 Even with all of the guides we've created over the years, building a computer can still be pretty challenging if you've never done it before. Wrong CPU socket, confusing case, and what do I do with all of these RAM slots? Our goal with this build then was to create a gaming PC that is not only darn near impossible to screw up, but that you can build yourself in less time than it would take to drive to the store and buy a console. Micro Center stepped up and sponsored us then to give you the foolproof PC. So grab a screwdriver, preferably one from lttstore.com, and follow along. ["Spring Day"] After slipping an ESD bracelet over my ankle, we will start as always with the motherboard, an ASUS ROG Strix B660i. And I can already hear you saying, "'Linus, small form factor is hard in the..." Ah, ah, ah, you gotta trust me, okay? An ITX motherboard might not have as much room for expansion, but it also has almost no room to screw up. Which memory slots do I use? Doi, the only ones. Where do I get it? Micro Center, obviously. See, easy. The box will serve as a handy build surface. Just unlatch the retention arm and pull it open, then orient your unboxed LGA 1700 CPU using the golden triangle on the CPU and on the socket cover, or by lining up the notches on the top and bottom. We went with Intel's Core i5-12600K because it offers great gaming performance and we like the value that those efficiency cores bring to the table for multi-threaded workloads. Once it's in, give it a little wiggle to make sure it's seated correctly, then push the lid down until the top latch grabs hold of the lid, push the retention arm down, you can really give her here, and tuck it under its holder. The socket cover should pop off on its own. Set that aside in case you ever want to RMA or sell your motherboard. The next step is to install our SSD, a Samsung 980 Pro. It is pricey, but Samsung regularly performs very well in Puget's reliability reports, and it's a really fast drive that can truly take advantage of PCIe Gen 4. Capacity, as always, is a personal choice, but since we only have two M.2 slots, we decided on a two terabyte model so you won't need to upgrade right away, unless of course you're a data hoarder, in which case make sure to get subscribed so you don't miss our upcoming video about who's the biggest data hoarder at LMG and what solutions everybody uses. Both slots on this board are Gen 4, so there's no wrong answer, but both have slightly different installation methods. The rear slot goes in like this and needs this screw from the motherboard box to secure it. I prefer to use this one for now, since this slot is gonna be harder to access when it's time to upgrade. When that time comes, the front slot is under the motherboard armor. Take out these three screws, a number one Phillips will do the trick, then lift it off and set it aside. Peel off the film covering the thermal pad and slide in the SSD until it clicks into place. Push it down and check this out. ASUS calls this M.2 Q latch, and it makes SSD installation as simple as rotating this little plastic doodad. Love it. At this stage, you can just not bother putting the armor back on if you wanna save some time. It's really unlikely to affect performance, but if you like the look, peel the film off the underside, place it over the drive, and screw it back down into place. Now for the CPU heatsink. The LGA 1700 socket is still pretty new, so any cooler that's been sitting on the shelf for a year might not include the right hardware. But if you reach out to Noctua with proof of purchase, they will send you a free mounting kit. This is a potential extra step in our foolproof PC, but thankfully this kit makes it impossible to screw up your mount. We went with the NH-U12S for its excellent performance, compatibility, and ease of use. Also it's available at Micro Center. But another solid option the community seems to really like is the Scythe Mugen 5 Rev-B. Pick up your motherboard with one hand by the IO shield and push the back plate into place through these holes. It's symmetrical, so the only thing that really matters is that the holes correspond to where the screws are sticking through the socket. So easy, right? Place the board back down on top of the box, slide the plastic spacers over the bolts like so, then install the two mounting bars over top of the spacers with the bars curving outward. Finally, we'll use the thumb nuts to screw down our four corners to keep everything in place. When it comes to thermal compound, don't stress. Noctua includes a non-conductive, non-capacitive paste with all of their coolers. So it won't hurt anything to put on some extra. For these longer LGA 1700 CPUs, we're gonna go with the thin line down the middle technique and it can be about the width of an uncooked grain of rice. Then remove the fan from the heat sink by pulling out these two wires and place the heat sink over the two mounting points and tighten it down until the screws bottom out. Honestly, that was the hardest part. But if you still think that all of this is too difficult, Micro Center has technicians who can put everything together for you for a $150 build fee. They'll even do hardline water cooling for an upcharge. Let's move on to RAM. DDR5 installs exactly the same as DDR4 and we only have two DIMM slots so you can't put them in the wrong one. We've also chosen lower spec DDR5 to ensure that we don't run into any instability or compatibility issues when enabling XMP. We also considered the size of our modules. You might choose to mostly follow our parts list, but maybe you change your cooler for example. These Corsair Vengeance 5200 megatransfer per second CL38 modules will fit in just about anything. Push down the tabs on the top end of the DIMM slots, then align the notch of your memory module with the notch on the slot. Slide the first module into the rails, then guide it to the bottom and press firmly with two thumbs until you hear a click on each side. Do it again for the second module and then you are all set. Now that our memory is installed, we can attach our fan to our heat sink with the side clips like so, then plug the cable into the gray fan header at the top. This is your CPU fan header and the one directly next to it is the AIO pump header. We'll get to our case selection in a second, but for now, since we know that it comes with two case fans, we're gonna use a handy Y-splitter and plug it into the chassis fan header up here near the CPU power connector. If you don't wanna pay the extra few dollars, that's okay. You can use the pump header for your second chassis fan. It just might require a little bit of extra configuration to get it to properly ramp