PUT ON HOLD FOR THE TIME BEING

I’ve been pondering about getting myself a real gaming PC for a very long time. For quite a while I’ve been thinking about just having one built for me, but there may be two problems with that as far as I’m concerned, after doing extensive research on the subject matter:
A)Either it’s a retailer with bare bottom prices seriously lacking quality control
B)Or it’s made by a reputable source, which will cost a premium of a few hundred dollars more

So I think I finally came to the decision that building my own wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all, and to make sure that the parts should fit right I cheated by perusing Puget Systems’s customization page. ;) They seem to be very well regarded by all accounts, so it probably can’t hurt to use them as a guideline for parts needed.

This is what I’ve come up with so far:
Case - Fractal Design Define R5
Case Fans - 3x Noctua 140mm fans
Power Supply - EVGA SuperNOVA 650 80+ Gold
Mobo - ASUS Z170-A
CPU - Intel i7-6700K
Thermal Paste - Arctic MX-2
CPU Cooler - Noctua NH-U12S
GPU - EVGA Geforce GTX 1070
RAM - 16GB Crucial DDR4 2133
System Drive - Samsung 850 Evo 250GB
Game Drive - Samsung 850 Evo 500GB
OS - Windows 10 Home on USB stick

Altogether this comes to around $1,660 right now and over $600 less than what I would pay if I used a service such as Puget Systems, which seems to be the cheapest among the premium builders. Yeah, so that’s why I thought maybe I should give this a go myself.

I’m not looking to overclock or play beyond 1080P for the foreseeable future. Why such a build then? Stability and longevity… and I don’t give two jackshits about VR. Sure some may think of this as a bit overkill, but I’m considering this a longer-term investment so I wouldn’t even have to think about upgrading for quite some time. In the past, I’ve basically moved from one mediocre system to a new mediocre one, and I want to be done with that.

Now I know for the most part putting a PC together should be pretty easy-peasy these days, although I do fret the thought of the CPU-mobo-paste-cooler combo a bit. That said, I do have a few questions and thoughts:
- Power supply: Is the 80+ Gold good enough? I know there’s also the platinum rating, but as far as I could find out differences between the two should be fairly negligible. While according to Puget that kind of system has a peak usage of 330w I would want a PSU that can handle future upgrades so 650w should give me enough room to do exactly that if I’m not mistaken.
- Case fans: After reading a number of reviews I get the impression the Fractal case fans are at best adequate so that’s I want to go with the NOCTUA replacements as they seem to be well regarded
- Thermal Paste: I figure I may go with a more premium brand rather than the stock one that comes with the CPU since it’s supposed to be able to lower overall heat output by a few degrees.
- RAM: Is there even a point to go with faster sticks? All the reading I did on the subject implied that improvement would be so negligible that one couldn’t really tell the difference
- Hard Drives: I decided I want to go with SSDs - never had one before - and the Samsung Evo 850s seem to be the best as far as price and performance goes. Is it screwy of me to try to go with two, one as system and one as gaming drive, or should I just get one instead? For some reason I just really like the idea of having the two separate.
- Cables & Tools: I assume all the cables that I need should come with all the components. Is that assumption correct? Are there any specific tools I would need like a specialty screw driver and tweezers? maybe?

Any help, thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated.

PSU is fine, don't worry about platinum. If you want to save a few bucks, I'd recommend looking at the 6600k instead. It's a great chip and significantly cheaper. Check around on your components: most come with the required cables, but some don't. I'd also check to make sure the CPU comes with a cooling solution. Some of them come only with the chip and no heatsink+fan.

I recently installed a Samsung Evo SSD and it works great. I'd say stick with your plan on those.

Not sure you need to worry too much about replacing your case fans (if you need to add some in empty case fan mounts, then sure, go with the Noctua). Overall, looks like a solid build.

*edit* Oh, and I wouldn't worry too much about the thermal paste either. I personally don't think there's a whole lot of difference. For what it's worth, I'm looking at doing a new build as well, and you've hit on many similar components.

I don't think I would have to worry about it seeing as I'm looking at getting premium paste and a better-than-stock CPU cooler. ;) Good to know.

Do you use specialty tools for assembly? I would assume some sort of screwdriver would be required at some point.

