With the release of Mass Effect Andromeda, I came to the realization that the time had come to gut my 6 year old PC. I’d eagerly paid for a month of EA Access to download the trial. Once I hit 42% d/l progress, the playable point, I hit the play button with bated breath.

And I immediately encountered an exception. My video card couldn’t handle it. I ended up buying a GTX 1080 and was able to play the game on low settings, though CPU usage was a constant, steady 99%. I finally decided to buy all new parts (excluding my PSU which works just fine) as shown in the “Outstanding” tier of logicalincrement’s glorious PC builds table.

More specifically:

video card GTX 1080
CPU i7 7700k
motherboard ASUS Z270-A
RAM 16GB DDR4
HDD reused my 512GB HDD
SSD 1TB SSD I got for cheap during an Amazon sale
Case NZXT Phantom white (my old case)

Below are some notes I took while building my PC. My dear brother has always built my PCs in the past and this was the first time I did it myself.

Helpful Resources

Case

  • Size form factor (ATX, etc) will determine what parts will fit, especially in the case of the motherboard which should match your case’s size form factor

Motherboard

Nearly everything gets connected to the motherboard.

  • 24 pin connector from PSU connects to motherboard to power the motherboard
  • 4+4 pin connector from PSU connects to motherboard’s EATX12V to power the CPU
  • Front panel audio of case connects to motherbaord

CPU/Processor

  • Inserted into motherboard

RAM/Memory

  • RAM is inserted into motherboard
  • Check your manual for recommended RAM stick formations

Video Card

  • Inserted into motherboard, there’s usually some sort of latch that can serve as an indicator of whether the video card has been attached correctly
  • Mount bracket in the back of the case and secure it

PSU

OS

Reusing drive

  • If you’re not planning to reuse the OS installed on your drive (HDD in my case), you can pretty much plug it in and access files.
  • Don’t expect to run programs that were installed on that drive if you’re using a new OS.
  • As far as game saves go, those should be independent of your environment/OS and should be importable and usable.

Creating a bootable USB drive from a Mac

  1. Acquire OS
  2. Download .iso
  3. Acquire a USB drive (move any important files out of it as your USB drive will be formatted)
  4. Use UNetbootin (more detailed instructions on their site) and the .iso to create a bootable USB drive
  5. With your PC turned off, insert your USB drive into your PC
  6. Start your PC
  7. Open BIOS
  8. Update settings so that your USB drive is used at boot time
  9. Your PC should enter your OS installation wizard
  10. Complete installation and you should be good!