I've been contemplating building a PC for quite some time but have always considered it to be something financially out of reach, so on and so forth. However, given the small bit of confidence I have in my laptop continuing operation for too much longer, I think that if there ever is a time to start thinking about building this thing, it's now. Or now-ish—it probably won't be until post-holiday season that I actually take any action.

Firstly, it's worth noting that I haven't put any attention into PC components for a long time and am therefore almost entirely in the dark when it comes to this stuff, so bear with me if I sound dumb or have any horrific ideas.

That out of the way, here are my vague criteria for building this thing: I want to spend no more than $1,500 or so, though less would be ideal. From everything I've gathered, an i7 is preferred for gaming and video work, two things I should be doing on this computer. I've read that there's a negligible difference between Haswell and Skylake processors (and the Skylakes are hard to find right now), so I'm a bit lost with that decision even though I have the Skylake on my rough draft of a build. I know next to nothing about cooling and feel as though my choice is inadequate. I'd like the computer to be at least reasonably quiet, and I'm looking for a case that is subdued since I absolutely loathe the trend of making gaming PCs have all kinds of dumb LEDs and windows and "cool" graphics and whatnot. I only have a 1080p monitor and don't intend to move up to 4K-esque resolutions any time in the very near future, but would like to be able to play games well (I've gathered that this makes a 980 fairly unnecessary and that an OC'd 970 would do me far well enough?).

And so on and so forth.

Here's a very rough draft of something along the lines of what I'm looking for: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3VYX4D

As I've said, I don't know if my cooling option is adequate. I also don't know very much about motherboards or cases or power supplies. The PSU I chose seems to potentially be overkill, but I don't want to go too low either.

I will welcome any changes that either: (i) Simply make more sense because I'm dumb and made bad choices, (ii) will increase performance without making it more than I want to spend, (iii) decrease price without causing terrible hits to performance. Feel free to ask any questions you need to know, etc.

Thanks, duders!

edit: Whoops, the motherboard has ethernet, so that was a pointless addition. And I've been told that 8GB of RAM is inadequate? Y/N

edit no.2: This is another thing I threw together, which opts for the 4970K instead of the newer 6700K. It saves a little money, and since Skylake doesn't seem to be that vast of an improvement, maybe a better choice? http://pcpartpicker.com/p/9jJwLk

For your edit 8 GB of RAM is inadequate but no worries RAM is super cheap. Get another 8GB.

The difference between i5 and i7 is a matter of less than 5% in terms of performance when it comes to gaming.

650 watts should be good for your video card. For your motherboard I might go with an ASROCK Extreme 6 (same price but more features). And for the CPU cooler I'd go with a be quiet! Pure Rock, that thing is balling on a budget.

Edit: For a power supply recommendation I would say go with a Corsair RM650 since it has a similar thing to modern GPUs where the fan doesn't turn on until it's needed (a little bit cheaper as well).

Not for video editing & rendering it isn't, which is the second use case for this machine.

@mike:Fair enough, got me there. Fixed it.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/wKH4Hx

For the video card I would go with a Radeon R9 390 because - it (for the most part) performs a bit better and is a bit cheaper than the 970, AMD cards tend to handle higher resolutions better, more ram makes the card somewhat more future proof, and the whole kerfuffle with the 3.5 GB ram and support regarding certain features of DX 12. Another thing you yourself should look into which of the video cards would offer a higher benefit to your video work.

For the CPU cooler I changed it to a Noctua cooler. It is a bit more expensive, but Noctua is considered one of the best when it comes to silence, performance and installation.

switched ram to 16 GB

Switched case to a Dractal Design R5, because imho it is more subdued than the Antec and also has sound dampening.

@miesals I noticed the R9 390 uses quite a bit more power than the 970; does that create any problems with the PSU, noise, temperature, etc.?

@yummytreesap: Perception of noise is subjective. That said in this review it is reported that the R9 390, under load, is two DBa louder than some incarnation of GTX 970. Will the sound dampening on the case eliminate the difference or the diference even notocable during regular use? That I can't tell. These guys think its pretty quiet.

It will run hotter than the 970, but that should not be a problem if your case is well ventilated, which if its not, will create temp problems for almost every high end video card.

Whether the PSU is fine depends on how much or even if you are going to overclock the system. I don't know much about CPU overclocking and I think that GPU overclocking is a waste of time. If you are planning to overclock I guess it would not hurt getting a 750 or 850 watt power supply.