That's about 3x more than my gaming rig. Hmmm...

Actually doing the job yourself isn't that difficult, have room, set an hour or two aside to put it together, make sure you don't zap it with static electricity, and you should for the most part have it done in no time.

Oh and bright lights... have bright overhead lights...

Also to note you'll probably want to be able to power it up while it's still on it's side and open, in case something doesn't work right. Have a cheap VGA monitor you can plug it into for initial bootup tests to see if any of the hardware doesn't start up. In the old days PC Speakers were standard, specifically they'd beep 1-8 times if something wasn't working specifying if it was the video card, ram, CPU, keyboard, or other hardware that wasn't working.

If it boots fine for a test run, close it up and put it in it's semi-permanent location. I'd have this. (mostly screwdrivers, but some screws are of a specialty type and be annoying) https://www.walmart.com/ip/Startech-11-Piece-PC-Computer-Tool-Kit-with-Carrying-Case/15172438

A long shaft screwdriver (phillips) and I also have a kit of small drivers (generally used for glasses), but rarely have to use the latter).

solid build but I would swap out those samsung drives for a 1tb adata, so far reliability of these other drives are pretty solid right next to samsung, I had my first adata for 5 years and still alive after all the shit I brought it through.

Is there much price difference between RAM on 2133 MHz and 2666 MHz?

Check this article in case you didn't and scroll down til you see DDR4 Speed on the Dual-Channel Z170 Platform and test results. There's a 2-3% difference but price should be the same or even cheaper according to them.

It's more on the programming than the ram that that point.

In a programming discussion it was said requesting ram uncached takes something like 300-400 cycles before you get the data. however cached ram takes 2-4 cycles.

Also multithreading with code that has to wait on a response to something, or waiting on ram could make use with lighter fiber based code which will run in sync on code while waiting for it's turn. This has to do with hot data (cached) and cold data. All data eventually goes cold after the thread is switched away, unless the OS doesn't swap data out. But once data pushes a certain size cache becomes less useful. There's a reason a lot of compression encryption and other algorithms stop at 64k in size, as that's generally the limits of the level 3-4 cache. Care to give the real link? The http link doesn't point to anywhere...

I'd go with only one SSD with a capacity of 1TB. Partition it like 50-100gb for the system and the rest for the rest.
Also the PSU is too high wattage, a quality 350-500W is enough.

Personal opinion, don't go with 2x8GB RAM, since that means that if you ever wish to go for the max RAM supported by your motherboard (and frankly, why shouldn't you?), you will need to replace those two sticks. Go for 2x16GB instead.

Nothing wrong with putting the replaced ram in another system, a lesser machine, file server, programming machine, or something like that.

The main reason why I'm considering 650W is once again longevity. Since PSUs may lose some of their efficiency over time and the possibility of future upgrades I have to consider a decent enough amount of headroom. 500W is actually the recommended minimum for a system with a 1070, even if the system is unlikely to go past 400W. 350W would probably be way too close for comfort seeing how my currently configured system would need around 330W at peak usage.

Or I could just go with another set of two 8GB sticks should I ever need it. That mobo does have 4 RAM slots after all. ;) Besides, there's as good as no (regular) software out there that has yet the need to go beyond 8GB. Hell, I've yet to even come close to maxing out my 8GB Mac mini or Win lappie. I imagine it'll be quite some time before the 16GB ceiling is reached.

I never heard of a quality PSU losing efficiency over time

future parts will be based on new manufacturing processes with lower and lower u nodes and thus will consume even less wattage

nVidia greatly exaggerate the numbers to be on the supersafe side. Your system will consume approx 100W 90% of the time, doing regular browsing. emailing etc. When gaming it'll not pass 250-300W.

I can understand the 650W if SLI. But even then an 1080 would be the better choice, along a max. 500W quality PSU.

Good luck!

As far as I know losing efficiency doesn't mean your 650W PSU will only output 600W. High efficiency means you PSU will draw less electricity from your power outlet.

Both a 70+ 650W PSU and a 90+ 650W PSU will output 650W, if needed. But the cheap one (with only 70+ efficiency) will take more electricity to do so (you will pay more electricity).

There's another reason for considering more RAM: Virtual RAMdisk