The Assembly Guide

✓ What you'll need

• A Phillips screwdriver — the normal cross-shaped one, medium size (#2). Magnetic tip is nice but not required. This is 95% of the "tools" for the whole job.
• Zip ties (a handful) — for tidying cables at the end. Twist ties work in a pinch.
• Scissors or a knife — for opening boxes. Riveting, we know.
• A clear table — kitchen tables are perfect. Good lighting helps more than you'd think.
• Your parts — one of our build lists, all present and accounted for. Check them off against the list before you start.
• This guide open on your phone or a laptop nearby.

Optional but nice: an anti-static wrist strap (about $10). Static electricity can, in theory, damage components. In practice, just touch your metal case every so often to discharge yourself, avoid building on carpet in wool socks, and you'll be fine. The strap is cheap peace of mind if it helps you relax.

1 Unbox and prep

Open everything and lay it out. Check each part against your build list — now is the time to discover a missing cable, not halfway through. Keep all the boxes and manuals; you'll want the motherboard manual especially. (Seriously. Motherboard manuals are actually useful — they have diagrams of every connector, labeled.)

Take the side panels off your case (usually two thumbscrews on the back) and set them aside. Peek inside: you'll see where the power supply goes (bottom, usually), where the motherboard mounts (the big flat area with little brass risers called standoffs), and the cable-routing space behind everything.

2 Build on the motherboard first

Here's a pro move: install the processor, cooler, RAM, and SSD onto the motherboard before it goes in the case. It's much easier to do this fiddly work with the board lying flat on the table (on top of its box — perfect work surface) than reaching into a metal box.

The processor (CPU)

• Find the CPU socket on the motherboard — the big square with a metal lever arm. Lift the lever.
• Look for the small gold triangle in one corner of the processor, and match it to the triangle marking on the socket.
• Lower the processor straight down. It should settle in with zero force — it just sits there. If it doesn't drop in, it's rotated wrong. Never push.
• Lower the lever back down. It takes a little pressure at the end — that's normal, that's the socket clamping the chip.

The RAM

• Your board has four RAM slots. Use slots 2 and 4 (counting from the processor outward) — that's the pair that gives you the dual-channel speed boost. Your motherboard manual confirms this.
• Push the little clips at the ends of each slot outward to open them.
• Line up the notch in the RAM stick with the bump in the slot — it only fits one way — and press straight down with both thumbs until the clips snap shut on their own. It takes more pressure than you'd expect. That's fine.

The SSD

• Find the M.2 slot — a small horizontal slot, usually near the processor, sometimes under a little metal cover (a heatsink). If there's a cover, unscrew it first.
• There's a tiny standoff screw at the far end. Remove it, slide the SSD into the slot at a slight angle (about 30 degrees), then gently press the far end down and secure it with the screw. Don't overtighten — snug is enough.
• If you removed a heatsink cover, put it back over the SSD (peel any plastic film first).

The CPU cooler

• Stock cooler (Budget build): it comes with thermal paste already applied — that gray stuff on the bottom. Just set it on the processor, hook the clips, and plug its cable into the header labeled CPU_FAN on the motherboard.
• Tower cooler (Mid-Range / High-End): mount the backplate behind the motherboard per the cooler's manual, then apply thermal paste — a pea-sized dot in the center of the processor. Not a sandwich, a pea. The cooler's pressure spreads it. Set the cooler down, tighten its screws in a criss-cross pattern a little at a time, and plug its fan(s) into CPU_FAN.

Done! You now have a motherboard with a brain, memory, storage, and cooling. The hard part is behind you.

3 Power supply into the case

• Slide the power supply into its spot (usually the bottom rear of the case) with the fan facing down — there's a vent and dust filter underneath for it. If your case has no bottom vent, face it up.
• Screw it in from the back of the case (four screws, included with the PSU).
• If it's modular (Mid-Range and High-End builds), plug in the cables you'll need now: the big 24-pin motherboard cable, the 8-pin CPU cable, and the PCIe cable(s) for the graphics card. Route them toward where they'll plug in — there's space behind the motherboard tray for this.

4 Motherboard into the case

• If your board came with a separate I/O shield (that thin metal rectangle with cutouts), snap it into the rectangular hole at the back of the case now — from the inside, sharp edges out. Forget this and you'll be taking the board back out. Ask anyone.
• Check that the brass standoffs in the case line up with the screw holes in your motherboard. They should already be in the right spots for your board size.
• Lower the motherboard in at a slight angle, back edge first, so the ports poke through the I/O shield. Line up the screw holes with the standoffs.
• Put all the screws in loosely first, then tighten them. Snug, not Hercules.

