Setting up your new PC

Put the box on the floor, not a table.It's heavy and it's about to get lighter at the top, which makes it tippy. The floor also means there's nowhere to fall.

Check which way is up.There's an arrow on the carton. Open that end.

Cut the tape, not the box. Use scissors or a box cutter with barely any blade out — 2–3mm is plenty. The PC sits close to the walls of the carton and a deep cut can score the case or a cable. If in doubt, just pull the tape off.

Lift the PC out from underneath, with two hands, from the bottom corners. Don't lift it by the glass panel, and don't lift it by any of the top panels — they're often removable and will come off in your hands.

Keep the box and all the foamuntil you're certain everything works. If anything needs to come back to us, it needs to travel in the packaging it arrived in. Flat-pack it and slide it behind a wardrobe.

This is the step people miss, and it matters.Inside the case there's foam or inflatable padding holding the graphics card and cooler steady for the trip. It has to come out before you turn the PC on. Leaving it in blocks airflow and can push against the fans.

Getting the side panel off

The panel you want is the plain one — the side without the glass. Look at the back edge of the case:

• Thumbscrews:two screws at the back edge, the size of a 5c piece. Turn them anticlockwise with your fingers. They're designed not to come all the way out — if they feel stuck, they're just tight, not threadlocked.
• No screws at all:many of our cases are tool-free. There'll be a notch, lip, or small handle at the top or bottom edge of the panel. Pull it straight back about a centimetre, then lift away.
• Glass side: usually four thumbscrews, one per corner. Hold the glass with one hand while undoing the last screwso it doesn't tip forward.

Taking the packing out

Pull the foam or air bag out gently and straight up. It's wedged, not stuck — there's no glue and nothing is attached to it. If it catches, wiggle it rather than yanking; there are cables around it.

Have a quick look around while you're in there. Everything should look seated and tidy. Nothing should be rattling loose in the bottom of the case. If something has clearly come adrift in transit, stop and message us— don't try to push it back in.

Put the panel back on

Slide it on, do the screws finger-tight. Don't run the PC with the side off: these cases are designed to pull air through in a specific path, and an open side actually makes cooling worse, not better.

Your cables and accessories are in one of three places. Check all three before deciding something's missing:

1. A motherboard box inside the carton — often holds the WiFi antenna, SATA cables and manuals
2. Inside the PC itself, usually in the drive bay area or cable-management space behind the back panel
3. Loose in the carton, taped to the foam

What you should have:

You do not need: a monitor cable from us— those come with your monitor. If you don't have one, you'll need a DisplayPort or HDMI cable to connect the two.

Can't find something? Message us with your order number before buying a replacement.

The rest, in order

1. Power cable into the socket at the very bottom of the back, then into the wall.
2. Flip the power supply switch to I. It's right next to where the power cable goes in. If it's on O, nothing will happen when you press the power button — this is the second most common one.
3. Monitor cable — GPU ports, as above. DisplayPort if your monitor has it; it handles high refresh rates better than HDMI.
4. Keyboard and mouse into any USB port.
5. WiFi antenna, if you're using WiFi — screws onto the two gold connectors on the motherboard's port cluster. Finger-tight, then angle them upright. Skip if you're using an ethernet cable.
6. Headset or speakersinto the green audio jack, or USB if they're USB.

Now press the power button

It's on the top or front of the case.

A new PC's first start-up looks more dramatic than it is.

All of this is normal:

• Fans spinning up loudly for 5–20 seconds, then dropping to quiet. They're calibrating.
• A black screen for 20–30 seconds before anything appears.
• One automatic restart during Windows setup.
• RGB lighting defaulting to a rainbow cycle. You can change it later.
• The case being warm to the touch.
• A faint high-pitched electrical whine under heavy load — that's coil whine, it's normal in modern graphics cards and it isn't a fault.

Stop and message us if:

• Nothing at all happens when you press power — first check the PSU switch is on I and the wall socket is switched on
• Fans spin but the screen stays black for more than a minute — first check the monitor cable is in the graphics card, not the motherboard
• It turns on then off repeatedly
• You hear grinding, clicking or scraping
• There's a burning smell — unplug it at the wall immediately and call us

How to reach us →

Windows is already installed and all drivers are done. There's no bloatware to remove.

