$690 Gaming PC Build - FX-6300 / GTX 960 / Cooler Master Elite 431 Plus

Hey everyone, this is Philip from PCPartPicker and we're going to be putting together a $750 gaming PC with an FX6300 CPU and a GTX960 video card. Huge thanks go out to Newegg for helping with this build. They've put together a special combo deal linked in the description below that includes all the parts you see in this video. We're going to go ahead and get started. First we're going to install the CPU in the CPU socket, line up the pin, drop it into the socket, and then put down the latch. Next we'll install the CPU cooler. Now the CPU cooler comes with a thermal paste pre-applied. There are two latches that are going to attach to the motherboard to apply tension to keep it held up against the CPU. First we'll hook one side and get that in place. And then after that's hooked in we'll go to the other side, hook it in place as well, and then apply tension by pulling the lever. Next we'll plug in the CPU fan into the fan header on the motherboard. After that we'll install our RAM stick and slide it in and then push down gently and the sides will latch into place. This is our case. It's a Cooler Master Elite 431 Plus. It has two three and a half inch external drive bays, a three and a half inch hot swap bay, two five and a quarter bays, USB 3 on the front panel. In the interior you've got room for a standard ATX power supply, a 120 millimeter fan in the rear if you want, and two 120 millimeter fans in the top. Next we'll install standoffs in the case. Now in order to install the standoffs, first we're going to do it by hand, put them into place, and then we'll come back later and tighten them down with the tool that Cooler Master provides with the case itself. Now here's the tool. It's essentially a small socket that fits over the top of the header, provides a attachment on the top, makes it very easy to tighten these down. Once those are in place, we'll put in our IO back panel. Be careful, this thing's really sharp. It's very easy to cut yourself on it. Now install the motherboard. Be careful when you put this in not to slide the motherboard across over the top of the headers. Once it's in place, then we'll screw it into the headers. Now we'll install our power supply. We have our 650 watt power supply by Cooler Master. Slide it in. Then on the backside, line up the screw holes and screw it in. First thing we want to do is plug in the 8-pin CPU power. Next we'll plug in the 24-pin power connector for the motherboard. Keep in mind that this motherboard kind of hangs over the headers a little bit, so you'll need to support it from the backside to keep the motherboard from flexing too much. Make sure that the 24-pin power connector goes all the way into the socket. Sometimes it's easy for it to kind of stick out just a little bit. Now we're going to plug in the power LED for the case. These pins have polarity, so there's a plus and a minus. Make sure that those line up according to what it specifies in the manual. Next we're hooking up our power switch, our hard drive LED, and finally our reset switch. Then to make sure that these don't come unhooked, it's very easy sometimes when you're working in the case to accidentally bump them and kind of knock them loose. And so to prevent that, what we're doing is we're zip-tying that to the power connector. Now we're going to hook up our USB. This is the USB 2.0. Move that out of the side. Then the USB 3.0. And then finally we have our HD audio connector. Now HD audio connectors come typically with an AC97 and an HD audio connector. The AC97 is not used and it kind of dangles around, so what we're doing is we're zip-tying that to the cable itself to keep it from flopping around inside the case. Once that's taken care of, then we'll go ahead and plug it into the header on the motherboard. Our SST is a HyperX Fury by Kingston. It's a 120 gig SST. Now the Cooler Master 431 does not have a two and a half inch mount on the drive itself, so what we're going to do is add on these adhesive strips that kind of have a velcro on it, so it's easy to basically attach to the case and then remove it with the velcro attachment if we need to and put it back into place. Now with everything ready to go, we'll place it in the case where we want it. Now that we've placed the SST, we'll hook up the SATA data connector and then also the SATA power connector. For the SATA power connector, we want to hook that up to the power supply. It's a modular power supply. Any one of those connectors is going to be fine. And then for the SATA data connector, we hook it up to the motherboard. We're going to hook it up to port 0. After that's in place, we have our 1TB Western Digital drive. We'll slide that into place as well. We're going to use the quick mount to latch that into place. There's one for each side. Now that that's attached, first we'll hook up our SATA power. This is a daisy chain connector basically that hooked up to the SST. And then now we have a separate SATA cable that we're going to be using as well. Once that's hooked up, we'll plug that into the motherboard. This time we're going to use port 1. The Cooler Master 431 also has an external hot swap bay with a SATA and then a Molex power connector. So we'll use those as well. For the Molex, it has a separate cable for the power supply. So we're going to hook that up. And then of course the SATA data connection for the hot swap bay as well. Now that those are in place, we do have a fan on the front of the case. There's an adapter that lets you hook it up to the Molex, but it's also got a three pin connector. So we're going to hook that up to the system fan header on the motherboard itself. Finally, we have our video card. It's a Zotac GTX 960. It's got a nice back plate on the back. This is a really pretty kind of short form factor card. We're going to put it into the slot. But before we do that, we need to remove two of the expansion slot covers on the case. Now these, in order to get these off, you basically have to kind of twist them back and forth a little bit. Be very careful because you don't want to rub over the top of the motherboard or remove any components off the motherboard. So just be very, very careful as you flex this. You just flex it back and forth a couple of times and then eventually it'll pop off. With those removed, then we're going to go ahead and slide our video card in place. Now this just drops right in and then you just kind of make sure it sits nice and flush and then we screw it into the case. Now the PCIe power connector on the video card only requires one single six pin connector, but the cable that comes from the power supply has two six plus two pin connectors. What we're doing is we're zip tying off the extra two pin connector on one side and then we're also going to zip tie the six plus two connector on the other side so that it's attached to the cable itself. The reason why we're doing this is so that those cables won't dangle around inside the case because the problem there is that if you were to move the case and they were dangling around, if those fans were running on the video card there's potential that they could get caught up in the fan. So we're doing this just to kind of keep the cables nice and clean and keep them out of the way. Now we'll move this over and kind of bundle it with all the other cables that we have in the system. All right, so that pretty much wraps up this build. A big thanks goes out to Newegg for sponsoring this build and providing all the components. We've included a link in the description below to the combo deal that includes all the parts that you see in this video. We hope you enjoyed this build and thanks again for watching!