5 Graphics card

• Find the long PCIe x16 slot — it's the longest slot on the board, usually the topmost one, often reinforced with metal.
• Remove the metal slot covers on the back of the case that line up with it (usually two — they unscrew or pop out).
• Open the little retention clip at the end of the slot. Line up the card's gold connector with the slot and press straight down until the clip snaps shut. The card's metal bracket should sit flush against the case — screw it in.
• Plug in the power cable(s) from the PSU. The Arc A750 needs two 8-pin plugs; the RX 9060 XT needs one; the RX 9070 XT needs two. They only fit one way — the clip on the plug matches the tab on the socket.

6 Plug in all the cables

Almost there. Go through this checklist one cable at a time — missing one of these is the #1 reason first builds don't boot:

• 24-pin motherboard power — the big one, along the right edge of the board. It clicks.
• 8-pin CPU power — top-left corner of the board, labeled CPU or EPS. (It's easy to miss because it's tucked up there.)
• Graphics card power — plugged into the card itself (done in step 5, but double-check).
• Front panel connectors — the tiny ones for the case's power button, reset button, and little LEDs. These go on a cluster of pins at the bottom-right of the motherboard, and every board labels them differently — check your motherboard manual's diagram. Take a photo of the diagram with your phone; you'll thank yourself. Getting these wrong just means the power button doesn't work — nothing breaks.
• Case fans — plug into headers labeled SYS_FAN or CHA_FAN. Your case manual shows where its fans' cables are.
• Front USB — the case's USB ports plug into a wide header on the board (labeled USB or F_PANEL). It only fits one way.

Give every cable a gentle tug to make sure it's seated. Loose cables cause 90% of first-boot mysteries.

Quick cable-management pass

Route cables behind the motherboard tray (through the cutouts in the case) instead of draping them across the middle. Bundle slack with zip ties. Nobody's first build looks like a showroom — tidy enough that cables don't touch fans is all you need. Airflow and future-you will both be grateful.

7 First boot

• Plug your monitor into the graphics card (the horizontal ports lower down), not the motherboard's video ports up top. This gets everyone once.
• Plug in the keyboard. Plug the power cable into the PSU.
• Flip the switch on the back of the power supply to I (on). Yes, there's a switch. Yes, everyone forgets it the first time.
• Press the case's power button.

What success looks like

Fans spin up. Lights come on. Within 10–30 seconds you should see the motherboard maker's logo on screen. Congratulations — that's called a POST (power-on self-test), and it means your build works. If you see a message like "no boot device," that's good news — it means the PC works fine and just doesn't have an operating system yet. That's the next step.

Peek at the BIOS

Restart and repeatedly tap Delete (or F2 on some boards) as it boots to enter the BIOS — the motherboard's built-in settings screen. Two things worth doing here:

• Check that it shows the right amount of RAM (16GB or 32GB). If it shows half, a stick isn't seated — power off and reseat it.
• Turn on EXPO (AMD boards) or XMP (Intel boards) — the one-click setting that runs your RAM at its full advertised speed. On the Budget build with the Arc card, also make sure Resizable BAR (sometimes called "Smart Access Memory") is enabled — it's usually under a PCIe or "Above 4G Decoding" menu.

! It doesn't boot — troubleshooting

Deep breath. Almost every first-timer hits one of these, and they're all fixable. Work through them in order:

Still stuck after all that? Send us a message — tell us which build you bought and exactly what happens when you press power, and we'll help you figure it out.

💾 Installing Windows

You'll need a second computer (any laptop will do) and a USB flash drive, 8GB or bigger.

• On the second computer, go to Microsoft's website and download the Windows 11 Media Creation Tool. Run it and create the installer on your USB drive. (Prefer Linux? Grab Ubuntu instead — same idea.)
• Plug the USB drive into your new PC and turn it on. If it doesn't boot from the USB automatically, restart, enter the BIOS (Delete key), and set the USB drive as the first boot device.
• Follow the installer. When it asks where to install, pick your SSD (it'll be the big empty drive). When it asks for a product key, click "I don't have a product key" — Windows installs fine unactivated, with a small watermark and a few locked personalization settings. You can buy a license and activate later whenever you like.
• Once you're at the desktop, install drivers: your motherboard's chipset and Wi-Fi drivers from the manufacturer's website, and your graphics driver — AMD Software for Radeon cards, or Intel Arc Graphics drivers for the A750. Then run Windows Update until it stops finding things.

That's it. You're done. Go install a game — you've earned it.