Skylake / Z170 Build #2 - i5-6600K / Asus Z170-I Pro Gaming / Asus GTX 980 Matrix Platinum

Hey everybody this is Philip from PC Part Picker and we are back with another build video. Today we are putting together a build for the Skylake and the Z170 launch. We have JJ from Asus here with us and he's going to walk through some of the parts and what we're going to be building and he's also going to give some commentary on the the components as we go through the build. Yeah well first and foremost thanks for having me here it's awesome to be able to be here. In terms of what we're going to be doing for the build like you said this is a Z170 based gaming build but it's going to be mini-ITX so small form factor. A lot of you guys I know interested in these type of builds so we'll be rounding it out with a high performance GTX 980 matrix platinum that'll be going with our mini-ITX new series aboard the Z170 pro gaming series. We've got an i5-6600k and then we're going to be rounding it out with some DDR4, M.2 SSD, a standard SSD and a couple of other components that we've got here on the table. Great so let's get started. So now we're going to install the CPU. The first thing we want to do is unlatch the bracket flip it back and we'll put our CPU into place. If you notice the CPU has a pin one indicator and also corresponds to the dot that's on the motherboard here to indicate pin one. There's also little indentions in the CPU bracket that match up with the socket so that you you're not going to put it in the wrong orientation. When you lower this down into place be very careful don't slide it side to side but instead just drop it down in because you don't want to bend any pins. And then when you flip this over you can leave the bracket in place the cover will actually pop off by itself and then you can remove that. So now we're going to install our RAM. This is the Kingston HyperX Fury it's a DDR4 2400 RAM. So we'll install this you got to make sure that the the little groove here matches up with the pin on the socket when I flip these back. Yeah and with this board you don't have to worry about actually having retention clips on both sides since it's only a single latch and also since these Fury DIMMs already come pre-programmed no need to worry about enabling XMP. It will automatically initialize at the right frequency. Great okay so now we're going to install our CPU cooler we have the Phanteks PHTC-14S. So one of the things I really like about actually this cooling solution is that it's a traditional air cooler. I think especially sometimes with some of these smaller form factor builds actually a little bit easier to work with some of these because you can pre-mount them onto the actual board as opposed to some of the closed-loop cooling solutions. You actually have to mount the board and then mount the closed-loop cooling solution. We also generally get a little bit more airflow across the entirety of the board whether we go with something like this a tower heat sink or whether we go with maybe a downward firing heat sink which is nice especially in these more compact environments especially if we are going to be overclocking. I want to try to aid in cooling the VRM a little bit more help to be able to maintain stability. So the first thing we're going to do when we install the cooler is install the backplate. If you notice the cooler the backplate has different labels for the different socket types so we have the 1366, 1155, and 56, 775. So this is an LGA 1151. It's socket compatible for coolers with LGA 1156, 55, and LGA 1150. So you lay this on here and then we'll basically put the screws in through now this is saying LGA 1155 is number two so we're going to put those through the number two hole slide these in then we'll gently flip this over lay this down and then at this point we put these spacers over the top screws and then we install these brackets. Now the brackets can go one of two ways either like this or like this and so the whichever way you put it determines the orientation of the cooler whether it's going to face this way or this way. So what we want to do is try to aim for the cooling so that the cooling is actually headed out sideways through the back of the case. Now the IO connectors here are always going to be on the back panel of the case for this particular case that we're using so we want to make sure that the orientation is such that the airflow on this particular cooler is if you look it's kind of hard to see but basically down here on the bottom of the fan you can see arrows that show the indication of which direction of rotation the fan is going and also where the airflow is headed. So in this particular way the airflow is actually headed out this direction so we're going to orient this so that the fan is faced this way and the cooler is structured this way. To do that we need to make sure that these brackets are going to line up like so. So we'll place these brackets over the top here like this and then we have these little thumb screws that we'll put on to hold these in place and then finally when we go to install the cooler onto the bracket there's a couple things we need to do first one is that the screws that attach to the bracket are behind the fan so we need to remove the fan and then also we're going to apply thermal paste to the CPU before we put this down. So to remove the fan you just pull these little brackets off and then the fan slides off and then for the thermal paste we're just going to apply just a tiny amount just basically about the size of a grain of rice you don't want to put too much and you don't want to put too little. In some situations too the viscosity will vary sometimes it might be a little bit firm sometimes if you roll it a little bit between your hands you don't have to warm it up it makes it a little bit easier to apply. All right so there was a little protective plastic