First PC Build

[joshl_1995]

Hello Daniweb Community,
I thinking about upgrading from my laptop to a desktop the main concern is either if I should buy one of build one. So as the title says this is mainly if I was going to build one.

To start off, my main concern about building one is compatibility. I'm not sure on if I buy a motherboard that I can buy whatever CPU, Graphics Card, etc... I'm not sure if there is like a guide I need to go off and even then does it all come down to if it's compatible with the motherboard? I have a cousin (that knows tons about this kind of stuff) that put a list of parts together like so (I think all the parts we found here http://www.msy.com.au)
Case: SHAW USB3.0 GT-GM4
CPU: Intel i3-6100
Motherboard: ASRock H110M-HDV
RAM: 8GB Single 2400 Crucial
Power Supply: Corsair 80+ Bronze CX V3 430
SSD: Crucial MX200 250G
HDD: WD Blue 1TB

So as I said could I get the motherboard from that list and just put any CPU (for example) in and it'll work fine. Same kind of thought goes for the drivers, how do I find/know what is the right one to get? Also what abo the BIOS?

I've looked up heaps of videos on how to put them together but all the ones I found (without crawling YouTube) are ones that don't really explain about compatibility and after putting it together (setup, installing Windows, downloading drivers, etc...)

So could anyone please help me out, I don't want to spend heaps of money and to have something either break, burnout, and whatever else could go wrong. This is my first build and if anything goes wrong I'll either scrap the whole PC build idea and either buy a pre-built one or stick to laptops.

F.Y.I. The kind of computer I'm after if for software development, website development and a bit of graphic design. (Home Office PC)

[rproffitt]

Nothing glares at me and says it won't work. There are too many builds to choose from today and if I was going for my first build I would check out https://www.reddit.com/r/PCMasterRace/wiki/builds too.

Installing the OS is well done on the web so it's Windows so you dive in, install and start your trip through driver hell. It's not that bad, just remember you can always start over and change your plan. Only the newest of the new worry about this area. I haven't and I've been at this since the early days (pre-PC.)

[joshl_1995]

Ok cool, with compatibility. I found this video, is it spot on with what he says?

[rproffitt]

Close enough. My view on picking power supplies is close to that. Today unless you are an electroinics engineer you also get a "single rail PSU." My choice is to much higher on the Watts since I want my PC to run for more than 2 years.

Your car at 80 MPH breaks down faster than at 70.

[rubberman]

My first custom build was almost 10 years ago - an Intel workstation/server MB socketed for dual processors, 8GB RAM, 350GB system drive, nVidia graphics card, 4 1TB data drives. It still works for my daily development tasks and only has had a couple of disc failures that I was able to pull the data from to install on new discs - the SMART interfaces of the disc warned me when they were starting to go bad.

One bit of advice - make sure your power supply is beafier than you think you need. For a system such as you describe, a 750-1000watt supply is called for - better too much than too little capacity for this.

[joshl_1995]

So I ended up buying all those parts and it turned out successful, only problem was installing Windows as I got the OEM version it came on a disk and I didn't have nor want (only because I never need it) a disk drive so I had to buy an 8 GB flash drive, out the disk in my laptop copied the files onto the flash drive then put it in the desktop.

Thanks everyone for your insight.