Hey duders!

After ~10 collective hours of building and troubleshooting, I finally finished building my first PC! I am super proud of myself and I just wanted to share my accomplishment with y'all.

Also, I would be happy to hear any suggestions you have for any rad games I might have missed that are PC only, or just any games that look especially awesome on PC (I just picked up Just Cause 3, since it was on sale on Steam. that game looks beautiful). This is my first gaming PC ever, so I am literally open to any and all suggestions. Maybe also some cool software you can't live without? I'm all ears!

Here are my specs:

CPU: Intel i5 6400

Video Card: AMD R9 390

RAM: 8 Gb

Congrats man, good job! It's quite a nice feeling, isn't it?

@anund: Hey thanks! When I finally got everything to boot up, I felt a mix of pride, relief, and exhaustion.

Congrats! I remember the first time I built my first PC a few years ago, booted right up without issues. Felt so amazing. As always, the best way to test a new PC is to immediately reinstall Skyrim and download ALL of the texture mods you can find.

Congrats. I know the feeling. You might want to try Witcher 3, GTA 5, Battlefront 3 for your pc. Those games look really freaking nice on a console but breathtaking on a high end pc.

Welcome to the master race. Enjoy your 60fps and always remember to restrain with caution during stream sales. Also another pro sales tip: checkout amazon digital deals every once in awhile. They run sales separate from steam but most of the games are just steam codes.

PC only games? Crusader Kings 2, the Civ series (Civ IV is the best don't listen to the Civ V heretics), Europa Universalis etc. THere are some great strategy games out there is that sort of thing floats your boat.

gratz! i'll never forget my first pc build- dropped $1500 only to hit the power button and have NOTHING happen.

turns out i wired the power/reset buttons incorrectly. that feeling of relief i got from the first POST beep is a high i'll be chasing for the rest of my life.

Loving all these suggestions, thanks everyone!

Same thing happened to me, but the reason was different. Turns out I just need to unplug my video card, install the associated drivers, and then plug it back in.

But that realization that anyone of these very expensive components could be busted is horrifying.

Congrats dude! Welcome to the PC Master Race.

An easy way to get all your apps in order on a new PC.

https://ninite.com/

Congrats! What a feeling it is. I took pretty much the entire day up too, can't believe a lot of people get it done within a few hours!

@hmoney001: This was literally the first thing I did after I got everything up and running haha. Still, thanks for suggestion! Pretty cool little tool.

@omgfather: I've heard people say they could put together a PC in about 30 minutes, which sounds like crazy talk to me

Gratz on the assembly. It's a great feeling and connects you with your machine in a rewarding new way IMO.

My first machine years ago took me hours to do. Some of that was unfamiliarity on my part and some of it was due to the hardware and software being harder to configure back then. I've built several since then and the last system I built for my son came together in about an hour including install of Windows 10. Having the right tools, knowing tricks about assembly (like when to mount things to the motherboard), buying the right case, not being afraid, etc. can save you A LOT of time.

I will say I'm building leaner machines these days. I've stopped bothering with things like installing fancy lights and other frills and go for pure simple performance and functionality (I want to look at the games not some LEDs). My storage situation has changed now to the point I'm not having to migrate or use as many drives within the box (NAS and online storage are your friends). I do make it a point to dress up my cables nicely and think a lot about airflow.

Think that's my problem - being afraid. Even after 3 builds I'm still too nervous that I will mess something up or damage something, so I'm still too careful. I'll even keep touching a metal surface to try and ground myself for static discharge.

I'm an old man, so I'm going to recommend some old man games. All of them are going to be under $10 if you find them on sale.

Head on over to humblebundle. Right now, they have a Star Wars bundle - while all the games are really old, X-Wing Alliance and TIE Fighter are -great- games. TIE Fighter was always my favorite post RotJ story.

Speaking of wars in stars, Freespace 2 (on gog.com) is my favorite space sim. Modders have kept the game looking current through mods. I think it requires a joystick, though.

You might want to give New Vegas or Skyrim a go and mod the crap out of them. You'll see the game of the year editions pop up on Steam sales for under $10.