label you got to make sure it's removed that first otherwise you're not going to cool quite as well as you thought you would. So we'll lower this into place and screw that in. So now I'm going to put the fan back in we got to make sure that we have the proper orientation for the airflow. Now that the cooler is in place we will connect up the fan to the motherboard header. So this is the case we're going to build in it's the Phanteks Enthoo Evolve it's a mini ITX case. As you can see on the front here basically we have a 200 millimeter fan it also supports two 140 millimeter fans in the front it supports two fans in the top you can either do 120 or 140. On the back also supports a 120 or a 140 millimeter fan mount. Now right here there's actually a spot where you can put a water cooling pump or hard drives we're going to remove this for the sake of the video card. Down here we've got space for a power supply this is a standard ATX size power supply and of course obviously room for the motherboard. So we're going to go ahead and put the motherboard into the case now and then later on we'll follow up with the power supply and the hard drive and the video card. Okay when we install the motherboard the first thing I want to do is actually since we're not going to use this bracket I'm going to go ahead and remove it so that we have more room to work with before we put the motherboard in. It's actually one of my favorite features in this chassis is it gives you the flexibility I mean we decided to go with a matrix which is a much larger card but you know we could have optimally gone with something like a DC mini which would have been a mini ITX card could have slot right in there and then we could have kept that in place but having the flexibility to go with pretty much the largest card you can go with is nice as well. Okay so we're going to go ahead and put the motherboard into the case now typically you would have an IO shield cover right here they would go in before you put the motherboard in but because this is a pre-production motherboard we don't have one now ordinarily that would come with a motherboard though. So now we're going to go ahead and screw the motherboard in. The next thing we're going to do is install an M.2 drive that goes on the back of the motherboard so we'll flip the case over. So now we're going to install the M.2 drive into the M.2 socket on the back of the motherboard. Now obviously this case has a wide enough opening that you can insert it here if it didn't what you'd want to do is make sure that you put this in first before you put the motherboard into the case but before we put this drive in we need to make sure that the standoff is in the right spot. So if you notice this motherboard has two little tiny holes that we need that you can put a standoff in depending upon the length of the drive. So now we're going put the standoff in this location here you don't have to tighten it down really tight a hand tightening is just fine. Then we'll place the M.2 drive in it'll go in place like so. All right so this is our power supply it's a Seasonic 520 watt power supply it's platinum rated and it's fully modular but before we put this into the case the first thing we're going to do is connect up the wires we're going to use because the space here is a little bit tight you can remove this bracket if you want to but I find sometimes it's a little bit easier to go ahead and wire things up beforehand before you put it into the case. Now one of the other nice reasons why we picked this power supply is that it's also a fanless based solution so since this is going to probably just be sitting on your desktop I think it's a little bit quieter. Okay so now we're going to connect up the cables to the power supply first. So the first thing we have here is the 24 pin. Now on this one you'll notice that it actually comes in kind of two parts so you have a 10 pin connector right here and then this one I believe is a 14 if I can count right. Okay this is for the CPU power so that's going to plug in down here. Then we also need one for the SATA card or sorry the SSD that we're plugging in so that'll go into the peripheral slot here and we also have two PCIe connectors. So now that those are wired up we're going to slide this into the case. So now we'll screw in the power supply. So now we have the power supply installed. What we're going to do is route our cables over the top through into the appropriate holes so then we can connect them up to the motherboard. So the first connector we're going to route through is a 24 pin motherboard connector. The motherboard connector is right about right here so there's a grommet right here we're going to try to run it through this hole right here so we have a minimum amount of cable length to get to on the interior of the case. The next one is the 8 pin CPU power connector and so that one the connector is actually right about right here on the motherboard so we're going to run it up vertically up through here and then through this hole right here. It's not a zip tie it's not a zip tie. Now we're going to connect up the 24 pin power connector to the motherboard and the 8 pin connector to. So now we're going to go ahead and connect up the USB connectors the front panel switches and LEDs and also the HD audio. The first one I'm going to start with is the HD audio connector. Now this one can reach to the connector over here just fine and it kind of goes around the the PCI Express slot but to give it a little bit more length and also let us cable management a little bit better I'm going to use this extension cable here. So first we'll plug this in on this side into the motherboard and then we can round it down through this little hole right here so that it clears that video card very easily and gives us plenty of length to manage. So now we're going to connect up the USB 3 and also the front