Note on the 2nd thing not to do: After turning off the power supply or unplugging it, it can also be a good idea to press the power button on the case/motherboard to discharge any residual power that may still be present.

1. Don't interchange PSU modular cables 2. Don't plug/unplug components with the PSU powered on. Switch it off at the back or unplug from the wall. 3. Don't vape or smoke near a computer. 4. Don't put your PC or other heat generating electronics in a cabinet. It will overheat. 5. Don't run a water-cooled PC unattended.

There is literally nothing that is obvious to a new builder. Every bit of tips/knowledge helps. Cheers.

I'm building my first complete new system since 2010 soon, so this is a great refresher for me lol. I've built every PC I ever owned since '95 and used to work in a local PC store. This is great advice about the PSU and it's also good to point out that leaving the IEC power lead in is a great way to keep the system grounded as well.

Here's a fun one. Don't overtighten your cpu blocks. Don't have blind faith in the springs to moderate the pressure. You can still bow your motherboard, and crack traces

Always press the power button a couple of times after you unplug it to drain out the capacitors. Also, you can tell if you have juice flowing by checking the network light if it's plugged in both ends. (Thanks Joe!)

Thanks for another great video Jay. I love the advice about vaping. An old engineer told me that back in the 80's, computer pros were accustomed to the "no smoking in the computer room" rule. This was from the previous experience of smoke tar actually slowing down connections and causing irreversible bugs. Not really an issue today, but defintely telling.

Dude, I love your videos! I'm no expert on this subject, but I DO build my own and have done so for 18 years now with (thus far) total success. I've learned so much from you and a few others in the last 4 months on building a PC the right way and I thank you for that!! May you have years of success!!

Me to my PC after I did all 5 of these things: I'm sorry, little one.

I always find it really weird that PSU pin outs aren’t standardized.

I have a 16 year old gaming rig build with closed liquid cooling by Falcon Northwest that I had on for most of the years and never had any issues. Still gaming on it.

Don’t let your cats lie on top of your tower case. I had a cat that used to love the warm air coming out of the top three fan holes. I ran the fans slow to reduce noise and they still kept the temps down… until one point where my computer alarm went off from overheating and I looked down and my long haired cat had splatted himself on the top of my case, blocking the airflow out of the case entirely.

Thank you for finally covering the PSU modular cable issues. Now why do they NOT have a standard.

A tip which cost me 6 months to find. When installing the video card make sure all power supply pins into the card made a klik. I was afraid to break the socket but didn't realize the smallest part wasn't totally in the socket. So i had 4 crashes last week and just by accident I found the problem. Even my neigbour who works a lot with computers overlooked this tiny problem.

Great advice on Power Supplies and Cabling are to be treated with special care. I matched my new EVGA PS with my new EVGA Graphics Card & paid very close attention to the new PS cables and made sure that I matched the cables to the plugs on my Graphics card, Motherboard, etc. I didn't want to fry any components. All worked out well. Your advice is top notch. Thanks.

Taken my eye off the ball over the years. Built MANY systems (and NOT blown or damaged a single component in the process) but was NOT aware that PSU cables are now potentially non-interchangeable !!! I really thought the PSU pinouts were an industry standard. Luckily I've never swapped cables, always using the ones that come with the PSU, but forewarned is forearmed, and I thank you for that snippet alone, and stopping the possible financial loss that would ensue if I'd continued to be ignorant of it.

Wow, I never knew the power cables could be different. I assumed if they're all ATX power supplies they would be the same. I guess I got lucky because I did mix some cables in my current PC.

There should be a standard for #1. It's a safety hazard currently when companies use whatever connectors they feel like using and the cables have no labels to indicate what pinout or what unit it works with.

Note on the 1st: BeQuiet has a compatibility site on their site. They tell you which cables you can interchange between your old BeQuiet PSU and the new one.

