Building the Rocket Lake
LENGTH OF TIME: 2-3 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: MEDIUM
01 FIX THE CPU COOLING BRACKET
An odd starting point, but regardless of what you’re building, it needs to be secure. Thankfully, that’s one thing our writer knew before starting. For this PC, we need to start on the back of our motherboard by screwing in the liquid cooler CPU mount. It can be tight inside the chassis, so be careful moving things around, take your time, and treat everything delicately. Lay the bracket on a table and gently align it with the four screw holes around the CPU slot. With the correct stand-off screws that come with the Corsair cooler, secure the bracket in place for later. With the back of the board prepped, we can turn our attention to the brain of the build: the CPU.
02 INSERT THE BRAIN
When handling Intel CPUs, it’s important not to touch the bottom pins. Lightly pinch the sides when placing it in the motherboard. To begin, raise the retention arm. When looking at it straight on, you have to push this outward first to unhook it, then lift the arm to reveal the socket. Leave the plastic cover in place. Thankfully, on our Intel Core i9-11900K, one of the corners has an arrow that needs to align with a corresponding arrow on the mobo in order to position the CPU properly in the socket. This is the brain of the build, so take your time, don’t apply any pressure, and it should all fall into place. Pull the retention arm down again slowly, so the bracket sits under the Torx screw, then push the arm back securely into the hook. Once done, the plastic cover pops off.
03 SSD STORAGE
What’s a brain without memory? We’re talking SSD, not RAM. We’ll get to that shortly. Our 1TB M.2 Samsung SSD will store everything in this build. Luckily, the MSI motherboard