Vampire the Masquerade is pretty old, but it's pretty darn awesome as an rpg.

You can dip your toe into Guild Wars 2. It is free to try. You can't use the auction house and have limited chat channel rights. You are also limited to... 2 characters, I think? But, you can play the whole base game for free.

Do you like Warhammer 40k? Check out Dawn of War and Dawn of War 2.

Also, congrats on the PC!

And that's completely reasonable in my book. I have a really good anti-static mat and wrist-strap which makes working on this stuff easy but if you don't you're wise to constantly ground yourself and be a little more delicate.

As long as everyone's systems come out at the end running well it's all good. ;)

That's great duder, well done! I hope it brings you much joy and that your AMD brings you minimal heartache.

Congrats! It's one of the best feelings ever. It's also a great feeling knowing you can upgrade over time after that as well now that you know what to do. That first "post beep" you hear after powering up a new rig for the first time that you built is the best. The best.

The more you build PCs and mess around with them the easier it gets. For me installing the heat sink (and applying the thermal paste) and cable management are the real time killers, but with new hardware being pretty much idiot-proof and plug-and-play, and new cases being designed to allow good, easy cable management along with modular drive bays and modular power supplies, the build is a breeze. I can honestly say it took me longer to install windows on my most recent build than it did for me to build the machine and troubleshoot everything. Having a big case with lots of room helps a lot, and as I said a modular power supply and all the is great too because now I only have to deal with wiring up what I need without all the cable clutter and all that.

I mean, if you're doing liquid cooling or setting up an SLI or Crossfire rig or something like that it can take some time, but a basic build with a single graphics card and one or two hard drives or SSDs and air cooling is super quick and easy.

MonkeyKing: Are you uh, interested in....photography, ay? 'Photographs, ay', he asked him knowlingly?

buttle826: Photography?

MonkeyKing: Snap snap, grin grin, wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more?

buttle826: Holiday snaps, eh?

MonkeyKing: They could be, they could be taken on holiday. Candid, you know, CANDID photography?

buttle826: No, no I'm afraid I don't have a camera.

MonkeyKing: Oh. (leeringly) Still, mooooooh, ay? Mwoohohohohoo, ay? Hohohohohoho, ay?

buttle826: Look... are you insinuating something?

MonkeyKing: Oh, no, no, no...yes. Can you show us some pics of your rig?

That's why I like using ASUS motherboards. They give you this little thing for the front header cables that labels everything so you just plug them into that and then plug that into the motherboard. No more having to go through the manual to find out where to put everything! That thing alone will save you and hour I swear lol. But man, having that machine turn on and POST for the first time is the best thing ever! YEEEEES! IT WORKED!

@buttle826: congrats. When i built my pc i was too careful with the ram. Booted it up and nothing happened. Turned out i had to push the ram in with both hands. That was pretty scary.

What's the first game you're going to check out on your new build? I remember i went for the Witcher 2.

@monkeyking1969: Ha! That was quite the ride. Had no idea where that was going.

That's a great idea! I'm busy tonight, but I'll take some pics and post them tomorrow.

congrats duduer! did you have any times where you thought you fucked up big time? i remember when i first built my rig a few years ago i went cheap on power supply. plugged in everything and my pc wouldnt boot. jut give me a hard error code on the mobo lcd panel. i took it to a shop fearing i did something bad. the guy looks at me and smirks and is like your main power supply cable is too short. fork up another 15 bucks for a better psu and your fine. i shat bricks of relief!

Congrats man!

I'm about to embark on a similar journey myself.

But can it run Crysis?

That joke is getting a little long in the tooth. Anyway, I still spend about 4-5 hours on PC builds and I've done at least 20 of them over the years for myself and friends. I like to spend a lot of time planning out my cable management strategy so the build doesn't end up looking like my first PC, code name Rat's Nest.

Congratulations on building your first PC!