Yeah kept my rig alive for 6 years now with these safe practices and keeping the unit low on a open milk crate type box (to keep it off the floor) - recently upgraded the gpu and the ram - planning on upgrading the motherboard and the cpu in the next year or two.

As both a journeyman electrician, and an electrical engineer, I can confidently suggest disconnecting all voltage sources when making or breaking any form of electrical connections, regardless of system. Changing the resistance of a connection while current flows is a good way to see the "arc'y sparkies" and let the magic smoke out.

getting a cheap multimeter is crucial when doing cable modding so you can check that the pinouts are correct. Yes for some plugs you can also just follow the cable too

#1 I had personal experience with this. Upgrading from a Corsair semi-mod to a Seasonic full mod. Forgot to replace the sata wire and tried to run the old ones. Luckily just kept tripping some sort of surge protection and didn't affect anything.

Guilty. I was just upgrading my cpu and putting my old parts into my gf's new build and was trying to be efficient and left the Corsair psu cable in the cpu socket with her new Seasonic and I thought the board was shorting on the case. Just watched this video right now, swapped the cables and voila! Everything fn works! Thank you Jay!

I work as external IT support for many local companies and private customers and have seen quite some cases over the years. I have seen the dirt from car workshops getting sucked in by the fans and sitting there for years, but I have never seen something as disgusting as a PC from a chain smoker. The smell when I first opened a smoker PC was so disgusting I still vividly remember it.

Jay: "Do you leave your PC turned on overnight? NO!" also Jay a few months ago: "So, I left this watercooled giant PC alone for dinner and forgot it, returned 1 month later"

Number 1 😅got me on my last build. Needed a slightly longer cable and thought I had grabbed the right one. Luckily it just killed the power supply and nothing else. Lessoned learned, always verify you have the correct manufacturers cable and version for your power supply.

Extremely basic knowledge is the sort I benefit from the most! Thanks 👍

Another good tip is to power cycle after unplugging, before removing or installing components. Even if you unplug the power, there's still power for a brief time and if you just start pulling stuff out or install something... same thing can happen. And I've worked on smoker's/vaper's computers... yes, they both get a thick coating over time that insulates the crap out of everything and slows fans and eventually will stop them up. One of the worst things you can do around any electronic or mechanical device, especially if it's sucking in air for active cooling.

What you said about putting a pc in a cubby or cabinet is so true, I used to put mine in a cabinet that was attached to my desk because it didn’t fit on the desk and I didn’t want to put it on the carpet. I always complained about my room getting hot and my pc feeling laggy. After getting a new desk and putting my pc on top of it the temps have been way better and pc feels way smoother.

I started watching ur videos while building and now I just find myself still watching ur stuff for fun. Like the vids

Great tip about not vaping! The vape juice is also slightly conductive! The PC I had at the time had vape build up, helped me quit vaping!

Just finished my first pc build and u help ALOT! i knew absolutely nothing about computers and was very overwhelmed by all of this stuff and u made it alot easier so i want to thank you for all of your content!

I would really love if companies actually agreed on a standard for modular PSUs. And for the case front panel connectors. I freaking hate those tiny single cable plugs.

I had my PC in a cabinet. It’s a miracle that this thing didn’t completely die. Whenever I looked at the CPU temps it displayed a constant 100 degrees. That little I3 was suffering but it worked as long as it needed to. Had the nice side effect that I didn’t need to put on the heating during Winter. My I7 doesn’t run that hot so now I have to heat during the winter.

Keep these coming. I did now some of these but am new to pc builds so it is helpful.

Also, when making sure the power supply is powered down, you can also discharge remnant by holding down the power button to clear any power to make certain there's no hiding juice.

Well, I like to use my 3080 as a room heater. It works quite well too, especially considering how with the snow storm this works as well as any other heating source for me

Always properly measure your case to see what will fit in there, basic but saves a lot of hassle. I bought a 2 fan 6600 the other day, and have been waiting a while for the market to stabilise after using Vega 11 for a while. It has literally only just fit because of how the ram slots sit on the Asus prime mobo and if I got a bigger GPU I'd have to have returned it. I brought on intuition rather than by what room I actually had and it could have easily backfired.

