Building a PC is a great experience. We sit there with a spreadsheet and multiple browser tabs, pouring over the best CPUs, the best GPUs, PC cases, motherboards, RAM deals, and many more components.

The package arrives, and we are excitedly tearing into the boxes, putting the parts on the table, and we are ready to build! We reach into the toolkit and dig out the rusty old screwdriver we used to open a paint can back in 2014. We then spill standoffs and screws over the floor, ready for an unsuspecting foot at 2am!

But wait, it doesn't have to be like this! We've all done this, made the mistakes, and now we share my knowledge and that of the Tom's Hardware staff so you don't have to hunt for the Amazon Prime Big Deals.

So tool up, and let battle commence!

• Check out all the PC tool deals on Amazon

Precision Kits

All the gear, and lots of ideas?

You need to start somewhere, and these kits have pretty much every tool that you could need to maintain a PC, all in a handy case. In my office/workshop, I have a general set of screwdrivers for general tasks, and a set of Hoto screwdrivers and bits for servicing my PC and any other parts I review, like motherboards, cases, fans, and more.

Whether you call them Hex or Allen wrenches, this part of our toolbox is often overlooked. Why? Because we get one in every set of flat-pack, DIY furniture that's why! You can get cheap sets of Hex wrenches, but they are ultimately made from a material softer than Play-Doh, or they have the power to strip a head. You need a good set of Hex wrenches, and this set from Wera is awesome.

German-made precision, strength, and a ball head to enable access to awkward screws. Grab this set now, and thank yourself later!

Everyone should own these great electric screwdrivers!

At least five Tom's Hardware editors own a Hoto screwdriver. I am one of them. It should be difficult to extol an electric screwdriver. After all, it is really just a motor that spins and screws / unscrews. But Hoto's new Pixel Drive is easy to glorify!

The main screwdriver chassis is chunky and features a rubberized finish to prevent it from slipping from your hands. The twist power ring offers three levels of torque, and the simple push-button forward/reverse is a joy to use. Throw in a bonus LED light ring, and you are ready to build and maintain PCs and have plenty of power to put up those shelves in the living room. All of the details are displayed on the LED display, so you know how much power you are putting down, and how much the screwdriver has left!

Screw Kits

Don't screw up your next PC build!

Let's be honest. We've all scoured around for a spare standoff or screw to secure a motherboard to a chassis. We've cannibalized other components to ensure that our main rig has everything it needs to keep the motherboard in place and the GPU firmly attached to the case. But what if we just spent less than $10 for over 500 screws?

That's right, for less than $10, we can have 500 screws, stand-offs, and insulation rings to secure every part of our PC.

In the kit, there are:

• Hard drive screws
• Motherboard screws
• Chassis fan screws
• SSD mounting screws
• Insulation gaskets
• High-strength chassis screws (think GPUs)
• M.2 screws
• Flat Phillips screws
• Chassis hand twist screws

I bought myself a similar pack years ago since I deal with motherboards and system components on the daily, and it has proven its worth on more than a few occasions. For less than $10, just throw it into your basket without thinking and have all the screws and bits you need to work on your PC.

Flashlights

Save money on this 'illuminating' flashlight deal

A good flashlight is one of the most rewarding tools that we can own. It lights up the dark, helps us see obstacles and what we are working on, and could be used to signal planes, should you be trapped on the island from Lost.

Air dusters and cleaners

Clean the filth from your PC!

Air blowers/dusters are a popular choice for quickly blowing out fans and filters to remove any collected dust and fluff. They can also blow out the crumbs that linger under your keyboard. Air blowers are a great alternative to single-use compressed air cans.

The Wolfbox MegaFlow 100 (MF100) may sound like a 1990s Euro Rock tribute act, but it has 150,000 RPM of power to blow dust out of your PC at 45 meters per second!

This convenient blower is battery-powered and supports USB Type-C charging. The MF100 fully charges in 2.5 hours and provides up to 100 minutes of runtime on the first setting. The MF100 is small and compact, weighing only 0.66lb, so it can be easily stored when not in use. The MF100 is also supported by a 24-month guarantee and 24/7 customer service.

Not everyone wants to buy an $60 air duster. There are plenty that cost less that still move a ton of air and come with several attachments that are plenty useful for cleaning out your PC.

