Newegg’s speedy PC building contest sees two builders finish in under five minutes, leaving my best time in the mud

I like to think I’m pretty speedy when it comes to building a gaming PC, but my record is firmly in the mud. Two contestants at Newegg’s PC speed building contest at Megacon 2025 have finished with sub-five minute times, and that’s a mighty impressive feat, even if it does come with some caveats.

And what are they, you might be asking? Well, it’s not really building a PC from scratch, as all that needs to be done here is installing the motherboard, GPU, PSU and RAM, before booting the PC and ensuring that it posts correctly.

Which, if I’m honest, makes me feel a bit better about myself. I normally dally around a bit with the CPU installation, admiring the shiny new chip and thinking about all the infinitesimally small pathways inside. Then I have a cup of tea, debate once again how much thermal paste to use (it’s a pea-sized amount, always), and by that point it’s usually time for lunch.

Anyway, Newegg has posted a timelapse of two of its top competitors going head to head, in a competition I would surely be disqualified from for interfering with my opponents machine. We also have photos of four winners holding various bits of hardware as prizes, with two of them managing times under five minutes.

The winning time? Four minutes, nine and a half seconds. Even discounting the fact that they didn’t have to unbox the components, install the CPU, or mess around with various cable configurations to make things look pretty inside the case, that’s darn impressive.

Our winner appears to have nabbed themselves an Intel Arc B580 GPU, an Intel Core 7 Ultra CPU, and a $1,000 Newegg gift card. That’s the beginnings of an excellent gaming PC right there, so well done them.

One thing I would like to know is how many of our brave competitors managed to drop a screw inside the casing. I have yet to manage a build where this hasn’t happened at least once, and I’m pretty sure you can tell which PCs I’ve built the quickest simply by picking them up and shaking them around a bit to listen for tell-tale rattles.

Don’t tell anyone though, alright? I’ve got a reputation to protect, and a career to continue. Oh goodness, I’ve said the quiet part out loud, haven’t I? Move on, everyone. Move on.