Yes, it is an easy task, but with any number of gotchas to watch out for. However those are mostly easy enough to avoid by simply posting your build plan up here or on a hardware forum to get some sober second thoughts on things.

Another good point to keep an eye out for is whether or not the processor ships with a heatsink or not. Whether or not it ships with one is kind of a moot point if you're buying an aftermarket cooler to use anyway, but I expect it would really rather suck to get your order, unbox everything and lay it out on the table to get started and then realize that you don't have any kind of cooler for the main CPU.

However this point is usually fairly well labeled on the store page before you buy, so as long as you are aware that not all processors come with one then it is an easy thing to avoid. Just triple check the parts you're ordering before you submit.

Another vote for selfbuilding your rig.

Yes, you need some knowledge (or ask around for example here), but you could end up with EXACTLY what you need, which is surprisingly hard when you buy preassembled rigs as Vendors seem to LOVE to build their rigs catering to fads instead of a real world need, and you might find that many Vendors also lack the needed expertise in things like building hardware specific for gaming even though they call themselves a "gaming brand"...

Most of this is just hot PR air.

So we end up with "Gaming machines" that have the latest and greatest and MOST EXPENSIVE i7 CPU built in, and pairs that with a weedy GTX 1050 or similar GPU that might struggle even in 1080p in some modern games. WTF?

Lets not talk about how Vendors like to shove massive 4 TB disks paired with 1 TB SSDs down your throat, and also increasing RAM size (which for media creation actually makes sense, no so much for media/game consumption) as soon as you go for the machines that start to pair decent GPUs with the maxed out CPUs...

So you are not only paying a premium for the preassembled nature (and a lot of bling bling that might not be to your taste), but also for a lot of oversized parts you might not use just to get the right specs in other areas.

And I have only talked about the woes gamers face when trying to find a preassembled machines that caters to their needs without paying WAY too much. Of course there are no machines specifically created for game developers or 3d game artists... at least not unless we move into the professional space. And unless money is really no problem, lets not do that, because you generally pay way more for little added value.

Self building is more involved, but allows you to select exactly the parts you need, cut corners where it doesn't hurt you to keep the price down (for example going with a minimum sized SSD as you only want windows and a select few applications stored on it), while spending more just where you need it (for example getting a bigger GPU and more RAM without also selecting a 4 TB Disk and the fattest SSD money can buy).

You can also go for semi-pro options like picking 2 disks and putting them in RAID 1 for added recoverability for your data, can swap the mainstream platforms usually used in gaming PCs for enthusiast ones for getting access to CPUs with more cores and morey memory lanes without having to pay for the pro-grade workstation platforms, or build the PC to cover the specific needs of your pipeline or applications of choice.

As a long time 3D Coat user my workstation is built around this application... thus a powerful GPU with a lot of VRAM is more important than a better CPU (altough my CPU WAS pretty beefy at the time I bought it, that was mainly for improving world machine build and lightmap baking times), and only getting Nvidia ones to get access to the speedup offered by the CUDA build of 3D Coat (3D Coat pushes a lot of the calculations to the GPU, and thus also keeps a lot of its application data in VRAM).

A Workstation built around mainly ZBrush usage might be better off with the beefiest CPU you can afford, but just a decent GPU, which could be as well AMD (seeing how ZBrush mainly works on the CPU and only uses the GPU to render the viewport... to my knowledge ZBrush does not use Compute on the GPU, thus neither CUDA nor OpenCL is used, thus it doesn't matter much if its a Nvidia GPU or not).

If you selfbuild your Workstation, and you have the needed knowledge, or the right people to give you hints, you will most probably end up with a machine that caters EXACTLY to what you need, you will pay a fraction of the price you would have paid to get a similarly powerful machine preassembled, AND you are dead sure you have an easy, unobstructed upgrade path, which might not be the case for all preassembled machines (especially mini ITX and smaller builds like to use special parts like mobile GPUs which are not replaceable, or are using expensive MXM formfactor, which means you pay double the amount of a similarly specced desktop CPU and struggle to even find those parts. Custom mainboards are another concern, Vendors not using standard ATX / mATX / mini ITX mainboards will make finding a fitting mainboard that much harder should the original one fail).

Even if you do not want to go down that route I would advise you would ask about opinions for every preassambled rig that you think might fit the bill, because there might be red flags you don't see from the spec sheet about that particular machine.

