The computer I'm using now is from 2006, a 32 bit budget machine I had custom built by a company so I could first get on the internet but after 10 years its showing it age. Until now I haven't had a reason to upgrade since every game I've been considering as a reason to ended up missing a feature I would exclusively play (e.g. battlefield 3 has no LAN, No Bots) but now with things like star citizen and Subnautica coming up I've decided to get on with it so I can play the single player of those kinds of game while retaining the ability to play older MP titles over the LAN.

I've been looking at some parts over at ebuyer.com and decided whatever I build needs to be 64 bit and be fairly Future proof and unlike my previous builds it needs to be pretty solid since I don't upgrade often.

The part I require advice with is what parts are considered mid/high these days? The last time I built a PC myself was 2008 and Tech has advanced massively since then.

Now the parts I'm considering are:

Asus z170-k motherboard
Intel I7 6700 3.4 ghz (retail with stock cooler)
Corsair Vengeance 2x8gb (2400 Mhz)
Gigabyte Geforce GTX 1060 6GB Windforce OC
Seagate 2TB SATA HDD
Aerocool 500w power supply
Cit Mesh gaming case (Has the most front USB ports I've seen on ebuyer so far)
64 bit windows 7 (64 bit, familiar interface and good comparability)

the other parts are just standard stuff like generic SATA DVD drive and a pci LAN card so I don't have to swap the LAN cable over all the time.

In particular I'm looking for GOG's advice on the ram and graphics cards. I am getting a bit confused about the MHz of RAM supported by that board so I can probably do better and the graphics card claims entry level VR capabilities but since I'm not following the VR scene closely I don't know how good entry level is. I'm not buying into VR right this minute, but I will definitely be looking into it in the far future.

What do you guys think? I'm open to suggestions and feedback and of course any problems I may have missed.

EDIT: Seems like several people have problems with this list so it should not be trusted until it gets fixed.

Don't have any specific advice to give but here is a link to a graphics card chart dividing up comparable cards into groups. Could be useful when considering your alternatives. I'm not an expert though so others will have to offer more in depth help.

wow! that was a quick response. Thanks for the chart, it looks useful and it even lists the card in my 2008 gaming rig (HD 4870)

Looks like a medium to high end machine. The setup seems fine although I would not pick those and go higher (e.g. 6-core or even 8-core CPU) and I would pick an AMD Radeon RX480 over a NVIDIA GeForce GT1060. Especially if you consider to use it again for a longer period.

I am waiting another 1-2 month now because I think AMD's Ryzen CPU will hit the market soon. Pre-release tests sound very promising to get a lot of performance for the bucks, but one has to have the patience and see how it turns out.
I would love to go for the latest platform AMD socket AM4 with an 8-core (16 threads) CPU 16 GB RAM for 700 €. I hope the CPU will not be in the same price-region Intel CPU's are at the same performance. I think AMD has to regain some user-base after years without competition to Intel, so they will have to offer a good performance for your money. Well and if not, I can always go for an Intel otherwise in the next 2 month. Maybe even Intel will be forced to lower their prices if they get some competition again from AMD. Imho, waiting now a little bit more will pay off anyway.

I have heard that the rx480 is slightly faster but draws a lot of power, its not enough to make me not consider it though.

as for AMD processors, I haven't followed or used an AMD chip for a long time but the last I heard they launched a "bulldozer" chip that had some problems so you are probably right in that they will have to win back customers with a good price-performance chip.

If it's faster depends on the game. DX11 games are case to case, DX12 performance favours the RX480 so far. In combination with the higher memory (8GB for the RX compared to 6GB for the GTX1060) I would say the RX could be a little bit better in the future.
Truth is, the power consumption of the RX480 is higher then for the GTX1060, although I think it is still OK. The main problem on release was that the RX480 draw more power from the PCIe bus than the specification allowed, but they fixed it with a driver update as far as I understood.

The price for both is nearly equal, although the cheapest RX480 (8GB) starts about 5 € cheaper then the cheapest GTX1060 (6GB).

It's a matter of personal taste if you chose the one or the other I would say. As mentioned before I favour AMD because of price, performance and the general company strategy. I also like the AMD drivers better then the NVIDIA drivers nowadays. If you intent to use a lot of proprietary hardware features, like NVIDIA PhysicX for GPU physic acceleration or if you have a GSync monitor, well then you will probably want to use an NVIDIA card. I stick to AMD FreeSync because it is cheaper again.

