Well hello there! How nice of you to take a look at my build log.
Introduction
My current machine is already 7 - almost 8 - years old! It's still working fine: it runs Windows 7 like a dream and about the only game that I play, Skyrim, runs great! I'll admit that I've upgraded the machine a little over the years by adding an SSD and replacing a Nvidia 9600GT by a 660GTX Ti SC because the SSD made my system considerably faster (although OCZ Vertex 2 apparently wasn't the right choice of SSD) and my 9600GT wasn't in the best of shapes. But as always, all good things come to an end and one of the two DDR2 modules began to produce errors so right now I'm down to only 2 GB of DDR2 at 800 MHz which isn't really optimal to say the least. Also, because my first SSD failed misserably, I bought a new Samsung 850 Pro on which I wanted to install Windows 7. Getting my PC to boot from USB was hell! I'm still not entirely sure what happened, but booting from either DVD or USB gives me errors and in the case of USB it corrupts the USB drive so I have to copy Windows to it again. Well.. Shit!
So, long story short, it's about time that I build a new machine.
Choice of hardware
Case
I believe that a build begins with a case. For me, the case decides what the theme's going to be. For example: if I buy a closed case, I wouldn't care too much about the looks of the internals because you wouldn't see it that often anyway. That of course changes with a windowed case.
There were a couple of things that I felt the case should have:
- nice, clean looks - no "gaming" tower with as much ugly plastic covers and LEDs as possible;
- sound dampening;
- possibly a window in the side panel;
- absolutely, positively NO optical bays!
Why no optical bays? I don't use opticals anyways (except maybe in my attempts to install Windows when USB fails, which doesn't happen that often), I don't want a fan controller because it just looks ugly and I've never missed it, they take up a lot of precious space inside the case and, most important, empty 5.25" bays just look ugly. Of course I could've gone with just any case that has a front door that hides these bays but they'd still be there. I couldn't bear the thought...
For as far as I could find, there's only one case that conforms to my "needs": the NZXT H400! Lucky me: it's very clean, it's got sound dampening and it has no 5.25" bays. Best of all: it's quite afforable. I've seen more expensive cases that have no where near the good looks of this one. So after doing a bit of research and watching some reviews, this choice was made fairly quickly.
Motherboard
With the case out of the way, it's time to decide on the motherboard... Now that's a good one! What do I want? It's going to be Intel, but that still leaves some options open, I have to keep an eye on the budget, so it's definitely not going to be an X99. But how about a nice 9 series one? The prices have been going down, so they're quite affordable now. At the moment that I was deciding on the chipset, I didn't know the difference between 8 series and 9 series chipsets but I kinda have the tendency to go with the newer stuff if it doesn't make that big of a difference in price. The Z97 chipset seems to offer the most of all 9 series chipsets so Z97 it is!
Of course there are hundreds of Z97 motherboards in all shapes and sizes, but since I can fit ATX I'd like to go ATX. Which brand? Asus and Gigabyte come to mind. There's also MSI and Asrock, but those two really have to convice me because I've had some negative experiences with them in the past. Talking about negative experiences, a BIOS update has gone wrong on me once so I'd like one of those dual BIOS - no, UEFI boards. Just for ease of mind.
So, a dual UEFI Z97 board from either Asus or Gigabyte, that does limit my choices considerably. There's only one from Asus that fits my budget: the Z97-PRO GAMER. It sure does look nice and aestetics are important in this build. There's also a couple of ones from Gigabyte but my choices were limited by aestetics and the way I feel about things. Most of them have "ULTRA DURABLE" printed on one of the heatsinks. What that tells me, is that they want to make it look more impressive. It feels like one of those $5 headphones that read "SUPER BASS" or something similar. They're probably very good motherboards, but I'd like to go with something that looks a little more refined. When considering my budget, this leaves only three options open: the Gaming 3, Gaming 5 and Gaming 7. They don't differ in price that much and the Gaming 7 does offer some nice little extra features so it's now down to two: the Asus Z97-PRO GAMER and the Gigabyte Z97X-Gamer 7. Looking at the details and features, I decided to with the Gigabyte one.
Processor
Now it's time to take a closer look at what I actually do with my computer. I don't really torture the beast too much... I'm not a gamer or 3D artist, I'm just a simple software developer. I don't need a true, monstrous CPU but of course I'm also a hobbyist. I like to be able to mess with my hardware, so it was quickly decided that I want a K series one. But which one? There's the i3, i5 and i7, so which one would suit my needs best? Well, an i3 is not an option. I've tried i3 machines but they're sloooow. You're better off with a cheaper and faster AMD CPU.
