PC Building High-Level Guidance (before you post, read)

[driz 2626]

1. Get an 80 plus platinum PSU that provide what you need (eg don't buy a 1000W PSU when you need 500W. You want your PSU to operate at around 80% of its max.
   1. do you want modular?
   2. do you need single or dual 12V rails?
2. pick a CPU 
   1. Understand what you're getting, if you dont know the difference between an i7, an i5, and an i3, why are you picking one?
   2. understand what hyperthreading is and whether you need it or not (you probably dont need it and if you have it you should disable it)
   3. understand which CPUs are unlocked and which are not AND why that matters or doesn't
3. Pick a motherboard that has
   1. enough PCIe slots for you
   2. enough USB version X slots for you
   3. M.2? verify it's the proper M.2 slot for you (not all M.2 slots support a disk)
   4. enough memory to satisfy your requirements
   5. check if the chipset prefers dual or quad channel memory
   6. if not using an external sound card verify it meets your needs
   7. ENSURE THE BOARD HAS THE PROPER SOCKET FOR THE CPU IN STEP 2
   8. KNOW WHAT KIND OF MEMORY THE BOARD REQURIES
4. Buy memory that has good ratings
   1. Check timings, especially if you plan to OC
   2. check voltage, especially if you plan to OC
   3. check speed, especially if you plan to OC
5. Pick a CPU cooler
   1. the included one is fine (with the included paste) for normal operation
   2. if you plan to OC, get some good thermal paste (i've always liked artic silver (i think it's up to 5 now??))
   3. open loop water cooling vs closed loop water cooling vs air vs heat pipes vs thermoelectric, liquit nitrogen, healium, immersion, etc
6. pick a graphics card 
   1. Ensure your monitors will plug into it, do you really want to introduce a single point of failure by using an adapter?
   2. Ensure it can plays the games you wanna play
   3. future use?
   4. cooling? do you need it to support liquid cooling?
   5. memory, how much do you need, why?
   6. power requirements?
   7. SLI/crossfire requirements
7. disks
   1. Are you going to use a SATA HDD? SATA SSD? NVMe SSD?  the fastest NVMe SSD is 4-6x faster than the fastest SATA SSD which is 4-5x faster than the fastest SATA HDD
   2. do you want RAID? software raid is bad, don't waste your time, if you want raid (raid0 isn't real raid) buy a raid controller
   3. if you want NVMe do you have enough PCIe lanes to support full speed, if not are you OK with that?
8. case <-- this is where you save money, not anything above here, ESPECIALLY NOT THE PSU
   1. ensure it's the appropriate size, too big of a case is bad for air circulation
   2. ensure you pull air in before you push air out
   3. use physics... convection already occurs, support it
   4. sound, support for radiators, proper size compatibility for your components (motherboard, length of video card, etc)
9. peripherals <--this is also where you save money because a mouse is a mouse and a keyboard is a keyboard. you can always buy something better later.

 

 

Where should you check reviews at? anandtech and tomshardware are great resources

 

When asking for help with your build

 

1. Post your budget
2. Post your list of components that you already have access to (ie. from your old system, such as keyboard, mouse, monitor)
3. Post what games you plan to play or if you plan to do 3D shit
4. Post what is important to you in those games, such as 144fps at ultra, or instant loading of levels, etc.
5. do your research using the first set of points.

Edited January 8, 2017 by driz

[Mimic 3307]

As an aside, you can use http://www.pcpartpicker.com to help you pick parts that are compatible.