Help a Complete Moron Build Their First Computer

[Turtle]

Wow, thanks all. Clearly I need to do a little more research and comparing on SSDs and video cables. Right when I thought I was beginning to understand it all.

@TwinTurbo LM Thanks for the suggestions on the cooler, I'll check those out.

@Danoff Thank you for all the advice, I'll be sure to look to see if my chosen power supply comes with the proper connectors. If not, I'm 99 percent certain the equivalent Corsair model does.

On the magnetic screwdriver: I wanted one because I'm terrified of dropping a screw onto the board. As for the wristband, I know it's not strictly necessary, but for five bucks, I'd rather have it than not.

I understand and agree with many of the points you make on the parts being something that drop in value rapidly and quickly become obsolete, but I think you kinda made my point for me when you said:

The longer you can put off buying any of them, the better.

I want to not have to upgrade anything in here other than memory and storage for a while, so going above what I need right now just means it'll take longer for it to drop below the standards that I'm looking for.

Besides, right now, I have very little in terms of bills or other expenditures. That's not going to last for much longer. If I want to make big, exciting purchases like this one, now is the time, because it could and most likely will be a long while before I have the financial freedom to do something like this again. Now or never, baby.

Also, I think you can still source copies of Windows 7, and I would were it not for Forza Horizon 3. I still prefer 7 to any of the others but I did find 8/8.1 to be inoffensive after adding Classic Shell.

 

[Danoff]

On the magnetic screwdriver: I wanted one because I'm terrified of dropping a screw onto the board.

It won't hurt it.

As for the wristband, I know it's not strictly necessary, but for five bucks, I'd rather have it than not.

Enjoy.

I understand and agree with many of the points you make on the parts being something that drop in value rapidly and quickly become obsolete, but I think you kinda made my point for me when you said:

I want to not have to upgrade anything in here other than memory and storage for a while, so going above what I need right now just means it'll take longer for it to drop below the standards that I'm looking for.

That's fine, it's wrong, but it's fine.

Let's say you'll upgrade once you encounter a game that you really want to play for which you no longer meet the minimum system requirements (that's probably what will happen). What you're trying to do now is spend money far up the curve of performance vs. value to put that off for a long time - which isn't possible. Where you're playing you're getting small percentage increments in speed for big costs. Those small percentages might stretch you out another 6 months... a year?... before you have to upgrade. If you end up upgrading every 3 years and you can stretch that to 4 years by spending money now, you're netting yourself an effective 33% of the cost of the upgrade (1 year out of 3). But it's going to cost you more than 33% of the next upgrade to try to futureproof (especially if that upgrade is just a GPU, but even still if it's a motherboard, CPU, GPU and RAM). These are all made-up figures, but basically there is a cost value curve and trying to climb it now to prevent yourself from spending money later is a bad move financially because your money is worth more later (always in electronics).

It's fun though. I've done what you're doing. Go build your hotrod, but don't pretend that it's saving you money.

 

[Turtle]

your money is worth more later (always in electronics).

This is depressing, but accurate.

I'm not necessarily saying it's going to save me money in the long run (because clearly it won't), but it's going to keep me from wanting to immediately upgrade. That's really what I want to avoid.
And you're right, it's fun. If I wasn't looking to have a little fun, I'd ditch the dedicated graphics card, save myself a couple hundred more dollars in other places, and just use the thing for editing photos. Actually, I'd probably just get another laptop.

 

[Danoff]

This is depressing, but accurate.

I'm not necessarily saying it's going to save me money in the long run (because clearly it won't), but it's going to keep me from wanting to immediately upgrade. That's really what I want to avoid.
And you're right, it's fun. If I wasn't looking to have a little fun, I'd ditch the dedicated graphics card, save myself a couple hundred more dollars in other places, and just use the thing for editing photos. Actually, I'd probably just get another laptop.

There's something about building a desktop that is just... game changing. If this is your first time, enjoy it, because it sinks its teeth into you and then you'll never look at computers quite the same way again.

 

[Turtle]

So I've done a little more research.

First, my chosen power supply has all the cables I'll need, assuming I'm following all of this correctly (an admittedly large assumption).

Second, I chose the Cryorig fan suggested by @TwinTurbo LM as many people say it installs easier. Installing the CPU cooler is one of the two things about the actual build I'm scared of, so anything to make it easier is great.

When I was looking closer at the motherboard specs, I realized that RAM above 2400mhz requires overclocking. Should I just go from the 3000mhz RAM I've chosen to 2400mhz or am I probably safe to overclock a little with my current setup? I don't want to go too far with overclocking, so if it's safer to just choose a different set of RAM, then I'll do that.

And one last thing I've learned: Always look at prices closely. Amazon offers the cheapest price on my GPU, but won't ship for weeks, so that's out. Meanwhile, Jet has a promotion going on that would reduce the price by around $30.

 

[Nexus]

3000 MHz RAM should work out of the box for Z270 motherboards, you just need to enable XMP in the BIOS and it'll automatically be set to the maximum speed (which is 3000 MHz in this case). You might be able to overclock 2400 MHz RAM to 3000 MHz (although this isn't guaranteed), but it'd be better to just buy the faster RAM in the first place.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

It might be a good idea to check if the RAM speed matters much. Sometimes it doesn't affect performance by any significant amount.

 

[Turtle]

Good news!

I have now ordered all of my parts. The last parts should get here on the 11th. Now we wait.

I ended up making a couple last-minute changes, but nothing too crazy.

I'm super excited to finally have all this stuff ordered. Thank you all so much for your help, I'm sure this build will be much nicer than the one I initially proposed.

I'll be sure to make another post when I get all the parts together and start putting things together.

 

[Turtle]

The build is done, you can see the results over in the Show Off Your Latest Purchase thread. Hopefully those that helped me with the parts list don't get too annoyed that I changed things around when ordering. I said it in that post (and the one above me actually) but I'll say it one more time: Thanks everyone for the advice, I really appreciate it. I owe all of you guys for the success of the build.

To make this post a little more worthwhile, I will say that @Danoff was right when he called the experience of building a computer "game changing". It ended up taking a bit longer than I expected - four hours to get it up into BIOS, four more to install the extra fans, do a bit of cable management, install Windows, install drivers, calibrate the monitor, and general tweaking of things - but the whole experience was very cathartic, with the exception of installing the CPU cooler and the pang of fear that came after dropping a screw or two onto the motherboard. Figuring out how to successfully install each component one at a time was fun, I enjoyed the problem solving that was required.

Just for the sake of helping anyone else looking to build a PC for the first time here's a few things I learned:

If using an aftermarket cooler, for the love of god put it on before installing the motherboard. Doing it that way has it's own downsides but it's so much easier than doing it afterwards.

If you use an anti-static band, keep in mind that it probably isn't very long and could make some things a little more difficult.

Don't put cable management off until the very end, think about it as you're putting things together. I didn't have to spend too much time on the cabling at the end because I was careful about it as I was connecting things.

Keep your work area clean. I had trouble finding some things as I was working because I had too much unnecessary packaging lying around.

Don't over tighten any screws. Just tighten them all "enough" at first, then tighten them a little more when you have them all in.

Keep your instruction manuals nearby.

Overall, I'm proud of myself for successfully putting this together, and ended up with something that runs well and - in my opinion - looks really nice to boot. I'm already figuring out how long until I start adding more stuff to it, and like I said, I had a great time putting it all together...

I want to build another.

 

[Danoff]

Looks great, congrats.