Help for newbie PC building

It really depends how powerful a GPU you imagine yourself upgrading to. Currently the most powerful Nvidia card is the 1080 Ti, which requires a recommended 600w total system power, and 35 amps. There are plenty 600w PSUs that have 46-50 amps, so 600w is plenty good enough, provided you stick with single GPU vs SLI. I DO NOT recommend SLI at all due to it declining in popularity and support.

Regarding Z370 MBs that support DDR3, I've not seen any, and I don't think it would be a good idea anyway. The problem right now is DDR4 RAM prices are sky high due to a major memory factory being destroyed by fire in recent years. Samsung is building a new memory plant, but it's too soon to tell yet whether it will stabilize RAM prices. Right now though there's a short supply and high demand, which is why the prices are high.

As far as M.2 slots, pretty much all Z370 MBs have them. I advise you also pay attention to what onboard audio chip the MB has, because that will determine whether you can output in DTS or not. For a lot of people, an AVR is also part of an upgrade path, and even if the AVR decodes DTS, it cannot if the signal from the MB is not encoded with it.

1. Just make sure you get a decent quality PSU. It doesn't have to be Gold rated and super high efficiency, just make sure it's a trusted brand of good build quality. My rule of thumb is I like the ones I buy to have good performance rating at jonnyGURU.

2. Same goes with the Z370 MBs. Z370 is a brand new chipset, so make sure the board you buy has all the kinks worked out before buying. I'm partial to ASUS for instance, but their Prime Z370-A I was considering was having voltage instability problems with the memory circuitry, which affected OCing. It's recently been sorted out with a BIOS update though. The Z370 wil support the new Intel Coffee Lake CPUs, which are high priced right now due to high demand, short supply, but hopefully will stabilize in a few months. Like any other modern MB though, the Z370 variants will support any GPU, since it has Pci-Ex 3.0, the latest Pci-ex standard.

3. DTS is the other main audio codec used that competes with Dolby Digital. There's a version of it called DTS Connect that a lot of Realtek onboard audio chips use now. It means it can encode any stereo game audio to 5.1 DTS. AVR just means home theater receiver. I have a Yamaha RX-V371 myself I paid a little over $200 for, but this time of year you can get adequate AVRs for under $200.

And yes, an AVR and DTS will give you superior sound to just plugging speakers into your PC. Also keep in mind, most speaker sets made for PC by Logitech and others have amplifiers built into them, which need to be both adequate in power and cooled well enough with proper heatsinks, especailly since their amps are usually in the subwoofer, which lacks good ventilation.

I had a Creative labs 5.1 speaker set made for PC that came with fairly good small front, rear, and center channel speakers with 2.5" mids and .75" tweeters, and a decent 8" sub. The wattage of the amp was also pretty good at 70 watts per each small speaker and 210 watts to the sub, plus the sub had a huge external heatsink. The small speakers even had titanium tweeters. The set ran $317, but honestly, it pales in comparison to my AVR and Jamo speakers. I paid $230 for my AVR, and $250 for my full Jamo 5.1 set, but had I waited a mere week, I could have got the AVR for $160.

At the time of getting my Creative set, the Logitech Z-5500 was the next best thing in wattage, but costed more, and only had a small full range speaker in each front, rear, center, no tweeter. It did decode DTS though, which is kinda nice.

https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-THX-Certified-Digital-Surround-Speaker/dp/B0002WPSBC/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1511480640&sr=8-9&keywords=logitech+5.1+speakers

^If you ask me, I'd rather have an AVR with true home theater 5.1 speaker set with floor standing front speakers at potentially the same price if you shop for good sales.

The guide is not going to tell you everything. It gives a Newegg link for it, and Newegg's spec tab on that MB shows it has a Realtek ALC892 audio chip. From there you Google "Realtek ALC892", and Realtek's site shows it has DTS support.

http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/productsView.aspx?Langid=1&PFid=28&Level=5&Conn=4&ProdID=284

The Realtek ALC1220 has MUCH cleaner sounding audio though, with a 120db SNR, vs only 95db for ALC892.

Newegg lists about 45 or more Z370 MBs with ALC1220, or ASUS' version called S1220A. Here's a comparison of 4 of them of different brands.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?CompareItemList=280%7C13-119-033%5E13-119-033%2C13-157-789%5E13-157-789%2C13-144-107%5E13-144-107%2C13-145-035%5E13-145-035

ASUS' S1220A is the best because they worked together with Realtek to combine things like a compressed music enhancer and DTS Headphone X. Plus it uses all Japanese capacitors for smoother sound.

BTW, I just downloaded the driver for the ASUS Prime Z370-A MB I'm considering, and it's over 1GB in size, vs 250MB for the driver on Realtek's site that only supports up to ALC900 version. The extracted driver from ASUS' site has a DTS folder in it too.

It used to be you could always get the most recent audio drivers straight from Realtek's site, but I'm pretty sure the latest MBs that have Realtek ALC1150 and ALC1220 need their drivers downloaded from the support page for each MB model on the MB manufacture's site.

It may very well be safe, just not practical. On a budget build you have to consider your total budget and put the money where it matters most, GPU, then CPU, then RAM, then MB, in that order. It makes no sense to pay what it takes to get 4000GHz RAM, only to be buying cheaper model GPU and CPU. That's why I recommend no more than 3000 RAM for your build. It takes at least $124 more to jump to 4000 speed. If you spent that on the GPU or CPU instead, that would mean going from a 1060 3GB to a 1060 6GB with $85 left over for an SSD, or going from an 8400 to within $15 of an 8700. There's no point wasting that kind of money on the 3rd most important part in the build.