up and down according to your system temperatures. All right, remember when I asked you to trust me, small form factor is hard, but we're not building small form factor. Our biggest trick today is the Jake Tivy special, putting an ITX board in an ATX case, specifically the H510 flow from NZXT. Ah, so much room for activities. Okay, we're gonna do this in sort of a weird order, but you'll thank me later, starting with our power supply. Yes, I know. Fully modular power supplies are a super cool upgrade for experienced builders, but while it's hard to put cables in the wrong way, it's not impossible and it does add extra steps. So we went with an EVGA 700GD. It's rated for 80 plus gold efficiency and outputs a bit more juice than we need today with some to spare for the reportedly power hungry upcoming RTX 4000 series. Let's grab the only three cables we actually need for our build now. The ATX 24 pin, CPU 8 pin and PCIe 8 pin. We'll take the others that we don't need, like these SATA and Molex cables, as well as these extra PCIe cables, bundle them together and forget about them for now. Put your power supply close to your case like this, then take the 8 pin CPU cable and feed it through the cutout at the top. Give yourself as much slack as possible for now, we're gonna clean that up later. While you're up here, feed the rear exhaust fan cable out through that same cutout. This next step can be done with your case standing, which will make the CPU power cable easier to manage, but if you're more comfortable resting your motherboard on the standoffs and then screwing it in with two hands rather than one, that's perfectly okay. Either way, we're gonna take our CPU cable in one hand and the motherboard in the other and bring it close enough that you can plug in the CPU connector by pushing this cable in with the clip pointed out. If you're not using the Y-splitter for fans, plugging your chassis fans now as well. Then as you place the motherboard on these four standoffs, align the IO, no shield installation for us, our board comes with one pre-installed, and gently push it into place. Our ITX board fits perfectly on the pre-installed standoffs and I promise you that using these screws to secure the three corners here, here and here, and then resting the last one on the pre-installed center post will be fine. But if you're truly worried, feel free to swap out that post with any of the other standoffs using their handy standoff tool. Now, remember that Y-splitter we plugged in earlier? Tuck the ends of that cable out through the same cutout as your CPU power connector, and then plug in the front and rear case fans. We can now wire up our case IO since we're in here, and this is why we chose NZXT. The power switch, reset switch and power LED are all properly grouped together for us so we can plug them all in at once. I mean, I get it, universal compatibility with the broken out ones, that's pretty cool, but most modern boards are the same, and man, is this ever a time saver. USB-C goes here, USB-A goes here, both of them are keyed so they only go in one way. Then we're gonna take our HD audio and stretch it across our board so it can rest snugly between our GPU and our CPU cooler. Now it's time to push your power supply into the basement through the side, get your ATX24 pin and PCIe8 pin out of the way, then you can tuck all those extra cables out of sight. So roomy! Run the ATX24 pin up the side, then out through any of the nearby cutouts and plug it in. It's keyed to only go in one way. Then the PCIe cable comes up through the basement and we can leave it hanging there for now. Next, grab the four screws included with your power supply and secure it here, here, here, and here. At this point, if we were using integrated graphics, we'd be ready to rock, but the GPU shortage is finally settling down. Micro Center has lots of stock, mostly in their stores to help reduce online scalping. So we chose an EVGA RTX 3060 XC. It's a great match for our 12600K, and being a two-fan card in a case this size, it is a breeze to install. Remove the two top slot covers from the case, then put them with your case hardware and keep those two screws. Grab your GPU, remove the PCIe protector, as well as whichever display out covers you'll need. And if you're a novice, I would suggest laying your case down for an easier time here. Line up the slot with the connector. You might have to wiggle this around a bit to get it just right, and push it down until it's seated. You can check if you're done by trying to spot the case holes through the rear bracket, like this, or by checking the PCIe lock to make sure that it's engaged. And we are in business. Now we just need to screw it back down and plug in our last power connector a little like so. And that's it. Following this guide, you could conceivably complete this PC in 10 to 15 minutes, and I'm so confident that it's gonna work. I'm gonna put the panels on before I power it up. You can check out all the products that we used, by the way, in the links down below, while we get Windows installed and get some games fired up. Blah, blah, blah, blah. This is a fantastic gaming experience. Doom Eternal's not the most difficult game to run, but anything that can do Doom Eternal 1440p, 130 to 150 FPS, is gonna be having a pretty darn good time in just about any AAA game that has at least some reasonable level of optimization. And the craziest part of all of this is GPUs are finally coming down to prices that you could conceivably actually build this thing. I love it, right? We've struggled so much to make videos for the last two years. This is great. So whether you wanna build it yourself or just pick out something you know has good parts rather than rolling the dice on a prebuilt, you can find everything you're looking for at Micro Center. They've got a great selection of products, knowledgeable associates to help you when you're shopping, and plenty of products available in store. Not feeling social? You can place your order online and get your products fast with their 18 minute in-store pickup options. They've got fantastic prices, 25 US locations with their own service and repair departments so you can avoid shipping RMA products overseas. And if you're a new customer, well, Micro Center wants to offer you a free 128 gig USB flash drive and a 128 gig micro SD card. Check out the link in the video description. New customers only, no purchase necessary, limited time offer, validance, or only limit one coupon per customer. If you guys enjoyed this video, make sure to check out the build stream that we did recently for a solid budget build. That was also sponsored by Micro Center, right? Yeah, it was.