My first rig

I was thinking about posting this on the forums but not really sure where I would do it, hopefully I get some guidance with this from the users here =D

I have been thinking about making my own rig for the first time in my life. Just felt the time was right, so I got a bunch of questions aside from the normal one which is "What parts are the best?". My budget is around $1000-1300 (is this too low?) I am looking to have a dual screen set up, does it take one graphics card or two? I know I will need a wireless router in my rig, I live in Canada so what site is fast and cheap with shipping the parts?

Could something do wrong while I am putting everything together? Is it easy or do you need a degree in rocket science to put it together? (that was a joke btw but really how much knowledge do you need for this?)

Of coruse I will be using it for gaming, programming (in school for it right now) and make editing a few videos.

I was thinking about posting this on the forums but not really sure where I would do it, hopefully I get some guidance with this from the users here =D

I have been thinking about making my own rig for the first time in my life. Just felt the time was right, so I got a bunch of questions aside from the normal one which is "What parts are the best?". My budget is around $1000-1300 (is this too low?) I am looking to have a dual screen set up, does it take one graphics card or two? I know I will need a wireless router in my rig, I live in Canada so what site is fast and cheap with shipping the parts?

Could something do wrong while I am putting everything together? Is it easy or do you need a degree in rocket science to put it together? (that was a joke btw but really how much knowledge do you need for this?)

Of coruse I will be using it for gaming, programming (in school for it right now) and make editing a few videos.

You'll probably want to shop around on a few different sites to get the best prices. NCIX and Memory Express are both Canadian and have excellent pricematch guarantees. If you live near a Memory Express store, you can pick up the parts within a day or two of ordering them, and pay no shipping.

Required knowledge is pretty much nil, just put the parts into the appropriate slots. The most difficulty I had was when my SSD didn't fit in the special mount that my case came with, or when the CPU cooler I bought needed some ridiculous effort to snap the brackets into place.

My first build only took an hour and a half, with no prior experience and plenty of consulting manuals. For dualscreen setups, just make your graphics card has at least two outputs, ideally HDMI or DVI (I have no experience with DisplayPort, so that might be fine as well?) -- and with your budget, stay away from crossfire/SLI.

I don't know why you'd want a wireless router *in* your computer -- unless you mean a wireless networking card, which makes more sense.

@Jrad: Lol I was a little bit tried when I wrote this up, thanks for the advice I will look at both sites =D

A few words of advice:

Don't wear a sweater/work on a carpet. I fried a stick of RAM doing that...

When working inside a computer, make sure to hit the power button after you have unplugged it to discharge any electricity still in the system. Obviously this doesn't matter when you are building it the first time, but keep it in mind afterwards.

Plan ahead. figure out where your cables are going before you put everything together. I've gotten a lot of headaches trying to cram things together in the wrong order.

Good Luck!