So I did it, goddamnit I did it. Built a PC. Tried not to cut corners and just go all out. Waiting 4 weeks on parts you placed orders on just to have it culminate in a sweaty nervous fever dream build that lasts 5 hours on a Friday night. It was fantastic, regrettable? Yes. Were there things I wished I did differently? Absolutely. Where there parts I wish I didn't bother with, maybe. Would I trade my PC for someone else's? No.

I think that's kind of the underlying theme behind every PC right? Fucking ownership. You picked the parts out, you decided to throw a paycheck away in the middle of summer, and you're a crazy bastard that went, "well it can't be that fucking hard right? expensive legos?"

Gallery

And that ownership is worth it, it feels pretty great just hitting auto detect and the game spits out the highest settings it can throw. I mean I left out a goddamn optical drive, because I'm in the goddamn future and I don't need disks. Also my internet is pretty good so when I forgot to order an optical drive I just shrugged my shoulders and got a flash drive to get all my drivers and windows.

It's not all fist in the air moments though, I seriously underestimated my power supply and got one I thought was good when I really should have payed more attention.

NEW BUILDERS GET A MODULAR POWER SUPPLY. Don't be me, I have a full size HAF 932 case and I still have a goddamn jumble of cable on the bottom. Don't get this one because it's an even 100 and you can't spot the difference between that and this. Or alternatively you can go seasonic up to you. But trust me that first Corsair I linked to they airbrushed the cables out of the picture, they don't show you the parasite ridden dreadlocks it struggles with.

Just do yourself a favor and make sure you can take power cables out. I'm seriously thinking of getting a new power supply in a couple months and redo the whole job, mind you I feel I did a really good job with the cable routing and zipties, but man it's a goddamn mess in there. Maybe before I buy another hard drive to install Mac OS X on it I'll do that.

Another thing that's weird if you guys can take a look at the second to last picture (never mind the nail polish, I assure you he has a girlfriend that put it on him), is it fine if the fan is touching a stick of RAM? I think it's pushing it slightly on the motherboard. Temps are fine and the fan runs good, but should I be worried? I don't even know why RAM has that plastic comb on top.

Other than that though, man Tribes is cool. Have you played tribes yet? It's free! Also Witcher 2 is pretty, but fuck what the game tells you turn ubersampling off...

But I mean that's it guys, hopefully some of you cats listen to some of my advice, you're probably getting a lot of it right now or looking through guides you can't make heads or tails of. Don't worry though the minute you finish the PC is the moment all that advice makes sense. That's when you'll go "Oh of course you want to do it that way".

The PC also isn't done yet, I still need two matching monitors to go with it. Or maybe one of each? I was thinking of going either Dell or go kinda cheap and just get ASUS monitors. Are the Asus monitors good enough? Am I gonna notice a big difference? Am I gonna regret anything? Just get one Dell and get another Asus 23 inch? I'm not really gonna be going two monitor unless I'm editing. I just want a second screen for my sensor and skype stuff when I play games.

Also I'm thinking about going stupid...like going on ebay to get crazy korean monitors that's stupid right? The gamble is you spend 400 bucks which is double my price range and maybe you get a perfect 2560 x 1440 screen that would normally be 1,000 dollars if bought here.

Kinda makes me want to redo this whole thing as a poll, whatever maybe next time. Here's that shalamar I promised...Yeah I should have went Parliament-Funkadelic.

Nice one, Doctor. You'll never look back.

I agree that a little extra money on the PSU is usually money well spent.

The RAM-fan thing should be fine. Most people try to set up their hard drives or SSD as near to a case fan as possible, so this shouldn't be too serious. Flash memory works fine down to 0 degrees Celsius, which I don't think that will reach. As for pushing down on the motherboard that's for you to judge, but a slight angle isn't damaging.
 
The plastic comb on the RAM is a heatsink (I think it should be at least partially metal, or maybe ceramic).  
 
The deal with the $400 Korean IPS's is this: they are exactly identical to the Apple Cinema Displays that sell for $1000 and over, however they are A grade instead of A+ grade that they use for the Cinema Displays. What this means is that they're still quite good, but have an increased likelihood of dead/stuck pixels. Take this into account, since refund/exchange back to Korea is about $100 shipping and could take months. The vast majority of people that have bought it say they're perfectly fine though, something like 90% say they have had no issues whatsoever. If you do go that route, try to find a seller on eBay with a "perfect pixel" policy. They're a bit more expensive ($50-100) but are manually checked over for dead/stuck pixels before shipping, and therefore have a decreased probability of being unsatisfactory. 

Welcome to the club!

@Jimbo: Yeah now I feel silly, I made sure I got a nice ass motherboard and a good CPU to make sure in a few years I just need to drop in a new graphics card. And I totally dropped the ball on the PSU.

@Geno: Thanks for the tech advice, and yeah I might just buy a korean display...I've been feeling lucky and that monitor would be an awesome present in August.

Eh congratulations you did it! Feels great doesn't it? Don't forget to keep the motherboard manual in a safe place. If you ever don't boot up don't forget about the jumper which resets the whole motherboard. Normally it's more likely a dead RAM stick, your cmos battery is low and needs replacing. or you just need to reset the jumper because your processor or video card was overclocked incorrectly. (Or it could be the power supply)

This probably won't happen to you for many years though. (3-5 years) So yea congratulations and read up on that motherboard manual so you learn what your computer can handle.

As for the power supply don't feel so bad. It happens to everyone including myself. One thing you want to look out for is at least 4 +12v rails at 20 amps each. These are the best power supplies. If you go to newegg.com and look up power supplies you'll see under specifications +12v rails @20amps. The ones with 4 of those are really good.

Everything changes fast though so even if a power supply doesn't have that but has great reviews than it should be okay.

Nice!

It's the only way to go.

Enjoy your new rig!

Enjoyed that read!