3 easy ways to customize your gaming PC

Written by Branton

Last updated Feb 14, 2020

3 easy ways to customize your pc build

Putting together a powerful gaming PC build is great. But, who wants their custom build to look just like every other build that used similar hardware? Exactly, no one! In this post, we’re going to show you 3 easy ways that you can customize your gaming PC!

Adding small touches to your build is the best way to really make it “yours” and set it apart from the rest. What’s the point in building a custom gaming PC if it’s not actually customized to your liking? Even if you bought a prebuilt gaming PC instead of building your own, you can still customize it any way you’d like.

Luckily, customizing your build can be really easy to pull off.

3 easy ways to customize your gaming PC

For the sake of brevity, I’m going to try and keep these options as short and concise as possible while still explaining what you’ll need. If you have any more in-depth questions, feel free to ask them in the comment section.

It’s worth noting that this list is by no means exhaustive. There are many other ways you could go about customizing your gaming PC build. These 3 are just the most common and the easiest/cheapest to accomplish. There’s also a bonus at the bottom, but that option isn’t going to work for everyone.

1. RGB the world

3 easy ways customize your pc build rgb lightsRGB! RGB EVERYTHING! RGB YOUR CAT! YOUR DOG! Or, just RGB your gaming PC. It’s up to you.

Enhancing your build with some custom RGB lighting is one of the easiest ways to set your build apart from the others. You could get RGB fans, light strips, RGB peripherals, RGB RAM, RGB graphics cards, RGB CPU coolers; pretty much RGB everything – even cables.

But, you don’t need to RGB everything to make your build look good. Something simple like upgrading to some RGB fans and adding a subtle RGB light strip can mean a night & day difference when it comes to how your build looks. It’s often the difference between having feature lighting on your fancy hardware and being able to see everything, or not.

Why spend hundreds or thousands on hardware and a case with a glass side if you’re never going to see your parts because it’s too dark? Exactly. That’s where RGB lighting comes into play, or at the very least some single-color LED lighting.

2. Add custom cables

3 easy ways customize your pc build custom cablesCustom cabling used to be an extremely expensive thing to do. But, with custom gaming PC builds becoming something that everyone is doing, custom cabling has become much more accessible for the average person.

You still have the option to have all of your cables custom-made by companies like CableMod, or you could also buy packs of premade “custom cables.” Whichever route you go, custom cables are one of the most sure-fire ways to make your build really feel custom. No one likes ketchup and mustard cabling inside of their brand new PC!

Not only that, premade custom cables are super simple to set up. Basically, all you have to do is connect your custom cables to your PSU cables and route the custom cables to your components. It couldn’t be any easier!

That all said, custom cables are only half of the battle. The other half is being able to route them in a clean and appealing manner. This is something you’ll have to work on – it’ll take time and patience to get everything just right, but once you do it’ll be worth it!

3. Paint/Plasti Dip parts

Painting or Plasti Dipping your parts is a bit more difficult than adding RGB lighting or upgrading/managing your cabling. But, if you have any experience in masking and painting, then it should be pretty straightforward.

However, I can’t imagine a lot of people actually have experience masking and painting things. If this is you, I would strongly suggest practicing on something that means nothing before painting your parts. Even something basic like a piece of cardboard that you mask up and paint is better to practice on than a $500 GPU or something like that. Never just wing it!

Which is best? Plasti Dipping is usually going to be the best method. Not only is most Plasti Dip non-conductive, but it can also withstand high temperatures. On top of that, it’s usually pretty easy to peel off, just in case you wanted to change your color scheme or needed to return something.

With that in mind, this is THE most surefire way to customize the look of your build. Everyone else might have a basic gray and black EVGA GTX 1080 Ti SC, but you might decide to paint yours red, or blue, or some other color/combination of colors that you think would look awesome.

You’re not very limited in terms of what you could paint, either. You could paint your RAM heat spreaders, fans, chipset covers (motherboard), the interior/exterior of your case, drives, cables (if they’re not sleeved), and pretty much anything else within reason – just don’t paint over your connections unless you’re extremely confident that you won’t get paint anywhere it shouldn’t be!

Here’s an awesome (but older) guide on how to Plasti Dip your GPU, the same method could be used on pretty much anything:

Bonus: Vertical GPU mount

An often overlooked option that can really make a build stand out is a vertically mounted graphics card. Now, this isn’t necessarily an option for everyone, but if you have the space to pull it off and you don’t mind modding your case, it can really change the entire look of your build.

Mounting a GPU vertically doesn’t take much in the way of extra hardware, all you really need is a good PCIe x16 riser and everything else could be done by hand if you don’t mind the DIY approach. The other option depends entirely on your case, but you could also buy a premade vertical mount. There are lots of options, but this mount from Cooler Master will not only work in a handful of their own cases, but people have rigged them to work in other cases as well.

Some things to keep in mind when vertically mounting your GPU are clearance and airflow. If your case isn’t wide enough and your GPU ends up being too close to your side panel, it can restrict airflow and weaken performance. Similarly, if you need the PCI/PCIe slots behind where your GPU will be vertically mounted, then you might have to reconsider your options.

Conclusion

As you can see, you have a few relatively easy options available when it comes to customizing your gaming PC build. This list is by no means exhaustive and there are many other ways you could customize your build; like putting together your own custom water cooling loop, as an example.

Out of the 3 options I showed you, painting or Plasti Dipping your parts is easily going to be the hardest one to do well. If you don’t mask well enough, or you overspray or lather on excessively thick coats of paint, you could end up making your parts look worse than before. That’s why it always pays to practice something like this before jumping in head-first.

Otherwise, adding custom RGB lighting and/or custom cabling is super simple and shouldn’t take you much time at all. Luckily, both can be done for less than $150 (each) depending on how many fans you need to buy and if you’re going for an RGB CPU cooler at the same time.

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Anonymous
Anonymous
June 18, 2023 10:31 am

trash

Anonymous
Anonymous
May 11, 2020 4:51 pm

So bad

Anonymous
Anonymous
November 22, 2018 9:19 am

I just randomly got to this website. Pretty dang cool! Keep it up Branton!

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