I've found some better compatible Ram running at 3000 MHz. looks like ebuyer has the corsair vengeance in the same spec and chip config (2x 8gb) with different colours. its a pretty big price difference for a different colours though, £120 for white and £89 for red.

It also looks like the new generation 7 is on there but not listed with other processors, apparently they are locked to windows 10 exclusively though so its not going in my build.

A core I7 6700 supports a maximum RAM frequency of 2133 MHz as far as I know, only the latest Core I7 go up to 2400 MHz I think I read. So as long as you do not plan to overclock or hope to use the RAM for a later build in the future, 3000 MHz won't be utilised by your setup. It would still work, but not at the full speed capacity of the RAM of course. Overclocking also seems not something you consider because I think only the I7 6000K/7000K CPU's have an unlocked multiplier.

As for Windows 10 exclusivity, I was under the impression that this applies to the Skylake as well by the way. Guaranteed Windows 7 support for Generation 6 ends 2017 is what I thought they said. I am not really sure what this means, probably no updates for the chipset drivers, the CPU will work anyway I would say. Pure speculation because I have not read much into this because I do not care about it and already use Windows 10.

Looks like a pretty good PC build you have there. The only thing I would change is the power supply unit. 500 watts seems a bit low to me, you might want to consider a power supply unit with 600 watts or more. Other than that, the PC parts you have listed should be able to play most modern games without any problems.

Here is your build minus case and a different PSU and OS since its not offered where i could pick it.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ZHmgqk

in my opinion you might want to look into a different hard drive. I would suggest a 1TB western digital black or better yet a 500GB-1TB Solid State EVO drive. Then toss in a 2-4TB whatever drive.. maybe a Western Digital blue. I say this because seagate has a bad habit of failing in a few years... they cant take heavy work or heat. they are also loud, as in they make a lot of audible noise. Its normal and nothing to worry about... but, its clicking whirring buzzing and it can drive you crazy after awhile.

Being an i7 you cannot rely on a stock cooler, you need an aftermarket as the stock is only sufficient for cooling on idle or light database work. So look into anyting with a copper core and a nice fan... no need to liquid cool.. and grab the defacto arctic silver for your thermal paste.

after that i would highly suggest not getting windows 7 as its going to be unsupported soon and no one will develop for it, really its not a good choice in the long run.... Windows 10 is getting a game centered update which will surpass everything that it has benchmarked recently... that said the interface sucks so that can be fixed with http://www.classicshell.net/ it will make it work, look, and behave like 7 in every way... and once you install it there is no difference between the 2 systems. All the CPL apps your used to exist and you never have to touch the new "metro apps" unless you want to.

I've been working in tech for 20 years, I'm a linux and windows dev/technician and I work for a public entity that houses 15,000 units looking to expand to 65,000 in the next few years on every type of device imaginable (apple, linux, windows, chrome, unix) and out fo them all, I love windows 10... more then any other OS i have ever used and that's strictly from a performance and usability standpoint... It's the fusion of search and instant results I use linux for, meshed into windows architecture.

Beyond all that 10 gives me better compatibility and higher gaming FPS then 7 ever did, or ever could since its memory use is neutered compared to 10 in how it interfaces with hardware.

As for RAM and GPU whats your max price point and how much is the case you want so i can factor that in and i'll generate you a new PC Partpicker Build with compatible everything in your range ^_^

Please accept my apologies for the incoming wall of text, its a long reply and its also getting late here.

I just noticed that I didn't make it clear in the OP what I am wanting this pc for. Over 95% of the games I play are older off-line titles (battlefield 2, source engine games etc and the only multiplayer I use is over a LAN so I'm not looking to build a supercomputer for the latest games like overwatch and the like since I've no interest in them.

the main reason that I'm wanting a replacement machine is that out of the three computers I've got on the LAN, this one is by far the weakest. since I only use the LAN with my uncles and they are notoriously picky about what they play the pool of games which we play is extremely small. Since I set up the LAN in 2006 and they started coming over regularly some time after we have played a total list of:

Battlefield 2 and mods
Enemy territory: quake wars
Counter Strike:Source
CS:GO
Insurgency
Day of infamy
A 2 weeks long coop campaign of IL2 1946
company of heroes (1 month tops)

having picky uncles + very few games supporting LAN = very few MP titles taking my interest.

The reason I'm building a mid/high spec machine over a budget/second hand parts 32 bit one is that over time I have built up a semi-sizeable backlog of single player 64 bit titles (transport fever, superhot, satellite rain ect) which wont require a cutting edge system, yet greater than my current one. star citizen is still under development so the requirements will increase over time. this build should let me get into it, though not necessarily at top settings.

