The build went through several revisions. I originally started out building a mATX system in a mini tower (Silverstone TJ08-E) but Justin had reservations about the usability of the optical drive, and the clearance behind the top-mounted power supply. I wanted a small case so I said "fuck it" to mATX and 5.25" expansion bays and picked mITX components instead. The chances of me ever needing dual graphics cards or a sound card are very small. The budget was $1500 for everything, including Windows, peripherals, tax, and shipping.

Motherboard: MSI H110I Pro AC.
This was the cheapest mITX mobo from a reputable company I could find that has onboard WIFI and supports DDR4 RAM.

Power Supply: Seasonic M12II 620
A fairly efficient PSU from an extremely reputable company, that is unlikely to explode. I don't need 620W, I guess, my total power draw is around 350W, but they're all about the same price. It's also modular which is important because my case is small.

OS: Windows 10
Haven't got much of a choice here.

RAM: Cosair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2400
I remember when I bought my old laptop I told my dad, "Oh, I'll only need 3GB of RAM!" Well the laptop I bought had 4GB, but I'm not making that mistake of underestimating my memory usage again. 8GB would have probably been fine but RAM is cheap nowadays... ergo, 16GB.

CPU: Intel i5-6500 6M Skylake
I don't intend to overclock. The i5-6500 is a solid GPU that should last a good while with the chosen mobo.

Case: Thermaltake Core V1
I wanted a mITX case because I wanted to keep my case on the desk, away from dust. This is a fairly cheap case reputed to be one of the easiest mITX cases to build in. Justin agreed when we finished the build - there is a lot of place to stash the wiring, and all the sides are removable. The airflow is also quite good. I was debating between the Core V1 and the Suppressor F1 for a while, actually, which is identical on the inside. I picked the V1 in the end because I thought I might benefit from the increased airflow, and I like the look of the front panel better than the ultra-minimalist flat front of the F1. Also, it was cheaper. This comes at the cost of having a large logo. The drive bays are a little flimsy but I'll live.

Cooler Things
I'm going to use the stock CPU cooler and the 200mm stock fan in the Core V1.

Storage 1: Intel 535 240GB SSD
I wanted an SSD to boot quickly and run games fast. Intel SSDs are kind of expensive (~50% more than most other manufacturers...) but are designed for commercial application, and have the reputation gold standard for consistency and reliability.

Storage 2: Seagate Barracuda 500GB
To make myself feel better about paying for the SSD I accepted Justin's donation of a spare, unused 500GB hard drive.

Graphics Card: EVGA GTX 465
It's a relic but it's faster than my laptop's 330M and I aimed to replace it eventually, probably with Justin's secondhand 760 (?) when he upgraded to a GTX 1060 next year. Probably.



Peripherals:
They're not really important. I picked up a set of refurbished speakers ($20 - what can go wrong with speakers?) and a new monitor ($150) at a brick n mortar shop to reduce the weight of stuff I'd have to move home eventually. The mouse, I already owned, and the keyboard is another "donation."

All about the Pentiums Benjamins
At this point, we had about $200 of peripherals, including tax. The system itself, including tax and shipping, fell a shade over $1000.

Problems
We built the thing. It went fine. No major problems.
: The CPU cooler was kind of tricky
- Thought the drives were aligned stupidly so we flipped one around
- scotch taped the front board IO wires together to plug them in more easily all at once
- Fucked up the IO shield for the IO a bit - some of the metal prongs blocked the USB ports and the ethernet port so we bent them up and tucked them back into the case.

More problems
It booted first try but something was wrong with the display. It was the graphics card. Perhaps three years sitting around let it corrode or forget how to output graphics. It's a mystery. We know it was the graphics card and not the cable/VGA adapter/mobo/slot/etc because it worked fine when we pluged the monitor into the motherboard instead.

So I had to upgrade the video card earlier than expected. I wanted something that would last 3-6 years, that would run the Witcher 3 at 1080p, 25fps, at, uh, reasonable settings. I.e. not total crap. It also needs to fit easily inside the case, which can hold a maximum length 255mm graphics card nominally, but can also hold 285mm with a bit of finagling. But better not to risk it.


My laptop did better than this, thank goodness.

So, that's actually a pretty low bar. Justin suggested something on the level of the GTX 950 or GTX 960. But I ended up browsing for the best graphics card I could get for about $250 (w/o tax) available at the local brick n mortar. That turns out to be a Gigabyte R9 380, which performs somewhere on the level of the GTX 960, but slightly cheaper.

More Problems 2
Windows and the drivers were installed smoothly. But the 500GB drive failed the Seatools generic long scan, meaning that somewhere, inside, there is an unrepairable bad sector. Also the drive is making suspicious noises. I'm a little worried and I'll probably end up adding a third drive to the system sooner than I expected. It's probably good enough that I can still use the old seagate as a backup - unplugging it to prolong longevity.

More Problems 3
Windows 10 looks nice but it's bundled with a lot of "apps." Actually the whole word "apps" makes my skin crawl but that's a different story. I forcibly uninstalled a lot of default applications and downloaded another application to reduce the information that my system was sharing with Microsoft. The whole process of how Windows 10 tries to get buddy-buddy with you is creepy and insidious. You need to set firm boundaries with the OS so it doesnt watch you when you sleep.


No, Cedric!

The build in retrospect
Including the emergency graphics card it all came up to a touch under the $1500 budget. Did the money dollars go to all the right places? Well...

li
like a basket of potatoes

I could have saved a bit of money on the PSU, RAM, SSD... but I don't regret the splurge for extra reliability. I think my CPU might not be on the same tier as the GPU but I'm OK with that because it'll probably stick around longer than the GPU. But, where are all of LI's price estimates coming from?

I think I could have waited a little longer for the non-reference GTX 1060s or RX 480s to come out and decrease in price. But I couldn't wait the few months for that, and I didn't feel like busting my budget.

Future Plans
I need another hard drive.
I kind of want to install an aftermarket CPU cooler but I definitely don't need one.
I also definitely don't need an LED fan.
Pictures. I'll post pictures. Later.