for our most in-depth gaming PC tutorial yet.

Grab yourself some popcorn, a beverage of your choice,

because we're gonna go incredibly in-depth

on everything you need to know about choosing components

and putting together your very own gaming PC.

To start out with,

I would recommend actually doing something

a little bit different than our previous years,

which is to start with a graphics card.

If you're not familiar with what a graphics card is,

it's the thing that makes the games go brrr!

So, for this build, we are going with an MSI RTX 3060,

but you can just as easily go with an AMD GPU as well.

Red team have many options

that are very much equivalent to NVIDIA.

And the big thing to keep in mind is to pick a graphics card

that is available, and that is inside your budget.

I think this year, I feel pretty safe to say

it's going to be difficult to get our hands

on graphics cards for the foreseeable future.

So, if you find something, buy it.

The next decision you're gonna wanna make

is to pick your CPU.

Now, this is the processor,

and, ultimately, alongside the graphics card,

one of the most important components of your build.

Now, if chosen a mid-range graphics card,

generally speaking, you should probably get yourself

a mid-range CPU, something like a Core i5 or Core i3.

And if you got yourself a high-end graphics card,

you may want a Core i7 or Core i9,

but that's very broadly speaking.

Now, generally, if you are playing games specifically,

then you don't necessarily need a Core i9 for example.

You don't need a ton of cores

because, instead, you can get away with something

like maybe a Core i5 for that same kind of performance

and save a whole lot of money.

But on the other side,

if you plan on using the system for a very long time,

or maybe you're gonna be doing

a lot of video editing or something,

the extra cores and clock speed of a Core i7 or Core i9

could be very beneficial.

On the flip side,

if you just wanna do some little more basic gaming,

something like a Core i3 could absolutely do the job.

Intel and AMD both make it pretty easy to understand

the lower numbers are less powerful,

the higher numbers are more powerful.

Because we've got ourselves an RTX 3060,

we're gonna go a little bit more high-end

for the purposes of this tutorial,

so we're gonna go with an i7-12700K.

Now, if you look at the model numbers

for all AMD and Intel CPUs,

you'll see that there's a little bit of a code to it.

So, "i7" means that this is one of the higher-end chips.

So it goes, i3, i5, i7, i9.

Just like Ryzen goes Ryzen 3, Ryzen 5, Ryzen 7, Ryzen 9.

The "12th Gen," as well as the "12" here,

just indicates what generation it is.

So, this is the latest and greatest.

"K" on the Intel side means that you can overclock.

Now, I will say, we're not gonna get into overclocking.

So, we're just gonna show you how to build a PC

and choose the components.

But if you wanna be able to overclock

and get the absolute most out of it,

you're gonna want a K series Intel processor,

and most AMD chips are gonna allow you to do that,

regardless of which one you picked.

Notice how this box is very small?

It's because there's only a CPU inside.

Now, for example, if I were to pick out a 12400,

so this is an i5, this actually has the cooler in the box.

Generally speaking, when you're buying the higher-end chips,

they just expect that you're gonna want to get

a secondary cooler.

And for our purposes, we actually are gonna do that.

But a lot of other chips do come with at least

a decent stock cooler in the box.

Though it's definitely something

that you wanna keep in mind.

If you're gonna go all out,

you're gonna have to buy an extra cooler,

but if you're building a little bit of a more basic system,

what's in the box is actually totally fine.

The next decision is to choose your motherboard.

Now, the motherboard is a very important component,

pretty much all of the different

bits and bobs inside your system

are going to connect to the board,

which is why we're gonna go with this MSI PRO Z690-A.

Now, there are a few things you should pay attention to

when it is time to choose your motherboard.

First and foremost, does it work with your processor?

Now, all graphics cards,

well, unless they're made in like 1997 or something,

will work with pretty much any motherboard.

That's not a really huge concern.

The big thing is to make sure that your CPU

and the socket is compatible.

So, for our build, the easy way to look

is to go to this little sticker on the top,

"Supports 12th Gen Intel Core processors."

Boom. We know that this will at the very bare minimum work.

However, look closely at that sticker.

You see this one right here?

Look at this, oh, I don't know, the Z590 supports 11th Gen.

The sticker's almost exactly the same,

except it says "11th" instead of "12th."

So, it is definitely worth double and triple-checking

to make sure that you have a motherboard

which will support your processor.

Now, other things to consider

when you're choosing your motherboard are the sizes.

So, the three main sizes for motherboards.