I clean out my desktop PC once or twice a year and the blower did a great job, but there were times when the amassed collection of dead skin cells, dog and cat hair, and other fluff was too much for my much weaker air duster. So I bought some cans of compressed air, and not the dollar store stuff either! I don't use them often, but they are handy when you need a little more power in a precise point.

Sometimes compressed air or turbo-force USB-powered jet fans aren't enough, and so you must get your hands dirty to get parts of your PC truly clean. Cleaning any electronic components should be done with care. Components aren't as static sensitive as their predecessors but we should take care not to trash our rig.

These nylon anti-static brushes come in a range of sizes and shapes to clean dust from components and inside drive bays, and to keep caked-on dust from your fan blades. It also includes a keycap puller and tweezers to deep clean the harrowing scene that lurks under your keyboard.

The final cleaning product that you need for building and maintaining PCs is Isopropyl Alcohol, IPA. Yes, 99% is overkill; heck, it's medical grade for first aid use, but if you really want to eke it out, get some distilled water and water down your mix to 70%. I don’t because it works well as it is.

My top tip, though, is not to spray it when the components are hot. There is very little risk of fire, but it will evaporate rather quickly. That said, in the electronics hobbyist world, rapidly evaporating IPA is used to identify super-hot chips, typically those that have shorted.

Thermal pastes

Thermal paste etiquette — pea-sized blob, an X, or a smooth layer like peanut butter?

Let's all agree that, however you apply thermal paste, that is the right way, ok? Thermal paste / TIM or thermal pads bridge the hot side of a component to a heatsink or heatpipe, which wicks away heat, keeping the component cool.

Thermal material is essential to keep your system cool, and I asked the team what they use. Our Editor-in-Chief, Paul Alcorn, said that MX-6 is his go-to thermal paste. So I looked around and found this handy kit that contains 4G of thermal paste and six handy wipes. The wipes are essentially isopropyl alcohol on a cloth, and they are used to prepare the surface for the new paste. They will wipe off the old paste, dust, dead skin (ewww) and leave the surface ready for pasting!

If you spot something better, or want to tell me I am wrong, hit the comments!

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A PC enthusiast has showcased their new all-AMD build on social media, packing a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Radeon RX 9070 XT. That’s an awesome combo to behold, paired with 32GB DDR5-6000 during the AI-RAM-pocalypse. However, this build has become headlineworthy entirely due to its steampunk-inspired aesthetics. If Thomas Edison and George Stephenson had teamed up to build a gaming PC, it might have looked like this. Meanwhile, the weight of Redditor voting suggests that most think it looks like some kind of espresso coffee machine.

The crafty PC builder behind this new battlestation is Old-Mate-Fetus. Key to its visual appeal is the extensive use of copper cooling apparatus and wood. The images clearly show this open-build PC made with a custom liquid loop using copper pipes, elbow joints, and welds. These pipes meander around the build, feeding the Alphacool GPU block, the Heatkiller IV CPU block, and circulating around a large radiator up top. A copper design feature that really stands out, though, is the “reservoir made from an old Primus Blowtorch with sight gauge fitted to it.” Nice.

Old-Mate-Fetus sits the PC on a base/backing frame they also handmade using a dark hardwood with an antique finish, and brass screws. We can’t see it in the photos, so it's probably pretty safe to guess that the Corsair 850W SFX power supply is hidden in the wood base. The builder says that they also made custom cables from the PSU to the various components.

Custom PC component list:

• AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
• Gigabyte Aorus Elite B650M Wi-Fi
• Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming OC
• 32GB Klevv DDR5-6000 CL28 (wanted 64GB)
• AlphaCool GPU Block
• Heatkiller IV CPU Block
• AlphaCool DDC pump with custom enclosure
• Corsair 850W SFX power supply
• Noctua Industrial 120mm Fans

If you are thinking the Old-Mate-Fetus design has some Billet Labs influence, and that it would be appreciated by them, “you are correct,” confirms the London-based copper pipe welder in the comments. The builder of this all-AMD machine warmly accepted the compliment. Redditors also joked about this new gaming PC possibly being the ultimate Steam Machine.

A tech enthusiast says that they managed to put together a home lab-worthy Proxmox server using PC parts scavenged from the nearby county landfill. Furthermore, Tsuto told fellow Redditors that they now routinely raid the dump’s separate electronics recycling area once a week. We can’t blame them; their gallery of liberated hardware includes plenty of valuable trinkets like SSDs, HDDs, GPUs, even RAM, complete laptops, and more.