Ohms Law the part they don't teach in school. When the smoke gets out those wires and components they don't work any more. Good point concerning modular power supplies. I have used them for 8 years and always used the same brand and models. I always thought the modules were wired to a standard. I'll keep this in mind going forward. Thanks for the tips

I always test my modular cables with a multimeter before I use them, for the most part, most of the PCI-e and CPU power modular cables have been pretty much the same across multiple power supplies, but the molex/sata cables have been always different Just double check them before you jam them in, dont just assume that its fine because it fits.

Thanks Jay! I bought a 1000w Seasonic to upgrade my 850w Seasonic and was getting ready to do this without switching cables.

I had a nightmare on first rule mentioned here. I upgraded my psu from Corsair 550 to ROG 850. I used all the correct cables for rog except the drives because i thought surely they are the same, nope!! Luckily it didnt harm my system but it took me about 2hrs to figure out and swap in the build so didnt end up being a short cut 😂

I just did #1 on the list. Power supply cable that plugs into the wall has seemed pretty standard for awhile now. Was really surprised by #1

As a person who was console gamer most of my life and moved into PCs, I love the upgrading and modifying of my PC, but man o man so much could go wrong. I guess that's part of the game. I'm way more knowledgeable than ever before on computers since getting into it at least and that's thanks to channels like Jay's, GN, Hardware unboxed etc.

I'm using this as a checklist of things to do to my pc

For the cubby/cabinet bit, that's actually not a terrible idea if you don't have room on your actual desk. I don't, and I do have that little open door area for my pc. The manufacturer actually included a back end for the desk, so air can get out. I basically took that, covered only the necessary parts with it, and cut out the rest. I also have no shelving in there. Air can get in easily, when door is open and pc is on. Air can get out easily, because nothing but the desk is above it (quite a bit of space in between too), and a huge opening in the back. You also have to make sure your case is thin enough, because airflow does have to go through the sides a bit too.

I watch these all the time, I've learned a lot, I'm building a thermaltake tower 900

Did not expect to actually learn anything from this one but damn I had no idea about power cables being rather brand specific. Might well have saved me as I have been thinking about buying some extra cables the next time I add another HDD to my build.

this video is so much needed for ppl just getting into pc building , learning from pros like Jay who already have made all kinds of silly mistakes

wow so glad you posted this man. Ops I just bought one without cables I'm going to have to double check before I use it what's going to where.

OMG, that tech demo running on your screen in the background takes me back! That's when Nvidia was showing off tesselation technology, wasn't it? I remember running that on my old GTX 770.

I would add "Don't use incense in the same room as the computer." I've had to clean plenty of PCs from my past clients where the motherboard and other components had a film buildup of resin coming from the incense, causing the parts to fail. Component failure was even more likely when the air became humid (during or after it rains, etc.). The humidity and resin buildup from the incense will actually corrode the circuits and boards and eventually cause a short circuit. Also, the resin cannot be cleaned with any kind of chemical or product. I would still recommend using an air purifier in the room where the computer is even when the incense is burnt in the room on the opposite side of the house.

Good point on the water cooling. That's exactly why my server is air cooled. Dropping the temp a few degrees is great but it's not worth the risk in my opinion. Especially since my server typically doesn't have the cpu pegged at 100%. Uses cases may vary of course

Talking about leaving the system running when your not around.. I have left mine running for YEARS.. but then you mentioned the water cooled system and I can understand that, and just might be the exception to the rule lol. The only catastrophic event I've EVER had with my systems is that one time a fan on one of my graphics cards took a crap on me when I was gone long time ago. Came back to no display and soon as I got close to the case I could smell "that smell" and I got lucky it didn't burn anything else out beyond the graphics card.

