Custom Gaming PC Build: Where do I start?

acerninetes

Honorable
Dec 20, 2015
20
0
10,510
After much deliberation I have decided to build a Gaming PC. The problem is despite reading countless answers for other similarly titled threads I still don't know what kind of hardware I'm looking for!

My budget is flexible, but I'm hoping to get something in the range £300 - £500. I'm planning on playing open world RPGs like Fallout 4 and The Witcher 3 (and hopefully TES 6 when that finally comes out!), and I'm also interested getting into RTS games (just started playing Starcraft 2 and Total War).

I don't know what kind of performance I would be able to get in that budget, and while I don't expect to be able to play Far Cry 4 on Ultra with 60 FPS I would like to have decent graphics settings (ideally high with decent FPS). I'll be playing mostly on a monitor (I think it is 1980 x 1080), but I might invest in a steam link for my TV at some point.

I have some very rough ideas which may be entirely wrong so feel free to correct me:
8GB RAM

1TB HDD (I'm not that bothered about shorter load times from SSD, because I assume I'll fill up my hard drive with game downloads [I'm coming from consoles so don't know how much space I'll need])

GTX 960 (Read in a few places that this might not be powerful enough for the next gen games I'm looking at, but 970 seems overkill)

Intel I5 6500 (Again, this may be overkill for my budget)

That's about as far as I have got. I don't know anything about motherboards etc. and I don't know how to choose a case! Also, I've heard a lot about making sure all my parts are compatible, so how do I do that? Power supply is another blank area in my knowledge.

I know this is a lot of questions, so sorry about that!

Thanks in advance -
Adam

EDIT:
I've already got the monitor, mouse, keyboard etc. but I'd probably have to buy another copy of Windows (this one is OEM). Is Windows 10 my best option?
 
Solution
This is an awesome build I put together for you: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/qTnT23

If you are really tight on money, you might want to switch out the i5 for an i3 if you are not planning to upgrade. If you plan to upgrade your graphics card, then go with GTX 950 (later replace with GTX 970 if you don't like the performance).

acerninetes

Honorable
Dec 20, 2015
20
0
10,510


Thanks for the build. What kind of FPS / Graphics settings would I be looking at with that?