I have also been seeking some comments on another forum.
My biggest issue is - it seems there is a lot of 'fear mongering' when recommending parts. Below I will list a few and wondered if you could comment your opinion on whether these opinions are a little blown out of proportion and whether the average casual gamer should be as concerned about these as they seem to be.
1. mATX motherboard vs ATX.
The general feeling is "If you're happy to save the cash and opt for blissful ignorance then we will always respect that decision. We want you to make your decision informed though. I genuinely wouldn't have an M board near any system that I ever built for myself, a family member or ever recommended to anyone on this forum."
If the board meets all my port requirements, the only disadvantage I can see is limiting upgrade potential. Is there any weight in their opinion?
2. One or two SSD's. One for OS and one for storage.
The general feeling is "I would also strongly, STRONGLY, recommend that you split your SSD’s as well.
Smaller, quicker drive for your OS and larger, slightly slower, but still fast, secondary drive for games.
Not only will it keep your drives from getting too full and losing performance, if anything does go wrong, it’ll potentially save you A LOT of time and patience down the line."
My old custom build only had one SSD and even as it became quite full I have never really noticed a significant disadvantage. Is there really such a significant advantage to having two? If we are looking to ensure we are spending our money wisely it does seem like an easy place to make a saving by going for one larger SSD.
3. Power supply wattage.
I have been advised "ATX 2.4 doesn’t account for transient spikes which can be up to double the power rating of the GPU and therefore you should go for an ATX 3.1 model".
I have also been advised to "go for a PSU with a lot more wattage than your build estimate is to account for transient spikes".
Based on this I selected a 1200w ATX 3.1 PSU however when I go through the builder I see the following automated message.
"You have selected a 1200W power supply, but based on our calculations you actually only need a 750W power supply. We have calculated your specification to require around 554W of power including a 20% allowance. "
Are transient spikes really so significant that I need to go for a significant amount of wattage PSU higher than the estimate or is this overexaggerated fear mongering?
I guess my question is - I know what they are saying is probably true, but for the average casual are these concerns really valid enough that its worth spending hundreds of points more on different parts to follow their recommendation?