THE ALL-INTEL BUDGET MACHINE

LENGTH OF TIME: 1-2 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: EASY

1 BACK TO BASICS

WE ALWAYS HAVE TO BEGIN our builds by focusing on what matters most: the chassis. In this instance, that’s the Corsair 275R Airflow. To get to the nitty-gritty, we need to remove the panels, and for this case that’s quick and easy. For the front panel, simply pull from the bottom to unclip it and then again from the top to pop it off. For the tempered glass side panel there are four thumb screws that are keeping it in place—just loosen these and keep them somewhere safe. Whenever taking the glass panel off a case, rest it on its back to avoid the glass panel slipping off—yes you guessed it, we’ve made that mistake before. Lastly, the back panel is held on with two captive thumbscrews, and when they’re loosened, it slides off. With all the panels removed, we can start cracking on with this build.

2 HIGH-FIVE I5

WITH THE CASE PUT TO THE SIDE for a moment, we bring our ASRock motherboard to the table, as well as our Intel Core i513400F. As this motherboard has been used before, it’s important to make sure that the socket and the area around the socket are clean. Even more vital is that all the pins are straight and none have been bent. Luckily, there was no issue with this board, so we could crack on with installing the CPU. First off, lift the retention bar to the right of the socket to open it up. Then, on the socket, there should be an arrow—align this with the arrow on the chip and gently rest it down into the socket. Make sure you only hold it by the sides and never touch the bottom of the CPU. Once the chip has been inserted, lift up the retention arm once more and hook it back into place to lock it in.

3 SWEET MEMORIES

WITH ONLY TWO SLOTS to play with, we didn’t have to refer back to the motherboard manual to choose the correct DIMM slots to use with our two sticks of RAM. The only thing we had to do was align the notch in the slot with the notch on the sticks, unclip the slot, and then press the RAM into the slot. When you hear a loud and satisfying click, you’ll know that the RAM has been seated correctly. We have to say, with the RAM in place, this motherboard is starting to look like a scaled-down dystopian model city, or maybe we’re just going crazy! Now that our RAM is in place, we can move on to the SSD.

4 STORING THE STORAGE

ONE ISSUE WE OVERLOOKED was with our SSD and its lack of a heatsink. Unfortunately, the motherboard didn’t come with a heatsink cover either, so for the purposes of this build we had to go without it. Although not necessary, as SSDs don’t typically get nearly as hot as HDDs do, we recommend using a heatsink on an M.2 drive. You can pick these up for around $10 on Amazon, which is what we did after the build was complete. Anyway, to install, remove the M.2 screw first, then insert the connector end of the SSD into the port, and push it down flat. Then you can use the M.2 screw to secure the drive onto the motherboard.

5 ICE COLD INTEL

THE LAST THING TO ADD to our motherboard at this stage is add the Intel Laminar RM1 stock cooler. Just like previous stock coolers from Intel, installation is easy—well, easier than a thirdparty AIO cooler. We positioned ours so that the cable was in the closest position to the CPU cooler header that it will connect to on the motherboard. Then, we applied a pea-sized drop of thermal paste into the center of our Intel Core i5-13400F and gently lowered the cooler on top making sure the clips on each corner dropped into the holes in the motherboard. With these in place, twist these clips and push them down to secure them in place.

6 I/O SHIELD

FOR NOW, our motherboard has all the components on it, besides the GPU, which we will install later, so it’s ready for placing in the case. Our mini ITX board has a detachable I/O shield that needs to be inserted into the case first, though. This requires no tools; just to be pressed into position from the inside. Make sure it’s the correct way up by checking the I/O ports on the motherboard first and then you can push it into the slot on the case. Go around the edges to make sure it’s level and flush with the case, and we can then begin getting this board in position.

7 MOBO INSTALL

TO MAKE LIFE EASIER, rest the case on its back before attempting to install the motherboard into the case. Unlike a larger ATX board, there are only four case screws required to install this. Align the ports with the I/O shield first and then line up the screw holes on the motherboard with the standoffs in the case. With everything in position, tighten it down using a long and thin Philips screwdriver. A thin screwdriver is always best to use, as PC building can sometimes get fiddly as you add more and more components. There’s still a lot of room left in this case after installing the motherboard, and although visually it may not be the best looking system we’ve ever build, we have room for improvement down the road.

8 POWER!

WITHOUT OUR NZXT C750 PSU, there’s no way for us to get power to the system, so how about we get it installed? Before we do, make sure that any HDD cages in the bottom of the case are removed to make room for your PSU cables. Although not necessary, we aren’t using a HDD, so we can put that aside for a rainy day for now. To install the PSU, make sure the fan is downward facing and align the screw holes on the PSU with the corresponding screw holes on the back of the case. Then, using four case screws, tighten the two together—it’s as easy as pie! We only have to mention pie once and now we are hungry, brilliant.

9 CASE WIRES

AFTER A QUICK BITE TO EAT, and after thoroughly washing our hands, we can start to connect up our case cables to the motherboard. One gripe with this case is the individual front panel connector pins—these have been and will always be a pain to install due to their fiddly nature. Luckily, we have plenty of space in this case to do so. Refer to your motherboard’s manual to make sure you’re installing the pins on the correct headers. It can take some time, and we certainly prefer it when these pins come as one header, but you win some, you lose some. We then installed the USB front panel cable to the motherboard—this port sits below the 24-pin motherboard connector.

