Interesting thread. It does seem you need to spec and price the whole thing first to see just how much you are indeed spending. The temptation is to spend a few more pounds on each item for the next model up and end up with a rather substantial total.
Good luck.
Graham
indeed.
i think start of with deciding on what case you want, what looks nice in your opinion on your desk next to your screen. find out what form factor it is.
then start looking at motherboards in that form factor, presumably you want to go with the i7 so youll want one with the LGA1366 socket. preferably with a good few internal/external SATA and external USB sockets for expansion purposes. at this point it may be worth deciding if you want to use any onboard graphics (built in to the motherboard) or a dedicated graphics card.
an onboard card usually shares a bit of the RAM for its use, in the grand scheme of things if youre looking at having 6gb or over you probably wont be effected by this too much. if you want to run twin screens, play games or edit video etc then it is worth going for a dedicated graphics board with its own memory. 1Gb seems to be the norm at the moment for this and cards are reletively cheap these days. as for ATI vs nVidia... swings and roundabouts.
now you know what motherboard you want you can decide on processor and memory. fairly self explanitory.. one note is to try and get the fasted speed RAM you can for your board. also look at 3rd party CPU coolers, the stock intel ones get NOISEY.
youll need a power supply too, in hindsite i should of got a modular one (you can remove/unplug the excess cables, a godsend in smaller cases). depending on how many hard drives and graphics cards/other cards you have installed and whether youre overclocking will dictate how many watts youll need. also dont skimp on power supplies, unbranded ones can chuck out all sorts of unstable voltages. look at corsair, tagan, bequiet for example. a lot of power supplier now come ready to plug in to a multitude of motherboards but you will need to check exact types of connector.
next would be hard drives. if you have the space personally id always have at least 2. first drive would be smaller (doesnt have to be smaller but personally a min of 64gb) for the operating system and programs, second drive would have storage and windows page file. at this point it may be worth looking at how much storage you want and whether you want to build in a backup. RAID was mentioned above, PERSONALLY i dont think it has any place in a system that does not have another method of backup (external and/or off site drive(s)) as even RAID mirroring is not infalible, and would simply opt for backing up to an external USB/eSATA drive. i would look at the amount of photos you currently have stored and at least double it for starters.
networking, most motherboards have onboard cabled network card. it may be worth looking at ones with gigabit sockets (usually called 10/100/1000) for futureproofing. but cabled network cards will require either being near your router or you can get a couple of powerline adaptors. it is worth noting that powerline adapters only currently go up to 200mbps so you wont get a full gig connection (although its worth noting that you will only get gig speeds if your router supports it and you have another device/machine cabled on the network, it wont benefit connection to any devices connected wirelessly to your router or your internet speeds). alternatively you can get a wireless card/usb stick (some motherboards have built in wireless albeit fairly rare).
otherwise theres odds and ends like mice and keyboards.. one thing i always overlook is sound, do you need to buy speakers..
im sure ive forgotten something though lol
:bonk: