you say, I wish I wasn't working on this. This is another time where the big hands is at a disadvantage. Yeah, a little bit. I imagine. I've never experienced it. There's one that has nothing above it. So you ignore that one. That's like the smelly kid on the team, you know? Yeah. He plays real good. So you got to you got to pick him, but like you don't want to have lunch with him. I understand that. We're plugged in. So I lied to you a little bit before because this is actually going to be kind of the hardest part. It sounds like practice when coach says one more thing and we're done and one more thing and we're done, one more thing and we're done. And we've got an hour practice. We're going to go find our motherboard screws first. We're going to be ready. Can you believe we've been at this for an hour already? It's been an hour. It's been an hour. Without even trying to put the motherboard in, I just want you to see if that threads in properly to one of the posts in the case there. It does. Well, in the case. Oh, and not a screwdriver in the case. Perfect. OK, so right now you've got kind of your case here and you got your motherboard lying next to it right like this, right? So you see that rectangular cutout there? Yes. That's going to line up with all those ports. And you just want to try and see those posts through the holes in the board. So we don't want to scrape it around too much, ideally. OK, if we scratch the motherboard, it can make it not work anymore. You know what? I can make this easier on you. We're just going to lay the case down. So let's try that again. But with gravity helping rather than. Oh, don't worry, we got this. They didn't go far. I think I got it. OK. So I couldn't help noticing you're building like a desktop here. How does that work with travel? Like you travel a lot, right? I have a laptop that I bring on the road and play with in my hotel room. So got it. Now, tell me something. As part of your writer, do you have that you need to stay in a hotel that has decent internet? I'll tell you a funny story. We were in the bubble and the first two days, the Internet was horrible. Everybody was trying to get on. Everybody was setting up there. It was horrible. So we were complaining and the next day they were setting up better Wi-Fi and they got it done. I wish I had that kind of sway, man. That's crazy. As a PC gamer, are you kind of an anomaly? Like, is everyone else Xbox? It's primary console. So most guys got Xbox, PlayStation. I could probably count the number of guys in the league that I know personally have a PC setup and PC gamers. Do you have any idea why that would be? I just don't think they know about it. Honestly, I didn't know about PC gaming until a year and a half, two years ago. It's like we live in completely different worlds. Yeah. One of my friends would tell me all along about PC gaming. It was all like coming back to me. Well, what do you like about it? What ever even attracted you to it? The frames, the smoothness of the gameplay, being able to customize it. To how you personally want to play your games was a big difference in the way I play. And I got a lot better once I got on it. So I couldn't turn back. You cannot buy an endorsement like that because you're just speaking the truth. Yeah, I thought PC gaming was playing Sims on a Macbook or something. Ah, it's so mind blowing to me. You can describe, you know, high frame rate smoothness to someone, but it's the feel. Exactly. So your motherboard's in. We're less than an hour and a half into this mess. I broke a little sweat getting on that one. That was the hardest part. PC building sweat. That's a stress sweat. Yeah. And stress sweat, it stinks. It's a little worse. Yeah. We're going to stand the case back up and grab the power supply. It's time to install that. All right. Now, I got to confess, as kind of a normie, my assumption is that, you know, you guys kind of eat, sleep, drink, breathe basketball. Yeah. You know, I just kind of thought, hey, they probably don't have a ton of time for like hobbies. Yeah. Were you always a gamer? I use gaming as like a relax time, as a recovery time. So especially on the road, I integrate it into my routine as far as what I'm doing in the hotel room. Man. OK, here's advantage to the big hand, Kai. Yeah. I mean, you might not realize kind of the jokes I'm making at my expense here. I'm about five, six and a half. OK. When you're five, six, you count the half. All right. When you're six, two and a half in the NBA, I count that half too. You know what? Actually, that's a good point. I never really thought about that. You're not that tall for an NBA player. I'm an average person on the street, but a little guy in the NBA. Six, two and a half. I need that that extra half. So really we're kin right now. I understand. Trust me. Do you think you're likely to put this computer on the floor or is it going to go up on your desk? Probably on the desk. If it's going to go up on the desk, then what I want to do is I want to put the fan side of the power supply down, because this case has nice big feet on the bottom. It's got a lot of room for ventilation. And if you think that it's likely to be up off the floor, then there's no danger of dust getting sucked in. So you grab your octopus with your left hand. You're actually going to slide it in from the back of the case. I know in hockey in the offseason, everyone's just playing golf. Yeah. What is it for basketball? You guys like bowling? Is that more applicable or like everybody got their own thing? There's less and less golfers out there by the year, though, just because the league's getting younger. As you get older in the league and more veterans play, start trying to learn to play golf and do different things. But golf is all not a favor, I guess, for guys in the NBA. Man, I can't even imagine. You know, I go to like the beer league softball game and like, yeah, frickin' LeBron James shows up. Yeah, for some reason, that's that's that's another sport that a lot of people play. I guess it's a little easier to learn than golf. Or like your brother's playing catcher or something. Yeah. Yeah, probably not. I imagine, you know, being like 6'2", trying to get in that catcher squat. That can't be a lot of fun. Put me at third base outfield, I'll knock it out. This part can be a little tricky, but it's not the hardest part. Actually, oh, man, for you with the big hands, it might be because you can hold the two things together. You got one in. Oh, no. If you get desperate, a nice old PC building trick is just to take a piece of tape and tape the two pieces together. So it's a little bit easier to put them there. This part's a little tricky. Don't worry. It takes everyone some time. OK, I'll try not to distract you. Not you, it's me. Known each other for a couple hours and already you're breaking up with me. All right, got one in. Yeah, that made it a lot easier. Hey, that's what I'm here for, for the tech tips. Now, this is probably also a dumb question, but all the gamers have got to know. Do you guys actually play NBA games? A lot of guys play NBA 2K. Do you play though? I do, yeah. Do you think that EA is fair to your skill level? No, I do not. Like if you have a good month, they'll adjust your ratings and make you a little bit better, make you a little bit worse. But I don't think I'm close to where I should be. I love this. He's doing the cable management, right? Ladies and gentlemen, this rig is going to look sick when he's done. You are doing awesome for serious. I'm not even just like, oh, he's a celebrity and you have to tell him he's doing a good job or whatever. You pick another connector and I'll show you where it goes. Oh, wow. This case has a ton of front USB. I forgot about that. I hate to tell you this. That top USB 3 that we had over here, it's a little metal. It's got a metal housing around it. Yes, we're going to have to swap those two because your graphics card is not going to go in right now. His attitude is so good when I tell him like, oh, you got to redo it. I guess you're used to that, though. Hey, I don't know. That's a good drill. Do it over. You know, does that ever happen where the coach tells you the wrong thing and you're the one who ends up having to do it? Usually lose. Man, this is going to be so much faster than your laptop. I'm not going to sleep tonight. Trust me. Good, good, good, good. Wait, did this come out? I have another power LED power LED minus. Where did that go again? Yeah, the little. Yeah, there you go. I cannot believe how fast you're plugging these in with those giant mitts. Power LED goes at the top left, so that whole top row should be full. OK. Are you ready for the hardest part? I'm ready. I'm ready. I got a good lather, a good sweat. We're going to do the water cooler. So that's going to be the ROG Ryujin 360. Look, look, cool. I got it. I'm having a lot of fun here, but it feels kind of unfair because this is, you know, my element. You got to try and do all my stuff. You're going to have to give me some basketball pointers someday. We'll get you on the court next time we got a game in Vancouver. We haven't had a real NBA team for since I was a kid. Yeah, I was young. I remember. Well, I don't really remember, but I've seen the highlights. All right. So for realsies, this is the hardest part. You should have a back plate that looks a little something like this guy. Back a back plate. You have two. That is very interesting. You notice how it has these four little like, whoa, that was close. Don't worry, I got this. OK, see how it has these four little bits in the corners? You see how they slide back and forth a little bit? Yes. There you go. And then you're going to want to leave your left hand holding that in place. You're going to thread that into one of the holes on the front side. OK, finger tight, finger tight, but finger tight all the way. Tell me something. What's your favorite thing about streaming on Twitch? The legit questions, talking to the chat, talking to my fans. I actually like the giveaways, man. It's a lot of fun. And I met a lot of people, a lot of other streamers through the through the Twitch community. So it's been cool. These are all in. I'm going to have you sanity check something for me. OK. On your water cooler, on the kind of the ball head, like the head end. So there's thermal compound on there. Don't touch that if you can avoid it. Thermal compound? It's that gray gunk. OK, OK, OK. Tubes toward the back. OK. And then we're going to need these big old thumb nuts. OK, fantastic. Now we're going to start by removing the Velcro. We're just going to take it all the way off. What is this Velcro for? Just a little grip. It's a carrying handle. Yeah. Yeah. So you decide kind of which way you like it. Yeah, like I like this. There we go. OK, now pull it back out. So hubs are going to go up. Good Lord. They sent you RGB fans. Of course they did. What does that mean? It means a lot of cabling. OK. I know that my camera guys commenting. I can't believe they hit him with the triple radiator. This one is a workout. They really pulled no punches. Poor Seth. There's no shame in having trouble with this. Asus really did kind of throw him a curveball, having him try to do a triple radiator on his very first build. No, that was the hardest part. Really, I'm not going to spring another one on you. I promise. All right. It's hard to believe you have to after the tenth