Building new PC - Novice

Hey Redsteel, the first thing you're going to want to do is put what you have so far into pcpartpicker.com and share the link. That makes it waaay easier to play with parts and find what's currently within budget very quickly.

Speaking of which, what is your budget?

2nd for putting your list into pcpartpicker. But from what you have I'd actually suggest getting an SSD, even a small one, for just your OS and core programs and then a traditional HDD for anything else. Even money isn't an issue than get a larger ssd, 500GB+ range, which should fit a good collection of large AAA games without much worry.

budget/country?

Your CPU is fine board and memory are fine. You can up your RAM beyond the 2400 speed if you want since the Z170 is designed for it and you obviously want to overclock a bit.

For the hard drive. Get a 250GB SSD. 120 is fine for windows and apps like office, photoshop, etc... for office use. But install a few 25GB games and you're full. For the storage drive I'd shy away from the hybrid drive. It's just storage. The hybrid is more designed for a laptop where you only have 1 drive and you need speed + storage. I'd get a regular 7200 RPM storage drive.

For the SSD the Samsung EVO seems to be the most popular right now. Look for an M.2 version. Read up on M.2 and the different keys and PCI-E SATA. Read up on that and educate yourself. You can get an m.2 SATA for the same price as the SATA version. This allows a potentially faster drive, plus it installs on the motherboard so you don't need to install it in the case with cables. Better cable management. Your Z170 board should support it, and it probably will boot form it. Whatever motherboard you use make sure it matches the hard drive, and make sure you can boot from m.2.

8GB is plenty for gaming. RAM is cheap so I'd go 16GB myself, but it's far from required unless you do lots of multitasking productivity and ake advantage of it.

If you need a monitor check out GSync and Freesync. Amazing technology. I prefer freesync and would buy a freesync monitor therefore would require an AMD video card. You can also get a GSync monitor.

With that NVidia card a 550W power supply is required. 750-850w if you ever want to do SLI and add a second video card. For value EVGA B2 is good, or the G2 for a step up. The B1 and G1 or lesser quality so skip those. You can use others if there are some sales or deals, but those EVGAs are great. I think the P2 is where the warranty steps up to 10 years so you may want to consider that. I got a P2 on sale for the same price as the G2.

Today DVD drives are usually only used to install windows and the network driver if required for the motherboard. Then the rest of the updated drivers from the net. Most people don't burn dvd's anymore. So what's becoming popular is cases without drive cages. And no 5.35" drive bays for installing a DVD-Drive. Just get an external dvd-drive for the odd time you want to install windows if it's on a DVD and not a USB stick. It's popular to install windows from a USB stick now. WIthout cages it makes lots of room for liquid cooling which is so popular now.

For a case check out the Fractal Design Define S. It's the exact same case as the R5, so the same quality, but without the drive cages so it's almost half the price. There is room for 2 drives behind the motherboard tray. One SSD and 1 storage, or 2 storage if you get an M.2 SSD.

The I5 will overclock easily on air. The K version does not include a heatsink so you need to buy one. The Coolermaster 212 Evo is the standard budget cooler, the Cryorig H7 a step up, and the Noctua 12 series the cadillac. The Noctua is the same price as entry level AIO liquid coolers and weighs 3 lbs and is huge. I would never use it. I hate having a big ass heatsink hanging off the motherboard. I prefer liquid cooling. The things I like about liquid cooling is there is just a thin water block on the motherboard so it's light and nothing in the way, and there are no fans to make airflow and cable management much easier. I don't like having the water pump on the water block so I use higher end units with seperate pumps like the EKWB predator.

Same goes for the video card. I like liquid cooling on them to remove the fans that frig up airflow. It also makes the video card take only 1 slot instead of 2 without the huge heatsink. And video cards heatup a ton. If you get an overclock version heat is often an issue.

As for the motherboard and video card I'd get Asus. I'm just a fanboy and have had great success with them over the past 25 years. And their strix video cards have EKWB waterblocks available for them. I go for reliability and Asus has never let me down.

Send us you budget and requirements and we can help more.

imho the GTX 960 has no place in a $1k5 gaming build.
Even if you tune down the cpu-subsystem. (cpu+mobo+RAM) in order to get a gtx970 the gain will be clear.

This is my suggestion for a great 1080p gaming rig:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($199.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($94.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($89.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 4GB WINDFORCE 3X Video Card ($309.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA GS 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($74.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $883.93
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-04-28 08:26 EDT-0400

For gaming:
i5-6500+GTX970 > i5-6600k+GTX960.
i5-6500+GTX980 > i5-6600k+GTX970.
i5-6500+GTX980ti > i5-6600k+GTX980.

Best: i5-6600k+GTX980ti.

Yes for gaming, CPU frequency makes little difference. This is why the I7 is not required. For the difference in price if you want to play with overclocking than sure get the K version I5. But a cooler is not included so there is the extra cost. With a regular I5 no heatsink is required so you save quite a bit. This savings can up the video to a 970 which is great for 1080p.

With a single video card and no k version cpu, you can drop the RAM to 2133 and get an H170 based motherboard.

Since you are using a USB headset, which has a built in DAC, you don't need a soundcard or fancy onboard sound. You can get away with an H170 board and don't need a fancy Z170 one that may have a headphone amp.

Drop the SSD to 250GB unless you want to install 10 games at a time, then get the 500GB version.

All these saving are used to up the video card to a 970, and possibly a monitor to a nicer 144HZ with GSync if you're buying a monitor.