panel LEDs and switches so the USB 3 will do that one first. Now as a quick side note this chassis we don't have the ability to have a front panel bay device but if you did go to a chassis that had that option there is actually a USB 3.1 front panel that also connect to the Serial ATA Express connection on the motherboard which is kind of cool if you want 3.1 support on the front of your chassis. So you know it was noted earlier that this is a pre-production sample so we didn't have all the accessories this process actually would be a little bit easier if we did have the full production board because it would come included with a Q cable. It's a nice little convenient cable you connect it to the actual motherboard and then would extend outwards to allow you to directly connect all your front chassis leads. So next we're going to wire up the front fan it's a 200 millimeter fan and we're also going to add a 140 millimeter fan on the rear. So what I've done is this fan connector I've routed it through behind the case and up through this little slot here and plug into the fan header on the motherboard on the very bottom. Now there's a total of three fan headers on here if you want to optionally go ahead and do top mounted fans as well I'd recommend setting the actual board into PWM output for one of the chassis fan headers and that would allow you to go ahead and then attach additional fans as well. Now we're going to install the fan on the rear of the case now as with the the CPU cooler fan this one also has arrows that designate the rotation and the direction of the airflow so we want the airflow to be out toward the outside of the case. We're going to rotate this through so the cable is actually facing toward the motherboard. Before we plug this or before we install this I'm going to go and plug it in because otherwise it's going to be really hard to reach that fan header. So now when we mount the fan on the rear of the case you can notice that there are slots rather than just screw holes so that if you were to install on the top there's options for two 120 millimeter or two 140 millimeter fans. If you were to put those fans in the top of the case you'd probably want to space this down a little bit but this gives you the flexibility to move it up or down as you need to depending upon your constraints in terms of your video card or radiators or fans on the top. On the back side of the motherboard we also need to remember to connect up the HD audio connector to the extension that we used earlier. So here we have the HD audio cable from the case the extension that's attached to the motherboard and then before we go any further with installing the SSD and the graphics card I'm going to go ahead and clean up these cables a bit tidy things up and then we'll continue on. Next for the SSD it's a Kingston HyperX Savage 960 gig SSD. When we install it in the bracket here this bracket actually slides down on the grommets and then pulls out and then you can put this put the SSD into place and then screw it in through the sides. Okay so we screwed it in our SSD then we will just place it back in. So next we're going to install the video card we have a new video card from Asus it's the Asus GTX 980 Matrix. So yeah it's a pretty special card I mean definitely with this being a high performance small form factor gaming system we definitely wanted to put something in there that was going to be able to live up to that and so definitely we've got a card that does that. So a couple of really key things you're going to have here of course is a full non-reference design meaning that everything in the PCB the VRM the cooling solution all custom so we got a really cool and quiet card. Some of the nice things though is actually underneath of course it's really customized aesthetic in terms of the shroud which looks great because it's red and black complements of course the look and feel of the board and the system is even actually some of the internal componentry really works well in a small form factor system like the capacitors they're actually 10k rated caps they have significantly better temperature tolerances for much much higher temperatures than what you traditionally have. You've got fully molded inductors there for guys that don't like coil wind this helps to really reduce the likelihood of getting coil wind. You've got really big 10 millimeter heat pipe to keep it nice and cool and for guys that like to be able to monitor a lot of stuff there's over 20 points of monitoring on everything from the GPU to the VRM to the PCB board temperature and a whole lot more you have full access to that that you can monitor it and you can also tweak and control all kinds of stuff here so pretty awesome card. I noticed on the top two of the even the heat pipes you've got this nice aesthetic where it's a kind of a matte coloring. Yeah the entirety of the heat sink assembly it's the first time it's ever been done is all unilaterally a flat matte black it was a really difficult process but I think it really sets off the look and feel of the card. It looks great. All right so before we install the video card first thing we needed to do is remove the expansion slot covers then we'll lower the video card into place next for the PCI express power connectors to the video card we're going to run them through the grommets here. All right so now we have everything installed and ready to go we're just going to tidy up some of these cables that we just routed through and then we'll be done. All right so now we're done this is our build we've finished everything out we've put everything in we've got our new Intel Skylake i5 6600k CPU that's put into a new Asus Z170i programming motherboard we have our Asus ROG GTX 980 matrix video card so everything's done. JJ thank you so much for joining us for this build. It's been awesome thanks for having me here. And thanks for watching.