hardest one. I'm just going to keep rolling. Can you turn it around so I can see where we're at? Voila. Yeah, turn it around. Let me see it from the back, you know, what kind of content you putting out over there. I'm into PCs like that. Do you have any games that are kind of like like a guilty pleasure? Fluffy's Adventure or anything like that? No, I don't. What was the one that people were on a few months ago? It was like a race. Oh, yeah. Fall Guys. Fall Guys. Yeah. Yeah. Do you like Fall Guys? That was fun for a while. Yeah, it was pretty fun. Did you ever actually win? Did you get the crown? Yeah. Did you ever actually win? Did you get the crown? Never. Never. Me neither. Apparently, it's really competitive now. Really tough. Really? Because people know the game's cold. Yeah. And if you want advanced points, then you kind of run it around to the back first and then bring it around and plug it in. But that is not necessary. Yeah, I'm just going to keep it simple for this one. Heck yeah. We're doing a little bit of movie magic here. Asus actually left the stock cables in, but we're supposed to be using these red and black ones from mainframe. So we have one of their technicians swapping out the PCI Express cables before Seth goes any farther. Have we already plugged in the USB 2? It's in. Okay. Wonderful. Now let's turn it around. We're going to focus on the back. Those power connectors for the ones in the top. Let's grab those three. They're going to plug into something called the Commander Pro. We're going to play some hot and cold here. Right? Right? Right? Keep going around. Oh, boiling hot. You're touching it. Oh, here. Here. Hey, there we go. Nice. So all three of those go into all three of those. You ever play hot and cold as a kid? Of course. That was pretty good. So you want to hear something really cool? Let me hear it. Now it's time to install the GPU. So the way that we're going to line this up is you're going to grab your GPU first. Yep. There you go. ROG Strix. It's got all that RGB, all that silent fan operation. Can overclock it if you want to get into that stuff. Speaking of different language, this thing is beautiful. I ain't gonna lie. Oh yeah. It's a big boy. Your top slot is the one that tends to have the fastest connectivity and your GPU needs that. This is pretty easy, but is the most expensive possible mistake that you can make in this build. I get that one. Just kind of keep finagling it until it's in exactly the right spot. Once it's in, there's a little latch at the back of the slot, a little plastic latch that's going to close by itself. In your hand, that GPU doesn't even look that huge. It's heavy. Oh, did that slide? Yep. Awesome. So see how it kind of sags like that? Yeah. Yeah. So this slidey piece right here, you can twist it to the side and loosen it a little bit. And then you slide it to where you want it and it'll support the GPU from the bottom. Then you tighten it up. That's going to be really good when you're transporting your PC back and forth. Because I don't know about UPS and FedEx down there, but up here, no comment, no comment. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. It is bad GBs to put the side panels on the case or finish up anything right now. If you don't power it on first, I guarantee you it won't turn on. Are there any like basketball superstitions like that? I mean, I got a full routine game day routine. So from wake up to game, I do have the same routine. So I don't really say a superstition, but I say a routine, you know. What about like, OK, when you're on the free throw line? I wouldn't say change what you do every time. So some of the bad free throw shooters have a different, when they catch the ball, have a different routine of how many dribbles they take before they shoot, spinning the ball, do something different every time. You don't have like a rhythm. So the good free throw shooter, you see them take the exact same amount of time from when they catch it to when they shoot, how many dribbles. It's just like repetition. This is it then. Moment of truth. Power button is up on the top at the front. Oh, yes. OK. These lights are crazy. Wow. OK, come on, monitor. That's normal. That's normal. First time you power on, it's normal for it to do what's called memory training. OK. Yes, yes, yes, yes. OK, good. It's up. It's up. It's up. All right. Big round of applause. We got it. Oh, I'm excited. OK, that's fantastic. Oh, yeah. There's a couple of things I want you to check for me. I want to see on the screen if all of your memory is detected. Yeah, 65536 megabytes. You did it. That's it. First try. Thank you, sir. This is a lot of fun, man. Worked out some muscles I've never worked before, trying to fit in some tight spaces. But it was all worth it. I mean, I got a different connection to this machine now. I guess that's it from our side. This thing looks absolutely awesome. Even though it's all like hanging out all over the desk, it already looks freaking sick. I was a little stressed when I came in here, but you made it easy on me. It's all about making people feel more comfortable asking these questions and having this first experience. Thanks again to Asus ROG for sponsoring this video. As part of their Build Together Give Together campaign, Asus ROG is giving you the chance to win one of two awesome gaming computers, with all of the proceeds going to BC Children's Hospital, and they're giving two other gaming PCs to the Philadelphia Communities in School program. So check out the link in the video description to learn more. All right. Thanks again so much. And you have a great rest of your day. Get some food. Yeah, I will. All right. All right. Bye, man. He did it. First try.