Periodically clean out your PC for dust and other maintenance. A thing I did after I built my PC is to go back and work on cable management. I find it fun and doing that kind of stuff really got me more comfortable with building future PCs and tinkering. It may seem insane at the moment that someone could build a PC in half an hour, but after some experience you'll realize that PCs are only 8 or 9 components and once you understand how they all work, swapping out parts or building other PCs will become much easier.

Enjoy your new PC! Also, I'm jealous of your R9 390.

Now, update the BIOS and you will be one of us.

My suggestion try some games with tons of mods for them (like Fallout, Skyrim) to hammer home that it just not about graphics or power - it is also about freedom. Freedom to marry Willow in the New Vegas, freedom to have floppy shlong in the Skyrim and freedom to Nuke Hitler in the Civ because he wont trade grapes with you.

Yeah okay don't do that unless you really know what you're doing.

I'm gonna hijack the thread a bit. How often do you guys clean PC parts? I do it once a month for all the pc parts as much as I can without the risk of damaging those parts and every week or so for dust filters. My problem is with PSU, how to get rid of accumulated dust inside ? And for video card fans and cpu heatsink? Is there any other way without compressed air?

When I built my first PC back in November I tightened down the CPU cooler mount nuts too hard, leaving scratches across the backside's circuits around the CPU. It posted right away, but during the first week it would randomly BSOD, and I just knew I was going to have to replace my motherboard.

After burning in my RAM with several MemTest86 cycles everything smoothed out, but that was a tense seven days.

Depends on your environment. I have dogs and cats so the hair and dust can build up quickly. I should clean up every month but the reality is that I get busy and it can be every 2 or 3 months. I've yet to run into a heat issue.

One tip that I think some PC builders miss is that when you clean your fans make sure you immobilize the blades if you're going to use compressed air! If you don't you can accidentally fry your electronics.

Also while the cans work just fine you're probably better off getting an electric powered duster at some point like an ED500 DataVac.

@maluvin: I don't have any pets and my pc case is on my pc desk. It just seems like dust gathers way too fast in my case.

Could be just the environment where you live. Your cleaning schedule sounds about right given what you're noticing.

All of the components you mentioned can be blown out as long as you remember the rule about not letting fan blades spin. Also be careful about using certain compressors if you go that route. 99.9% of the time you'd be just fine but some compressors can occasionally spit out condensed water (I noticed this more when I lived in humid climates) and that can be bad for obvious reason.

Finally, if at all possible try to control your environment. Keeping it "server room" clean probably isn't feasible but keeping up on your home vacuuming, higher grade dust filters on your home climate control system, minimizing dirty outside air, etc. can make a huge difference.

Like I said though it sounds like you're doing a good job all around.

@maluvin: Maybe it's the case? I have Fractal Design Define XL R2, it seemed quite good. For video card fan blades and actually all the fans I use cotton swabs. It's not that practical and a bit time consuming, but gets the job done.

I have to upgrade too, I guess since I'm probably sticking with the base i5 computer I have until 2018/19. I just will start over 'new' in 2018 after all the VR hubb-bubb calms down.

Nah, recovering from botched BIOS update and bricked motherboard by re-installing the bios just by going by the beeps and blinking lights is rite of passage.

More than 10 years ago I lived with a slightly annoying, but good-natured architecture student. He was one of those guys who say that if you believe in yourself, everything is possible. Said that he could draw a diagonal line on a wall with milimeter precision without using any tool. He didn't want any help during his first build. "How hard can it be? Pfff!". I agree that it isn't hard, but turns out that you need to have at least some common sense. Electronics don't care whether you believe in yourself or not and if you screw your motherboard directly to the backplate without using those elongated nuts or platic supports, all you're going to get from your machine is copius amounts of smoke. And a life lesson.

@qrdl: I did that, but gladly I realized something is wrong right away, it looked weird. The mobo was bending and I started to panic. Unscrewed mobo, googled If I missed something. It was probably my one idiotic mistake during the build.

time for some starcraft 2!

@edgaras1103: Yeah, exactly. He must've used quite a lot of force to achieve that carnage. After all, on one side, the MB is held in place by the ports and visible bending is inevitable. I wouldn't be surprised if he ignored some audible cracks.

Determined little bugger.