You'll be asked to:

1. Pick your region and keyboard— Australia, and US keyboard layout (that's correct for Australian keyboards; there isn't an “Australian” layout).
2. Connect to the internet — your WiFi, or plug in an ethernet cable.
3. Sign in with a Microsoft account, or create a local account if you'd rather not. Either is fine.
4. Decline the extras if you want — OneDrive, Game Pass trial, personalisation questions. None of it is needed.
5. “Enter your product key” — see the next section. Click “I don't have a product key.”

First login takes a minute or two while Windows finishes up. After that you're done.

Read this before you worry about it

We get asked about this more than anything else, usually by someone who thinks they've been sold a faulty machine or that they're about to lose access to it. Neither is true. So, plainly:

What “not activated” actually means

Your PC works. All of it.Full performance, every game, every program, all your hardware. Windows doesn't slow down, doesn't time out, doesn't stop working, and doesn't delete anything. There's no trial period and no deadline. You can use it exactly like this indefinitely.

What you get instead is:

• A small “Activate Windows” watermark in the bottom-right corner of the screen
• Some personalisation settings greyed out in the Settings app — wallpaper, accent colours, themes and lock screen
• An occasional prompt in Settings suggesting you activate

That's the entire list. It is a cosmetic nag, not a restriction on what your computer can do.

Why we do it this way

A Windows licence adds real money to the price of a build, and a lot of our customers already have a key — from an old PC, from their work or school, or they simply don't care about the watermark. Rather than build that cost into every machine for everyone, we leave the choice with you.

Your three options — all of them fine

1. Leave it as it is. Costs nothing. You get a watermark in the corner and you lose a few personalisation menus. Plenty of our customers run like this for years and never think about it again. There is nothing irresponsible about this choice.
2. Buy a licence from Microsoft.The official route, around $225 for Windows 11 Pro from microsoft.com. You get a key that's unambiguously yours, tied to your Microsoft account, and it'll survive a reinstall.
3. Use a key you already own.If you have a Windows 10 or 11 key from a previous PC that you're no longer using, it will very often activate here. Worth trying before you spend anything.

How to activate, whenever you want

Settings → System → Activation → Change product key → type it in. Takes about thirty seconds and doesn't need a reinstall. You can do it today, next year, or never.

Changing your wallpaper and theme without activating

Windows greys out the Personalisation page when it isn't activated, but it leaves other paths open — these are built into Windows and work fine:

• Change your wallpaper: find any image, right-click it, choose Set as desktop background. Works from File Explorer and from the Photos app. Same result, different door.
• Turn on dark mode:it's blocked in Personalisation, but you can still get it via the Accessibility settings — Settings → Accessibility → Contrast themes, and pick a dark theme. Not identical to standard dark mode but it does the job.
• Change your mouse cursor: Settings → Accessibility → Mouse pointer and touch. Not blocked.
• Rearrange the taskbar and Start menu: right-click the taskbar, or drag tiles in Start. Not blocked.
• Change your lock screen: blocked, no clean way around it.

About the watermark

We're often asked how to remove the “Activate Windows” watermark without activating. We're not going to publish instructions for that — it's a licensing notice, and telling customers how to switch it off isn't something we're comfortable putting our name to.

What we'd say instead: it's small, it's bottom-right, it doesn't appear in screenshots of most games, and in full-screen games you won't see it at all. If it genuinely bothers you, option 2 or 3 above fixes it properly and permanently.

• Run Windows Update a couple of times until it stops finding things. Settings → Windows Update.
• Install your games launcher — Steam, Epic, Battle.net, whatever you use.
• Set your monitor's refresh rate. This is the second most-missed thing after the GPU port. A 144Hz monitor often ships running at 60Hz. Settings → System → Display → Advanced display → pick the highest refresh rate listed. The difference is immediately obvious.
• Turn on Resizable BAR / Smart Access Memoryif you want a few extra frames — ask us, it's a BIOS setting and we're happy to walk you through it.
• Keep the box for another couple of weeks, just in case.