I've taken many client computers home throughout the years and, when I have them in a different environment, you can always smell which users smoked inside. For several of my clients that were heavy smokers, the inside of their PCs were lined with sticky tar. On the other note, whenever I vape, I always blow it in a different direction from my PC to minimize any intake.

The "unplug the PSU" one, it's been a reflexe since day 1: turn off the computer, switch the PSU off, press the on/off button on the front I/O panel (with my Antec NX210 the rgb fans would turn on for like a sec before turning off) just to "remove" the juice left, then finally unplug the PSU.

I got a tip as well: Make sure your home is not too humid. True story: my computer at one point kept shorting out, having power surges, etc. I later found water from high humidity levels collecting on the inside of my case. Amazingly, nothing has died from it. Ever since i got the humidity level balanced within the home, i never had those issues since.

On the Vape note get a small standalone hepa air filter blow it right at in the intake. It can take hours with ipa and cleaning tools to get the condescending juices off compents. The hepa filter cuts the build up down by 99%

Although none of these apply to myself I immediately thought of half a dozen people I know to whom it does. Some really good pointers here.

Modular PSUs come with bags to store parts in. I keep the PSU cables and documentation of a specific brand together in each bag. Also, no water-cooling for me. Air-cooled is the closest to maintenance-free PCs. The rest are time-honored practices I've done since my first DIY. Also, an additional practice I do is skip overclocking. The last time I had a real NEED to OC was with the original software-based Quake. I stopped after 3D cards and GLQuake came out and the game was very playable. If people want to strain their PC further, that's their business. Me? I tend to keep my PCs reliably doing it's job, sitting at a corner forgotten.

I think a lot of people made these mistakes, myself included, but I appreciate Jay saying that him and his team are guilty of it at one point or another.

Thanks for the great vid Cad! 👌

I just put together my first rig and it turns on and works!

Instead of using different pinouts on the MB side they should have just used "passthrough cables". Use the same MF connector on both sides. Like extension cables but for MB's

Yeah the psu off thing is really important. I have a specific use case for needing my system to power on when AC power is restored. Once when doing a cpu swap, I forgot to power off the psu and I saw sparks under the cpu as the system tried to start. That cpu is now dead.

I recall ol' AT-type computers hadn't the 5 V standby line, and the front panel power switch was actually connected to the main power. Things changed around year 2000 where the power supply was controlled via the motherboard, and the computer was drawing 2 - 3 Watts when off. It is called progress. There are worst cases, like "instant on" tube TVs, which kept tube filaments on while the TV was off, causing 50 - 60 Watts of idle power consumption. When TVs were granted a remote control, that caused a 10 W idle power. Regarding vape. Vape is a cloud of atomised glycerine and glycol, some really sticky stuff. It sticks atmospheric dust to fan blades and heatsinks. I noted cloud-chasing devices are the one causing damage, while computers used by people who do low power, high nic vape are barely affected. This because the cloud is tiny and dissipates after few centimetre. Thanks for the video...

I learn so much from this channel :)

Love the channel and advice. Listen, a video demonstrating the steps someone would take if the just upgraded components for their computer might be helpful. Like for instance, if someone just purchased a brand new CPU and MOBI…..what steps would they take in relation to using their current SSD, drivers etc. lia it as simple as slap it in the case, plug in their existing storage and stuff. Just an idea.

I've had custom loops for 25 years now. Never had a leak. I even went away for a week this x-mas and let the computer bake some Projects acoustics. 100% AMD 5950x utilization for a week. Zero problems! :D I have had "leaks" in the form that water evaporate out of the system faster than it should, but never a leak, leak of liquids leaving the system.

Loved this! (Hot swapping was a good mention aswell as comparison imo)

LOL at smoke in computers. I used to work in a computer repair shop. I have put on rubber gloves and vacuumed and scraped tar that had absorbed every spot of dust in the computer. I wore the gloves because I was worried about getting a contact high from literally brown layers of tar.