Just for reference/entertainment here is the current stats on the current pc from 2006 (it was a budget build by a company at the time)

asus vintage barebones v2 board (original part)
3.0ghz pentium 4 (not a core 2) (original part)
2gb Ram (2011 replacement )
Nvidia GTS 450 (2011 replacement)
1tb Seagate HDD (2011 replacement)
Generic DVD drive
32 bit XP home

Despite how the stats read it has done surprisingly well, I have been able to play arma 2 on it with lower settings and tweaks and modern games like insurgency will run well until a few map changes when it hits a memory limit. the main issue I'm finding is with ram limitations and framerate issues, particularly on Unreal engine 3 based games and the GS:GO branch of source.

Thanks for your posts so far guys, to answer

@Quasebarth

Thanks for the heads up on the ram and you are right, I'm not particularly interested in over clocking. Having a look round ebuyer the slower speed ram seems to be more expensive somehow

right now I'm looking at: http://www.ebuyer.com/737134-corsair-vengeance-lpx-16gb-2x8gb-3000mhz-ddr4-c15-red-memory-kit-cmk16gx4m2b3000c15r

versus the slower: http://www.ebuyer.com/719231-corsair-vengeance-lpx-16gb-2x8gb-ddr4-dram-2133mhz-c13-memory-kit-cmk16gx4m2a2133c13r

unless I'm missing something the only difference appears to be the MHz.

@CanThing12

I was just thinking about the power supply the other day, my other machines are less powerful and have about a 500 installed, something like the setup I'm thinking about would need something better than 500, I think the graphics card needs its own 6 pin so ill have to bear that in mind. the card recommends 400w but I guess combined with an i7 it may need more.

600w?

@Starkrun

I have had a number of Seagate drives over the years without any problems but I did read something a bit ago about the Seagate failure rate results being distorted because of the way failures are counted. I did hear WD drives are good so I'll consider one if I cant get the one I wanted. I considered an SSD but I find the unreliability and price bit off-putting.

Are the stock coolers on the i7 that bad? I've always used stock coolers before without problems. I figured since I'm not planning on overclocking it wouldn't be a problem.

Regarding my preference for windows 7, its a bit tricky to explain:

I'm a heavy duty XP user so I want to get an OS that looks and works like it but with 64 bit capability. I haven't been particularly inconvenienced by the end of life in 2014 since very few modern games interest me. Even to this day a handful developers are still making games which run on it and since windows 7 is still extremely popular I cant see developers cutting development the moment Microsoft does

I have seen windows 8 and 10 in action and I wasn't won over. I know you have linked to a shell replacement but I would rather they did that from the start than the smartphone style interface they are going with these days.

I suppose in the end its down to personal preferences, I might reconsider windows 10 in a couple of years once the dust settles or perhaps move to Linux, as it stands I don't like windows 8/10

Regarding my budget, the current system comes to just over £1000, its more than any system I have built in the past and I wasn't planning on going that far. over £1200 would be crossing the line for me.

apologies again for the long post, I have been editing it for ages so some parts may have been shifted around.

EDIT: oh and the case I'm looking at is this one: http://www.ebuyer.com/713419-cit-mesh-gaming-case-with-black-green-interior-goblin

it seems to have a decent number of front usb ports which is the main reason I want it, I couldn't care less about all the flashy LED's and the like since they will be facing the wall.

Pardon me. This test is huge bullshit.

For example:

HD 5970
HD 7870 LE (XT)
HD 7950
R9 280

I own 5850 and R9 280.
5870 is only 10% faster than 5850.
But R9 280 is 2x faster than 5850 (and 3x vram).
The 5970 is crossfired doublechip 5870. Making 5970 = 280 is like making G9800 GX2 = GTX 280... If it works - maybe, but in reality 50% of time it will have issues and problems.

Also, 4770 is weaker than 9800 GT, its about same as HD4830.

If you want a reliable test - thats passmark GPU rating table.

what do you guys think of modular power supplies?

I've never seen them before but I've just been looking at a 650w corsair branded one: http://www.ebuyer.com/724681-corsair-rm650x-high-performance-power-supply-cp-9020091-uk

Funny story. At the time I updated my last power supply, I thought "Modular Power Supply? Stupid, who cares. Solution to a non-problem."

Shortly after I jammed about 3 pounds of shielded power supply cable into an empty bay space above my hard drive, I thought to myself "Oh, NOW I get it." ;)

Having done it once, I can easily say if the price difference isn't too bad, DEFINITELY spring for the modular power supply.