10 FANTASTIC

BY USING A SMALLER FORM FACTOR motherboard such as this mini ITX ASRock model, you sacrifice headers and ports. For instance, when it came to connecting the fans to the motherboard, we soon hit an issue in running out of options, although a daisy chain connector soon resolved it. We connected one fan directly to a fan header on the motherboard, the other two used the daisy chain adapter and then that went into the other free fan header available. As we didn’t enter destination RGB with this budget build, we didn’t have to worry about a fan controller unit or excess RGB cables, so it kept our build nice and tidy.

11 SUPPLYING THE POWER SUPPLY

NOW WE HAVE THE CASE and fan cables linked up to the mainframe, it’s time to supply power to the build with the PSU cables. As we mentioned earlier, there are only three cables, so this stage is fairly straightforward. Saying that, the CPU power cable is always awkward as it’s in the top left of the motherboard tucked away in the corner. We managed to get this installed after some maneuvering, but if you know that this is going to be a tight squeeze, then you can always connect this first before installing the motherboard. The other cable we installed at this stage was the 24-pin motherboard cable through one of the case’s rubber cable channels. As for the PCIe GPU cable, if you hadn’t already noticed, there’s currently no GPU, so we parked this one for now.

12 ENTER THE A750

SPEAKING OF, we can finally install our Intel GPU, seeing as all of the cables are linked up. If we’d done this at an earlier stage, we wouldn’t have been able to attach the individual pin connectors, as this A750 graphics card will block them. To install, make sure that the PCIe clip is opened up by pressing down on it. Also, make sure you have space where the PCIe shroudings sit. At this stage, all of ours had been removed before this build. We first aligned the PCIe connector to the slot on the motherboard and pushed it into position. This will reward you with a satisfying click to let you know it’s been successfully installed. Then, using two case screws, we tightened the GPU onto the case, and installed the five remaining shrouds to the case to fill up the leftover space. The last cable to connect is the PCIe cable—we ran this through the bottom rubber access slot.

13 BEHIND THE SCENES

TO KEEP THE FRONT AS TIDY AS POSSIBLE, it’s vital to keep all of your cabling in check around the back of the case. Thanks to Corsair’s cable management system and a fairly lite build, that was easy to do with this setup. Throughout the construction, we made sure to loosely run our cables down the most efficient routes and try and keep them together. After booting the system up to check everything was connected properly, we can now use some ties to fully cable manage our PC before putting on all of the panels. Although this isn’t necessarily visible, it’s good to know that your PC is neat. With a few minutes spent here keeping things in check, your PC is now ready for a BIOS update and fresh OS.

14 BIOS BONANZA

THINGS DIDN’T EXACTLY GO QUITE TO PLAN when booting this system up for the first time. It was stuck in a loop—however, we were one step ahead as we thought this could be an issue before building. We knew this motherboard was technically compatible with our 13th gen Intel chip—it just needed a BIOS update, but we thought we’d try our luck anyway. When that didn’t go to plan, we had to use an Intel Core i5-12600K, a processor we knew worked with this motherboard, to boot the system with. Once loaded into the BIOS, we then had to use a secondary PC to download the latest BIOS driver from the official ASRock motherboard page, and installed this onto a clean FAT32 formatted USB drive. We then plugged this into the new build, loaded the system up again into the BIOS, then went to the Tools menu and selected instant flash. Here, it found our drive with the BIOS update on. Once this happens, click update and yes to confirm. Leave the PC alone while it updates.

15 OUT WITH THE OLD (AGAIN)

ONCE THE BIOS HAS BEEN SUCCESSFULLY UPDATED, we can turn the system off and reinstall the Intel Core i5-13400F. Remember when doing so to always clean the old thermal paste off the previous cooler and the CPU cooler, then apply a new pea-sized amount in the center of the CPU. After the new chip has been seated back in its rightful position, we can start the process of installing Windows 11. Using a secondary PC/laptop again, go to the official Microsoft website and head to the Download Windows 11 page. Choose the ‘Create Windows 11 Installation Media’ option, install this, and then follow the on-screen instructions until it gives you the option of where to install.

Make sure you have a clean USB drive formatted to FAT32, like the one used to update the BIOS, and install it here. Once finished, insert this USB drive into the new PC, and load up the BIOS by mashing the DEL key on startup. In the BIOS, find the boot priority list and make sure the USB flash drive with Windows 11 installed is at the top, then save and exit. When you next boot the system it should then load the Windows 11 installation process. Follow this installation wizard and customize it to your liking.

16 UPDATES & DRIVERS

ONCE ALL OF THAT HAS BEEN SORTED, you can start to enjoy the rest of your system. After you’ve connected it to the internet, the first thing to do is to install any Windows 11 updates and additional updates. This is easily found by heading into the settings and clicking on ‘Windows Updates’ in the bottom left-hand side of the Window. After this, you’re going to want to install the Intel Driver & Support Assistant from the Intel website.

Here, it will automatically scan your system to detect if you need to update any drivers—most importantly, any Intel Arc graphic drivers. Install the latest to keep your system running at its best.

This will ensure you’re getting the best out of your components. It’s only after this that you can start to install all of your favorite applications. A great starting point for this is ninite.com. On the website, it has a range of popular applications, utilities, creative software, security programs, and more to kit your new PC out. Check the boxes of the ones you want, and then underneath hit the big blue ‘Get your Ninite’ button. This will run an application that will install all of these apps at once. Trust us, it will save you a bunch of time. Finally, we can start having some fun with this new PC.