When you take a closer look at the differences between the i5 and i7, the thing that really stands out is hyperthreading. While i do use virtual machines quite often, I don't feel that hyperthreading is worth the extra hundred bucks so an i5 K series CPU.. There's only two of those in the Haswell family: the 4670K and the 4690K. I don't really care about the extra 100 MHz that the 4690K has but what I care about is that the 4690K is a Haswell Refresh CPU. And apparently, that's where the 9 series chipset comes in! The 4670K also appears to have some heating issues which have been solved in the 4690K, so 4690K it is!
Memory
Because of my case, the fact that I run virtual machines quite often and my personal preference, it'd have to be some nice looking Corsair Vengeance ones that run at at least 1866 MHz, preferably even a little faster. I could've gone with a 2400 MHz kit but there's literally no single web store in my country that has those in stock. So I went with something in between: 2133 MHz. Because of the red-and-black theme of the motherboard and the lower CAS latency than it's siblings, I went with the Corsair Vengeance Pro CMY8GX3M2B2133C9R kit. I would've liked to have 16 GB, but that's above my budget at this moment so maybe I'll buy an extra 8 GB kit later.
GPU
I can be very short about this one for a change: I'm very happy with the one I currently use - an EVGA GeForce GTX 660Ti SuperClocked 2GB one. As I sair earlier, I'm an enthousiast on a budget and not much of a gamer. My current graphics card can handle the only game I play often, Skyrim, very well so I'll stick with this one. Nice for the budget, too!
Cooling
Ah yes, cooling... Up until this point I was convinced that I was going to use a good old Scythe Mugen, just like in my 7 year old bastard. I've always liked the Scythe Mugen for it's cooling capacity and the fact that it can hold two fans, but I've never really liked the aesthetics and because I'm going to use a case with a side panel window meant that the Scythe Mugen wasn't really an option anymore. Furthermore, clinging to a Scythe Mugen would mean that I'd have to select different, low profile memory. As far as I know, there are no air coolers that can compete against the Scythe Mugen, are a lot smaller so that I can fit my high profile memory and look good. Using the ugly stock cooler isn't an option either, of course.
So, what's left? Yes, watercooling! This is going to be a first for me! It took me a couple of weeks to do proper research and buy a kit that I like. Because I have no experience with watercooling whatsoever, I'm going to use what's apparently called a CLC: a Closed Loop Circuit. That pretty much seems to mean that you simply buy a plug-and-play kit that has everything you need and does not require too much fiddling. Everything is ready to go out of the box: there's a pump/cooling block combination, tubing, a radiator and most even come with fans. Even better: they're all filled up with some sort of liquid so it's all ready to be installed just like that!
There's a number of different options. At first I wanted to go with a 140mm radiator because my case could fit one and they're very affordable: a Cooler Master Nepton 140XL is only slightly more expansive than a Scythe Mugen. The problem though, is that the cooling capacity seems to be about equal to a cheaper Scythe Mugen. Somehow, this didn't feel very comfortable: if I go watercooling, I want performance! Luckily, the NZXT H440 case will also take a 280mm radiator - double the size! It'll have to go in the top of the case, but that's not a problem. A 280mm radiator has another big advantage over a 140mm radiator: it's thinner. While push-pull is recommended for a 120mm or 140mm radiator, it doesn't offer much advantage with a 280mm radiator. This way, the radiator would easily fit in the top of the case and leave enough clearance to the motherboard.
At first, I decided to go with the Cooler Master Nepton 280L, the big brother of the 140XL, but after reading some reviews I wasn't to sure anymore. It's one of the cheapest 280mm kits that I could find, but there seems to be a problem with the pump where it starts to make noise after a while. Very anoying if you're going for silence and there's a humming pump... I began to take a closer look at the NZXT Kraken X61, a very nice looking kit which was too expensive for me at first but seemed to be an afforable option now that I was looking deeper into it. Best of all: NZXT has a white-and-black one, which fits the looks of my case neatly! And, also nice, the color of the LED can be controlled (although I'm pretty sure it's going to be white all the time anyway 
).
Edit: Summary
I understand that it's a lot to read, so I thought it'd be nice to add a little summary:
- NZXT H440 white/black, because it looks nice;
- Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 7, because of specs and looks;
- Intel Core i5 4690K, because it's an overclockable Haswell Refresh;
- Corsair Vengeance Pro 2133 MHz, because they're fast and red (like my motherboard's heatsinks);
- EVGA GeForce GTX 660Ti SC 2GB, because I already have it and it's good enough;
- NZXT Kraken X61, because of performance and silence.
What's next
Well, those are the parts that are going to be used in my new machine. There's also some boring stuff like HDD's and the PSU (a carefully selected full modular Seasonic M12II Evo 750W, fyi) but I'll spare you the tech talk about those.
I'll post some pictures here so you can get an impression of what it looks like in it's different build stages.
Oh yeah, there's one more thing! I like to name my PC's, just a weird thing I do, but I can't think of anything original... Names like "The Beast" or "Monster" are kinda lame and cheesy 
so if you can think of a nice name, you're very welcome to drop it in the comments.