Taking the plunge and wrapping this up, is there some noob pitfalls I need to avoid and stuff I need to get that I wont think about until I go to put it all together and realize? Like: cables, OS, thermal paste etc?
Most power cables should be included with the PSU. Most other cables/screws come with the case. Thermal paste is not usually included but you can buy a small tube at a local store for less than $5-10. Some closed looped liquid coolers come with some pre-applied. OS is never included unless you ordered it. You can buy OEM for cheaper, use an old key, or 'find it on the internet'. A linux distro is great to boot in if you want to test things quickly after building but not required. Remember to do your drivers/updates first to get them out of the way early and while your connected to the net. Keep yourself fairly well grounded while putting the components together. Static shocks are pretty rare but it is never fun to zap something. I like being barefoot, hard flooring, remembering to touch the case with my hands. Edit: Oh and keep all your extras in a box somewhere. It is nice to build up a supply of extra cables/screw/and shit over the years.
You will need an operating system. You can either buy one from wherever you buy the parts, try out a cd key website (may or may not be reputable), or download one. thermal paste will come with the heatsink you bought. Or at least a small tube of it has every time I have bought a Hyper 212. It isnt the best stuff, but it is good enough. Cables will come with the motherboard for plugging things in.
You can either download an ISO on another computer and burn it to a disk, or download an ISO and "burn it" to a USB flash drive. I have used Rufus before to make a bootable flash drive for OS installation. Microsoft is moving away from disk installations though, most OSes they sell are license keys for an ISO or they actually sell you a flash drive set up as a bootable installer. Flash drive is really the way to go, 10x faster installation than the DVD drive method. And honestly since none of our work computers or any of my home computers even have a disk drive anymore, flash drive is the only way I can go. lol. (ok not really, I do have an external dvd drive I can pull out if absolutely necessary)
And ISO is just a digital version of a CD or DVD. Pretty sure if you just download this: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10#d2784474-fdb0-4e9d-9e47-5e88c0e053ec It will walk you through everything and download the proper ISO and everything and make it able to be installed on a flash drive. That is, if you are going to buy a license key for Windows 10 (either Home of Pro). It wont work with older versions of Windows.
yeah I mean I have used them before for when I had torrented games and stuff just have had them not work as many times as I have got them to work. I think I am just going to go with windows 10 and not have to worry about it going out of date etc for a while I plan to keep this pc until the kids old enough to claim it
so basically looking at: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/sHxNFd @EniGmA1987 any reason to just wait for memorial day to see if any sales or is that not a thing?
yeah kicking stuff around, looking to upgrade a few things so may end up waiting the extra couple weeks at this point. everyone is like "oh just upgrade this for $50 or this for $100" hah
Finally ordered it last night with a memorial day sale from ibuypower, there was minimal to no additional cost to have them put everything together and managed to upgrade to cpu and video card to i7 and 1080. thanks for the input @Obscure @EniGmA1987 @PersonalRiot
Yeah waiting for it to come in, from the pics it looks like a spaceship! Really the first thing I bought for myself in a long long time