There's ITX, which is the smallest,

there's microATX, which is a middle,

and then there's, of course, full-size ATX,

which is what we've got here.

Most builds are probably gonna wanna do ATX,

that's what the vast majority of chassis are.

If you're building like a regular mid-size

or a full-size tower, this is the move,

it's gonna give you the most expansion, blah, blah, blah.

However, if you do wanna do

a smaller form factor build or something,

you may wanna go smaller.

Most important is to make sure

that the size of your motherboard

is equivalent to the size of your case.

One other very important thing to consider

is what kind of RAM you are going to be using.

So, for AMD this is not really a problem.

And for pretty much all the last few years of Intel,

it's not a problem.

However, for the latest 12th Generation Intel chips,

they actually support two different kinds of RAM.

You can use the DDR4, which has been around for many years.

It's a little bit more cheap,

but also it's much, much easier to get your hands on,

or you can get the maximum performance using DDR5.

Now, there are pros and cons to both,

DDR5 is faster, but more expensive,

a little hard to get your hands on,

but you need to make this decision

right now when you choose your motherboard.

Because even though you can get a DDR4 or DDR5 motherboard,

it's only gonna be one or the other, right?

We're gonna be using this tutorial with DDR5

because it is the latest technology.

But honestly, feel free to go with DDR4.

If you can find yourself a board,

they're usually gonna be cheaper.

The RAM is certainly gonna be cheaper.

You're losing a little bit of performance, it's not crazy.

But, for the purposes of this tutorial,

we're gonna show you the pretty much cutting edge,

most up-to-date system that we can,

which means DDR5 and a DDR5-specific motherboard.

Speaking of RAM,

that is our next decision that we need to make.

There are a few things to keep in mind,

but it's actually not super complicated.

So, of course, first and foremost, DDR4 versus DDR5,

you gotta pick whichever one you want.

Beyond that, you need to choose the speed,

the RGB, the amount of RAM.

There's a few other things involved.

The first one is just picking how much RAM you want.

Eight gigs is the absolute bare minimum you're gonna want.

And realistically, in 2022,

you should be aiming for 16 gigs if at all possible.

If you're getting DDR4,

we're talking like 60 bucks for some 16 gig kits.

So, don't get too stressed

on trying to save a few bucks on RAM,

try to get at least 16 gigabytes.

On top of that, the speed is important.

Generally speaking,

AMD systems are a little bit more sensitive

to the RAM speed than Intel,

so you may wanna go up to 3200 or 3600 on the AMD side,

but because we're choosing Intel

and because we're choosing DDR5,

it makes our lives a lot more simple.

Now, for this, we're gonna be going with 64 gigs

of this Crucial DDR5.

Now, the other thing you wanna consider when choosing RAM,

make sure to get at least dual channel.

Now, that will make a difference,

regardless of whether you're using Intel or AMD.

So, basically, don't be tempted

to just buy a single stick of RAM,

because it's cheaper and you can expand more later.

You're gonna get more performance

if you buy a least two sticks of RAM

then you can run in dual channel mode.

Next up, let's choose our case.

This is the fun part because this really is

the most aesthetic part of your system.

And as you can see, there are hundreds and hundreds

of different options for a case.

Remember, there's the ATX, microATX,

and ITX motherboard sizes.

Make sure that you get a case

which will equivalently those different sizes.

So, for example, this fits a full ATX motherboard,

meaning that we can put any of those sizes inside

and we will be A-okay.

On top of that, make sure that you have enough room

for whatever other components you need inside.

So, generally speaking,

most cases will fit most graphics cards, but not always.

Some graphics cards are really big,

some cases are a little bit small,

so you may wanna take a look at that.

And think about your cooling.

This is probably one of the big ones.

If you are doing a mid-range system,

you probably don't need a ton of fans

and AIOs and all this kind of stuff.

But, on the other hand, if you're building an RTX 3090

and Core i9, and all this kind of stuff,

you're probably gonna want some space in the top

or on the front for radiators and whatnot.

So, think a little bit about how high-end your system is,

and whether or not the cooling in the case

can either support it

and/or if you wanna be able to add additional radiators

or fans to then help improve the cooling of that system.

So, for now, we're gonna go with the 205,

which is right here.

With this case, we had not only glass,

but we also have room to mount a radiator up top.

We have an exhaust fan, as well as one fan on the front.

So, you can obviously mix and match this however you want.

Continuing on, it is time to choose our storage device.