As an enthusiast who has only built a couple of aircooled systems in his time, usually preferring even basic watercooling to air, I will say that there is a great deal of salience to the last point. My father is an engineer who designs power quality management and cooling systems for datacenters. His work can be found in datacenters operated by Microsoft, Samsung, MSI, and others. As an engineer who is used to continuous uptime low maintenance environments, my preference for watercooling seemed insane to him. He went as far as to say he would never mix liquid and computing. As enthusiasts, we have the luxury to be present during uptime; but we should draw the line between uptime and offline time at the extent of our presence.

Thanks from Down Under Jay'. Really appreciated one of the earlier vids in this series with regard to 8 pin power cable to GPU and am now running dual cables and leaving the PCIe slot idling under 75W. #1 So this one is rather apt again particularly for the aftermarket sleeved cable I purchased a week or so agao now I'll be checking very closely the pinouts from the Seasonic Focus to my motherboard! #2 Very close to installing my first custom loop :o

I literally just installed a new drive today without turning it completely off...fortunately it all went well but I'll absolutely keep it in mind now.

I've left custom loops unattended for weeks at a time, never had a leak. Still good advice.

Great video thank you Jay. While I can never dispute with how well liquid cooling works I will never go near it - precisely because of the risks you mentioned. Noise from a PC does not concern me and gimme all the big slow RPM fans in the world but nope to liquid cooling!

@JayzTwoCents Good tips. On 11:00 - 12:00 something to clarify. Hot air is less dense than cold air and when air expands it creates positive pressure. If a PC case is in a closed space, like a cabinet, even if the door is opened or it does not have doors and the back is open, hot air will heat nearby surfaces, they will radiate heat back to the environment and the case panels. The case(inside and outside) will get hotter and hotter because of the hot air loops back in the system and the heat radiation of surfaces. Then the air will get hotter and hotter and less dence, lowering it's mass per volume results in it's heat exchange capability getting lower with time. The system will overheat sooner or later.

The thing with vaping is that it's just moisture and that moisture mixing with dust or dirt or pet hair gets really funky. Kind of the same concept with the evaporator coils in your home HVAC unit. Very difficult to clean properly

Guilty of number 2. Done that several times over the years without ever realizing it. thanks for the reminder 😆

I always say take the plug out of the wall and press the power on button a few times to clear the PSU capacitors before doing anything.

I remember my first time owning a 3060 thinking 2 PCIe cables out of 3 would be enough to power it. How little do I know. Very insightful video for those new to the world of PCs!

No idea how I made it through ca 10 years of not knowing that psu modular cables aren't interchangeable. Learnt it the hard way a few years back when a hdd died. This is good advice that needs to be said more often!

Note on the potential leaks on water cooler system. (I'm a plumber ) put a water detector that sends a message to your phone if water is detected. The more expensive the device the better chance of it telling you earlier rather than later. Not full proof but that might let you turn off your computer (even remotely don't know if possible) before damage can take place and assess where your leak is coming from. All products can have problems just be prepared when they fail never hope that they wont.

They do make water sensors that you could put in your case that can be connected to your wifi to alert you if moisture is present in your computer. These are typically used for water heaters.

Weirdly enough I once, years ago, had extremely convenient, one might say considerate, failure. I had three hard drives, basically every drive in the system, fail within two months. But they failed in such a way and order that I lost zero data and ended up with just moving my data to a mix of SSDs and larger hard drives. Of course I still lost money but given how big an upgrade moving to SSDs is and how lucky having multiple hard drives fail without data loss is I am not complaining. In case anyone is wondering one of the SSD advantages is that they do not cause a large transient load when they start up since they do not need to spin up anything. This matters when you repeatedly have multiple hard drives connected to the same power circuit spinning up at the same time. This is the original reason people advocated leaving PCs on. Not really relevant with SSDs and modern power supplies I think? Just do not connect a bunch of hard drives to the same thin wire. IIRC servers started using staggered spin up years ago. It is a SATA feature but not sure if all consumer systems implement it.