‘It’s wild what people throw away these days,’ says the successful tech scavenger. Tsuto seems to admit that many of the bits and pieces are “on the older end,” but even folks paying cold, hard cash at retail in 2026 are competing for components like RTX 3060s, AM4 motherboards/CPUs, and DDR4. That’s how hard the components shortage is hitting folks.

Tsuto also seems rather pleased with an Asus ROG laptop found at the landfill site. “The Asus ROG laptop just needed a $25 battery off Amazon and still has decent enough specs for casual gaming for my son,” they comment. Pixel peeping Tsuto’s gallery indicates that this portable gaming laptop packs an Intel Core i7-4710HQ (4C/8T) supported by 16GB of RAM, and allied with a GeForce GTX 860M 2GB GPU. It will be playing less demanding titles such as Stumble Guys, we see.

In a follow-up post, the Redditor explains that one of their home lab projects that has been built from the dumpster finds includes a Proxmox server. It’s a dusty-looking machine (it’s a shame Tsuto hasn’t found an air duster yet?), but it is ample for their needs. The ‘new’ Proxmox machine is said to pack in “Two mirrored 256GB SSDs for the OS, one extra 1TB SSD for fast storage, and three 2TB HDDs in RAID1 for ZFS storage.”

Despite the lavish tech finds from this landfill, Tsuto says they actually bought some key components off Amazon to finalize the system – a Core i7-7700 and 64GB of RAM. We hope the RAM wasn’t bought in recent months, with the prices as they are.

Where I live, you might as well rob a bank as try and swipe electronics from the local council recycling centers. There’s security and cameras around these trash = treasure hoards, which can be particularly appealing to folks who appreciate retro computing.

If you need to kickstart your hobbyist toolbox with a set of kit, then you'll want to take advantage of this Amazon deal. This Strebito 144-in-1 kit is just $39.99 right now, which gives you a 20% saving on its usual price for a set that includes both a precision and an electric screwdriver, along with 22 maintenance tools and 120 different magnetic driver bits to work with.

● Check out this deal at Amazon

Basically, this is the ultimate starter kit for anyone looking to build or repair any kind of electronics, including PCs and laptops, and at an affordable price. You're gaining a complete set with two different drivers, a whole set of bits, built-in LED lighting, and a set of tools to help you clean, scrape, and adjust for any kind of project you're working on.

The big deal here is those two drivers, which you'll each need for two different types of repair jobs. The mini electric driver has a 350 mAh battery, which you'll be able to charge up within an hour using a USB-C cable.

Specs-wise, it features adjustable torque options between 0.15 and 0.5 Newton-meters, along with speeds of 200 RPM. It's a good option for getting into tight spaces like a PC case, with a built-in LED light to help you see better. As for the precision screwdriver, that gives you a much higher set of torque, up to 7 Newton-meters in this case, for when you need to apply a bit of heavy pressure to get the job done.

Worried about not having the right bits? Not with this kit. 120 different options are available here, covering all of the major head styles. You've got flathead, Torx, Phillips, and Pozidrive bits to choose from here. There's even a magnetizer/demagnetizer tool to help your drivers keep hold of the screws, but if you're worried about the magnets damaging your electronics, you can demagnetize them, too. There's a 5.7 x 3.3-inch magnetic project mat included here so that you can keep it all organized while you're building or repairing, too. This Strebito set also includes brushes, scrapers, and a suction cup to round out the 22 extra repair tools, which you'll find useful for taking apart your electronics.

All in all, the $39.99 price for this Strebito 144-in-1 precision screwdriver set makes it an affordable must-buy for someone who needs to expand their kit. As we head towards the holidays, you can even put it aside as the perfect gift for the DIYer, hobbyist, or PC builder in your life, too. With Strebito's lifetime guarantee included, you'll be covered if you have any issues.

A self-taught electronics tinkerer called Mike recently shared details of his retro-computing project on Hackaday. It certainly is retro, as the design eschews modern computer component niceties like microprocessors or microcontrollers. Instead, Mike’s computer is “a modern 8-bit design, built with recycled 1950s vacuum tubes.” It uses 460 Soviet-era 6N3P (Cyrillic 6Н3П-ЕВ) double triode tubes, which were manufactured around 50 years ago, combined with era-appropriate germanium diodes.

