voreo :
logainofhades :
Which brands do you disagree with?
ive had some friends say G.Skill isnt reliable
Some of Seagate's drives failed or made whirring noises on me
Gigabyte i honestly have no idea and would rather have an Asus board anyway
the cooler from cooler master doesnt look like it supports 2 fans on it like the Phantek on my list
I maintain 23 PCs at home. They used to mine Bitcoin 24/7 now they mine Litecoin. I'm also old... I've been on Toms since the site started. I grew up in the 80s and 90s. I was part of the .com boom as well. The only reason I'm telling you this is to make a point.
All hard drives fail. Be they Western Digital or Seagate (or other competitors such as Hitachi, Samsung etc). They all end up in the same place (trash heap). What matters is the warranty as well as the performance/price. The rest is mostly based out of allegiances to a particular brand. Something which is, at its fundamental most fundamental level, absurd.
I've also had various Motherboards, over the course of my 33 years on this planet, Epox, Abit, Asus, Gigabyte, DFI, MSI etc etc etc I've owned one or several models of each brand. When it comes to an Intel system, I tend to use Asus motherboards. When it comes to an AMD system, I tend to use Gigabyte.
For an AM3+ build, I tend to recommend the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3. I have two of those boards (and a UD5 as well). They're solid motherboards. No reason to go for Asus when the 990FXA is better than the Asus equivalent. How do I know? As I said above... the machines I've built run 24/7 at 100% CPU load. You get to know a thing or two about reliability under those conditions.
I have used two of those Gigabyte boards, running 24/7 at 100% CPU load, for a year now. Overclocked no less. The way I see it... this screams reliability.
There are two predominant groups in these forums. The "Dude Bros" and the "g33ks". The "Dude Bros" will always follow what some other Dude Bro suggested to them. They tend to be very very active over on Reddit. They will always recommend a Core i5 CPU with an Asus motherboard and an nVIDIA Graphics card. If you question them on their choices.. they will have nothing more to say than "It's what gamers crave brah" (which is reminiscent of the movie Idiocracy). Taking advice from this lot is not recommended as they have no clue how this "stuff" actually works. They're brand conscious consumers (Beta Males/Females). Think "Apple User". Who yield to the authority of a perceived Alpha Male/Female. g33ks, on the other hand, share a disdain for authority (being Alpha-Omega in nature). g33ks tend to try the stuff out themselves, due to curiosity, as well as learn the fundamentals of the topic which they then address. g33ks fall in love with a topic and then learn everything there is to know about it. This is very time consuming and is likely why "Dude bros" can't handle it. You know... the popular Dude bro saying "TL;DR".
Trust the g33ks. Ignore the Dude bros.