It's common to forget that the 5Vstb voltage is expected to be always on. So even when the computer is turned off, the PSU has a side circuit for 5Vstb so that the computer can have wake-on-lan, wake-on-keyboard etc. And one side effect here is that inserting an expansion board can result in the computer turning on the PSU fully. Some motherboards has a LED explicitly showing 5Vstb, so there is a LED still on when the computer is off. It's there to warn that it isn't safe to plug/unplug boards. The normal 5V/12V/... are off, so no power to disks etc. But the 24-pin connector has this 5V live. And 5Vstb is sent to all card slots. And that's why it's important to remember to disconnect the cable and then have the juice run out of the PSU.

LOL me looking at my Arctic A35 air cooler going, yep still glad I stick with Air cooling for the win!

Your PC should have its own dedicated outlet if possible, or at least its own surge protector. A single US home outlet can support up to 15 amps or about 1800 watts. But its recommended to stay below 1500 watts. So maybe plug the window AC, printer, space heater, vacuum, and minifridge into a different outlet... And even then, we're assuming the 1500 watt limit doesn't apply to the whole room. When in doubt, you can flip breakers to see which outlets are on the same circuit.

I have an AIO in my PC and I leave it unattended all the time. Honestly, even if a leak did happen while I was using it, I probably wouldn't notice. I'm not staring at my tower when I use my PC, I'm staring at the monitor. And even then, chances are pretty good that any leak would either be immediately catastrophic (in which case it wouldn't matter if I'm sitting right next to it or not) or it would drip in such a way that it just exits out the bottom of the case without hitting anything important (in which case it also wouldn't matter if I'm sitting right next to it or not, the liquid might ruin something on my desk but the PC itself would be fine until the loop ran dry, and then it would probably shut down from overheating). Granted, I also don't keep my PC in an office where I might not see it for days at a time either. It's in my bedroom, and even if I don't use it I have to walk right past it multiple times a day, so there would be plenty of opportunity to catch a non-catastrophic leak.

I've unplugged and plugged stuff into the PSU while its plugged in and switched on before, nothing happened to me but I will be more cautious about it in the future

I don't build many systems, but it never crossed my mind that different PSU would have different wiring!!

I am a mechanic by trade. I have a suggestion for the installation of O-rings with the custom water cooling. Obviously make sure your hard pipes have a smooth edge after cutting to size. I use a product called Sil-Glyd. it is silicone lubricant that I use to lube O-rings in my trade work. it helps protect the O-ring during installation.

Hey, Jay!; Thank you for all you do. My wife heard you talking about power supply cables. She said; "With great power comes great responsibility". I say LABEL the modular cables w/ the brand & model. Even if its just a piece of tape w/ the brand name & model number. I've got a Seasonic w/ modular cables; I keep them in the bag they came in. If possible, organize modular cables WITH the power supply they came w/. Have a GREAT day, Neighbor!

Very helpful video.

Ultrasonic cleaning will twist and break small leads going to pads inside integrated circuit chip. This happened to my companies manufacturing department when they wanted to clean up boards from soldering.

Had a buddy push a RAM module in one time and he ended up breaking/cracking is MoBo PCB from it bending with the force. He learned the hard way to give the board some support when popping them in. Some of them require a little bit of force.

Learned #1 the hard way. In my defense, every other cable in a PC is interchangeable. I can use any Sata Cable with any peripheral. Never imagined those cables would be the exception....

Just had my power supply give out on me after many years, and luckily I had another one just sitting around from when I helped a friend build his computer. Both were modular EVGA PSUs, and they were the same model, just different wattages. specifically a nex650g to a nex750g. luckily, those PSU's share the same pin configuration even for their 24 pin connector, so it worked out for me. There are some (rare) cases where just a PSU swap can be done safely, but I am absolutely in agreement that as a general rule, you should avoid doing things that carry risk of fire or explosions when done incorrectly without doing a bunch of research or breaking out a multimeter to check your pins.

Great advice.