How to setup up a new Gaming PC
So it’s Christmas day, you’ve just got a new gaming PC, and you want to set it up. Or maybe you got money for Christmas instead and you are off to buy a new PC, in either case you’ll want to hear my tips on how to quickly and easily set everything up, and if you are still looking to buy a system, you’ll want to hear from this video’s sponsor, Overclockers UK. We are going to be setting up this next day PC from them, which like the name implies, is pre-built and ready to ship ASAP so there is no wait for the system to be built. They’ve got 3 options you can choose from, all of which come with a comprehensive 3 year warranty as standard, so check them out at the link in the description below!
Right, the first job it to get it out the box. OCUK aways does a great job of packaging systems, as they come with a number of layers of protection. First lets get these straps and the outer covers off, then we can get into the box.
Inside the box, we’ve got… another box! You’ve got the accessories for the system, alongside the PC itself. Lets get that out now.
Once you’ve extracted the system from it’s packing, you’ll need to take the side panel off to remove the packing material that’s inside. This helps keep especially your graphics card from breaking your PCIe slot during shipping, and if you have a big air cooler, that too. Once it’s all out, you can stick the side panel back on.
Next we’ve got to fire it up, let me grab a display and shuffle things around, then we can plug it all in.
So, the chunky power cable plugs in at the bottom, don’t forget to flick the on switch once everything is plugged in, display connects to your graphics card in the middle. You might see some display connectors up at the top by the USB ports, but you don’t want to use those as you won’t be able to game very well. What you can plug in via USB is your keyboard, mouse and any other peripherals you want to use with your PC, and if you need to, ethernet too.
Then we can flick the power switch on the power supply, then press the power button on the case. It should roar into life, and boot into Windows. Let it sit for a second to fire everything up, then if you aren’t using ethernet, connect to your home WiFi down at the bottom right.
When you are connected to the internet, you’ll want to start installing all your programs and games. An easy way to get started is to use a tool called Ninite. Head to their site and pick all the programs you want installed. Pick your web browser – or multiple, things like Discord, I’d recommend VLC, Notepad++, Everything, Steam and 7-Zip too. Then click “Get your Ninite”, open it and let it install everything for you. You will still have to grab installers for services like Battle.Net, Origin and Ubisoft connect, but that’s pretty easy to do too.
When it comes to installing your games, you can do it the slow way, by redownloading all your games, or if you have an older machine or laptop with some games you already play on it, you can speed things up a bit. First, if you want to install Steam games, and have a larger drive you want to keep your games on, you’ll need to create a Steam library there. Log into Steam, press “Steam” in the top left corner, then “Settings”. Click “Downloads” then the top button for “Steam Library Folders”. Click “Add Library Folder” and create a folder on your second drive and select it. You can also right click on your new folder and pick “Make default folder” so you don’t have to pick it every time you install games.
Now, copy your existing game files to your new PC. If you have an old hard drive, you can turn the PC off, open the side panels, plug in power and data, then boot the PC back up and copy directly. If you have a large USB drive that works too, or if you are on the same home network you can directly copy the files from one machine to the other. This is a bit more tricky, so I’ll link to a full guide on that one below.
Once you’ve got the files on your new PC, inside the new Steam Library folder, and instead the “steamapps” folder, create a new folder called “common” and paste your game files inside that. Once they’ve all copied, open Steam and select all the games you’ve copied, tell it to install them to where they already are, and let it discover the existing files. This can be a bit picky and might redownload the game anyway, but it’s worth trying.
For something like BattleNet, when you first install it, it’ll ask if you want to locate any existing games, leave that window open, copy your game files anywhere you want, then pick them from Battlenet and you should be good. Similar for Ubisoft Connect, pick your game, click “Locate installed game” and that should be it.
If you are using a high refresh rate monitor, you’ll need to set it up to run at it’s full refresh rate. On the desktop, right click and pick “Display Settings”, scroll down to see “Advanced Display Settings”, then click on “Display adaptor properties”, then the “Monitor” tab. Set your refresh rate, hit ok, and you are all set.
So, that’s how to set up a new gaming PC, the easy way. One other note, if you get errors like “MSVCP140.dll missing”, install the latest vc_redist – both the x86 and x64 versions. And, make sure you run Windows update to get everything up to date too. You can check for new versions of your graphics drivers as well, signing into NVIDIA Geforce experience should automatically tell you if there is one available, so that’s a good shout too.
If you are looking to buy a PC with your Christmas money, definitely check out Overclocker’s pre-built options. They are offering an RTX 3070 system that’s in stock, and since it’s already built it’ll be shipped ASAP with no build time delays. Like I said it comes with a comprehensive 3 year warranty as standard, it’s built by experts – I didn’t realise but they’ve been selling systems for 21 years now, so yeah plenty of experience, and the people who build your system are also the folk you speak to if you’ve got any problems, so they know how to help you well. They’ve got three options at different price points, so check them out at the link in the description below, and of course thank you to them for sponsoring this video and helping make these videos possible.
