My last self-built PC lasted over 10 years before it died, so I'm very much in the camp of "build something quite nice that will last a while" rather than replacing a £300 PC every couple of years. However, that machine used a Zalman Reserator to cool CPU and GPU and thus was a bit faffy to put together. It was also difficult to move even within the same room, on those rare occasions when I had to move it. I'm not sure I want the faff of watercooling this time around, given that some modern air coolers are so darn good...
My requirements are:
1. Powerful - I don't do much gaming but I'd like to do a bit more, and I do a lot of Photoshop and video transcoding. I expect this PC to last me quite a few years, so I'm aiming for top of the range 'normal' products... i.e. I'm happy to spend more to get something that is faster/better than I really need at the moment, but I'm not interested in the Nvidia GTX Titan or i7 3960X or similar overpriced items. "Premium not Insane" is the level I'm aiming for.
2. Hackintosh compatible - I haven't decided on my final OS of choice yet: Win7, Win8 or OSX (I'm currently using XP, so anything is going to be a big change!). I'm strongly tempted to try to build a Hackintosh, so my aim is to choose components that work well for both platforms out of the box...
3. Quiet-ish - absolute silence is not my goal but it would be nice to be able to forget that it's switched on if placed under the desk during less intensive use (browsing etc).
Here's my current list:
- Nanoxia Deep Silence One case (Anthracite)
- Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H or Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP5 TH motherboard (the latter for Thunderbolt)
- Intel Core i7 3770K
- Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler
- Crucial Ballistix 32GB (8GB x 4) DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600), 8-8-8-24, 1.35V
- Asus GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II NVIDIA Graphics Card - 2GB
- Seasonic FANLESS 520W Platinum SS-520FL2 Power Supply 80+ Platinum
- 512GB Samsung 840 Pro Series, 2.5" SSD
- Sony AD-5280S-0B 24x DVD±R, 12xDVD±DL, DVD+RW x8/-RWx6 SATA, Black, OEM
- LG 16x Blu-ray Writer, 16x DVD±R, 8x +RW, 6x -RW, 12x RAM - OEM + Software
- 29" Dell UltraSharp U2913WM
Note that I have a decent NAS for my mass-storage requirements. So I don't think this PC needs a mechanical drive - the SSD should be big enough for OS, apps and working files (photos, videos etc) that I need locally, I think.
I've put a bit of thought/research into each item so happy to provide my reasoning (or be corrected!) if something looks odd. If anyone has any comments or suggestions for better alternative options I'd be very keen to hear them.