Upgradeability as mentioned, but also poor thermals, or a Vendors poor reputation when it comes to quality control or support might be things you don't see from the spec sheet.

Well, I guess I could try going down the route of self building a workstation. If it's simple enough then why not I guess right? Mainly what I'd do is go for

64 gb RAM (not sure what type yet, will dig more)
Nvidia GTX 1080 8 gb

Some sort of fusion of SSD and magnetic hard drive

(No disk player, lol, I don't personally need those)

Windows 10 (since I hear it's palatable these days)

Intel i7 6850 potentially

Not super sure on display, but that shouldn't be a huge deal anyways

If I don't go down the build a workstation route, I'm potentially thinking of going with an Alienware Aurora or an HP Omen, if anyone has experience with those. I hear the Aurora is pretty good with upgradability.

Sounds like a reasonable build.

IDK if there are still fusion drives on the market. Just get an SSD and a HD as a secondary drive. If you mainboard supports that (most modern ones do), get an M2 SSD, as these are not only smaller (taking up less space in the casing thus improving airflow, altough even SATA SSDs are rather small 2.5" drives), but oftentimes fastern than SATA SSDs, as even SATA3 is at its limit with modern SSDs (SATA3 is limited to around 500 MB/s, with M2 you can get SSDs that reach double or three times that without problems).

Just make sure you either go one notch above what you think you need in SSD space (256G instead of 128G for example), or watch the space used carefully. I had to upgrade each and every SSD I have bought at least once as you easely run out of space even without Windows writing stuff to the SSD. "Just another tool downloaded from the net, how much space could it possibly use?".

Currently DDR4 is the most up to date RAM Type. If you buy Intel, doesn't really matter which. Latency seems to be more important than clocks, but even there most tests I have seen show little difference in game or application speed.

Now, if you buy today, AMD is contender to look at again in the CPU space. Have you had a look at their new Ryzen CPUs? You could get 2 additional cores for the price of that i7, without really sacrificing single threaded performance (given the Enthusiast Intels are not the fastest singlethreaded performers from Intel, the mainstream ones clock higher).

Price to pay is a less mature platform (though most teething problems seem to be shaken out by now), only 2 instead of 4 memory lanes (halving memory bandwidth), less PCI lanes (which shouldn't affect you with only one GPU, but you never know what kind of PCI Cards you might want to add in the future ;)), and a higher sensibility of the CPU to RAM speed.

For Ryzen, you need the highest clocking RAM you can get as this will improve performance of the CPU in some realwaorld scenarios (like gaming). Thus you most probably will have to get more expensive RAM, unless you either overclock the RAM, or just don't bother loosing some % of performance in some scenarios (IDK if I would care :))...

Another thing to keep in mind is that both AMD and Intel have new Platforms in the works.

Intel is working on their new X299 and just have moved the timeline by 2 months, so its coming in June instead of August. Most probably because of AMDs Ryzen platform.

No idea what you can expect... more PCI Lanes, more memory lanes? Most important though, we might get an 8 core this time at the 500-600$ pricepoint as this is where AMD positions their most expensive 8 core Ryzen.

AMD has leaked that they are also working on a Workstation/Enthusiast platform based on Ryzen, which should bring 4 memory lanes, most probably more PCI lanes, and a 12 and 16(!!!) core Ryzen CPU with SMT (Hyperthreading). You can expect these CPUs to clock lower than the 6 and 8 cores, but boy would some professional software that is highly multithreaded get a nice speed boost by all those cores.

Release date is unclear, but rumoured to be in the second half of the year.

Then there is the next Intel mainstream platform, coffe lake, that might also be moved forward to this year. Still, we might see a mainstream 6 core Intel CPU with the next mainstream platform, which might bring you 12 threads for a price competitive with the cheaper Ryzen 8 cores. Good deal? Bad deal? IDK. Time will tell. Exciting to see Intel trying again in the mainstream space nonetheless.

If you need a new PC Right now, those options of course are way to far out. If you can wait 6 months, I'd wait right now. X299 might bring affordable 8 cores on intels enthusiast platforms, AMDs workstation Ryzen platform X399 (harhar, good one, AMD :rolleyes: ) might bring the option of a core count even high end Xeons could only dream of till now for "affordable" 1000$.