The wall-mounted vacuum tube-based computer you see in the video above is apparently the third tube computer Mike has engineered this decade. Previous iterations have sometimes come to an explosive end…

Of course, there have been a number of famous historically significant computers based on arrays of these tubes or valves, which offer similar functionality to the transistors that largely succeeded them. There are plenty of reasons the computer industry moved from tubes to transistors, and then silicon ICs, but enthusiasts aren’t bound by such practicalities.

Mike notes a few drawbacks with vacuum tubes, actually. Most notably, this simple 8-bit computer design needs 460 of these fragile, rather bulky, white-hot glowing tubes to run. Furthermore, these used/old stock 6N3P models only have about a 500-hour operational life, so a few handy spares are required, as is a stepladder to reach the whole array of tubes, which may fizzle out at any time. The tubes run hot, so Mike's computer room is always toasty whether the season makes that a nice thing or not. A fire extinguisher is always kept handy, and the room smells of burning dust.

Performance and capabilities are about as limited as one might expect. Mike notes that starting The Tube Computer (MK3) means waiting 10 to 15 mins after power-on for the machine to literally warm up. This is followed by a mandatory reset to get the tubes into a unified operational state.

For compute functionality, Mike’s Tube Computer architecture uses an arithmetic logic design to perform just the five essential functions needed for its instruction set (sum, carry, not, increment, and XNOR). Meanwhile, its instruction cycle relies on a non-pipelined architecture with a six-step fetch and single-execute cycle.

Components:

• 460 × 6N3P vacuum tube
• 46 × 10 tube pcbs
• 1 × 190cmx130cm 4mm acrylic panel
• 3 × 2m 30mmx30mm Aluminium box section
• 5 × Backplane pcbs

User interaction with this wall-mounted homemade computer varies depending on the program in use. Currently, Mike has it set up to run an Airship Simulator piloting a British R80 airship from Brighton to Paris. “By pressing controls on the image of the bridge of the R80, you can direct the airship software,” says Mike. “These membrane buttons simply put 5 volts directly to the input board of The Tube Computer. You can control the ballast, gas release, engine power, elevators, rudder and the bow mooring gear, which is used to release the airship from the tower.”

Another charming feature of this admittedly “build it now, fix it later” computer design is the very audible accompanying ex-British Rail flip-digit display. That add-on will invoke another entirely different flavor of nostalgia for some of our readers.

Hoto screwdrivers have become a key component in the Tom's Hardware staff toolkit in recent years, and this particular model has been one of my favorites. I've used it for DIY projects during my house reno, but it's also been useful for PC repairs and other odd jobs. The battery life means I've only had to charge it a couple of times in nearly a year of heavy usage. If that sounds good to you, you'll want to grab the 40% discount on this 25-bit Hoto electric screwdriver kit, now priced at just $29.98 for a limited time only.

● Check out this deal at Amazon

This kit is an upgraded version of the model I own; it's the same driver, but with extra bits and a better case, so it's a little bit more robust for users. The 40% discount brings it back to a price that we've seen a few times in recent months, but the kit does spike up and down, so you'll want to grab it while it's on offer.

You're getting the familiar 3.6V electric driver here, with a 1,500 mAh battery that Hoto claims allows you to drive over 1,000 screws without the need to charge it. That does match my own experience, as I've only needed to charge it a couple of times since I picked it up late last year. I use it extensively, pretty much every weekend, too. To charge it, you'll need to use the supplied USB-C cable, and it takes about two and a half hours to fully charge.

This is a fully adjustable driver, so it can handle a few different scenarios, with three different torque settings to choose from. It has an LED light at the top to help you see when you're driving in dark spaces like PC cases, and it'll stop immediately as soon as you release the button. It's magnetic, so keeping hold of tiny screws won't be a problem here.

You get an upgraded storage case with this Hoto model, which helps to both protect the driver and keep your bits organized, and it's a nice upgrade over the circular casing I received with the earlier NEX O1 Pro kit. You're getting 24 different screw bits here, along with an extended PH2 bit, giving you access to Phillips, Torx, flat, hexagon, and Pozidriv head bits, which are all rated for 60HRC on the Rockwell scale.

The $29.98 sale price on this 25-piece Hoto electric screwdriver set makes this a must-buy for hobbyists. If you need a starter set for a PC building kit, or just want a few handy tools for DIY-ing around the home, then this Hoto kit is a good place to start. It's versatile, lightweight, and a good option for when you just need a bit of extra power compared to manual driving.