I'm going to ask a pretty basic question that I've never been fully aware of but I'm pretty sure everyone should now.

How do I pick out a good PSU?

(I typically just look for gold certified PSUs by seasonic or rebranded seasonic)

That's generally the way to go. SeaSonic, PC Power & Cooling, and Enermax are among the best OEMs. Always check out reviews from JonnyGuru if possible.

#2
Reviews.
No other way.
There's some really horrible "brands" that you can rule out (raidmax and coolmax come to mind) but other than that every manufacturer has good and not so good PSUs. Some manufacturers have pretty much only good PSUs but if two PSUs are the same price how do you know which one is better? Right, reviews.
This list should help.

#3
Enermax stopped building the low and mid range units, it's all CWT now except for the high end units.
PC Power & Cooling went to shit a decade ago and got bought by OCZ. They switched their OEM to (I'm gonna quote someone for this) "Sirfa, the brand well known for being the go-to guys for mediocre to mid-range power supplies."
Guess who built the PSUs that made P&C famous? Seasonic.

If I had to name my personal favourites it would be Delta, Seasonic and Super Flower (Leadex platform is insanely good).

BUT
RULE NUMBER ONE (1) FOR PSUs:
BRAND NAMES DON'T MATTER, ONLY REVIEWS MATTER
It happens all the time, a decent OEM slips up and builds a mediocre PSU, a midrange OEM puts out a sick platform and improves build quality aswell (praise Super Flower) etc., only a test will tell the truth, names don't mean shit.

EDIT:
To clarify: PC Power & Cooling has never been an OEM. They went through a phase of releasing garbage PSUs, got bought by OCZ and faded into mediocrity.
I don't think you'll be finding Enermax doing any OEM work nowadays, they even stopped manufacturing almost all of their own PSUs and are using an OEM (CWT) themselves now. While they're still using their own designs so the quality on that end hasn't changed, their build quality is down to the best CWT can offer (thanks to proper QC, unlike some of Corsair's CWT models) and that's simply not on the same level as Delta, Seasonic or even Enermax own production.
Seasonic is still one of the benchmarks for consumer PSUs, but they are not Delta.

What would be a good motherboard (£50-70) for a GTX 960 and intel i5 4460?

CPU and GPU are the only thing that can't have compatibility issues as long as you get an LGA1150 motherboard.

Case size, RAM, number and speed of SATA ports that you need, RAM, number, size and speed of PCIe and possibly PCI slots that you need and if you want any special features would be more helpful.

And no, motherboards do not affect performance.

Does anyone have recommendations on SSDs? I've had a look about over the last few days and the Samsung 850 pro/evo seem to be getting really high praises, does anyone have experience with either? That or recommendations of similarly priced drives.

What price range are you looking at and for how many gigs? If you're looking at the 850 I'd assume you want something pretty premium. If you want to go for a drive that just came out and is blowing everyone's mind with performance you can look at the Intel 750 for PCIe (you can do through M.2 but not many people have those). It's to the 850 as the 850 is to HDDs basically.

If you don't want a PCIe SSD then the 850 or M550 by crucial is also really good.

Why does everyone hate raidmax power supplies? I bought mine 2 years ago unknowingly, and after finding out their bad rep about a year later annd got it tested for all sorts of issues and it hasn't had any until then or since. It has just been a good deal. Perhaps I am just fortunate.

Because cheap PSUs have a bad habit of blowing up after a few years and provide dirty power that can damage components. When PSUs go they also tend to take other parts with them. I wouldn't risk a $800+ machine on a 50$ PSU.

A lot of them also advertise their peak wattage only. Sure it might be able to hit 500W for a second if it needs it but if it can only sustain 350W then it will blow up.

I'm building a rig for myself and have bought an NVIDIA card. Now I'm looking at 1440p 144hz monitors and this whole Free-Sync vs. G-Sync tech is confusing the hell out of me. Do I HAVE to buy a monitor with G-Sync to since I have an NVIDIA card? People are also mentioning two cards, can I get away with just one? (Only playing Source games at the moment) I'm looking at 1440p because the monitor will be shared between my gaming rig and my design laptop. 1080p isn't enough real estate for my work usage.

Ram speed vs ram Quantitiy which one to pick.

You don't need either Free-Sync or G-Sync but I'd recommend G-Sync until Free-Sync is improved. If you're playing source games and have a good GPU you especially won't need either one unless you're okay with a premium on the monitor. And yes, one card is fine depending on what it is for 1440p.

For most people the most you need is 8. A select few will need at MAX 16. I personally would pick 8 gigs at both a fast speed and relatively low CAS latency because having good speeds and high latency and low speeds and low latency just ends up being around the same.

8 gigs of 1866

Underclock it to 1600 and get the timings as tight as you can for best mouse responsiveness.
You should be able to hit 7-8-7-24 with decent memory.

I'm a bit late to the party.

#7
Budget?
Capacity?
Capacity is really important because every series only covers a certain range and the performance differs between different sizes of the same series aswell.

#9
You're arguing like this right now:
"Cigarettes cause cancer, I smoke cigarettes but I didn't get cancer yet, therefore these cigarettes don't cause cancer."

I recommend reading from this page on.
"That's right, the 12V rail on this unit is rated at 4A above the part that supplies it."

It's like putting a 100HP engine into a car and then selling the car as 150HP. There's no way you'd get away with this. However with PSUs you can actually get away with it. It's bullshit.
This is the reason why AMD and nVidia recommend 500W PSUs for 150W GPUs. It's not like you'd need more than 300W it's just that the worst case for a 500W PSU is that it's actually a 300W PSU. If they only recommended a 300W PSU they'd get blamed for all the problems with 300W PSUs that are actually <200W PSUs.

#12
You need neither G-Sync nor FreeSync.
Any GPU will work with pretty much any monitor.
G-Sync and FreeSync are additional features that adress screen tearing (think VSYNC without the horrible input lag).
It's the other way round, if you want to use G-Sync you need an nVidia card, if you want to use FreeSync you need an AMD card (while FreeSync is in theory free, nVidia doesn't plan on supporting it).

However since both G-Sync and FreeSync offer pretty much the same features your GPU choice doesn't matter if you don't already own a monitor that supports one of them. Just buy whatever GPU is best for you and if you decide you want G-Sync/FreeSync later just buy a monitor that supports whatever your GPU supports.

The exception would be if you want a specific monitor that supports only one of the two and there's no other monitor with the same features.

#13
Quantity or size?

Speed is basically irrelevant, the average use won't be limited by bandwidth (especially when running dual channel).
What you want is low latency. The problem is that latency isn't given as a fixed number, instead it depends on the timings (e.g. CL9) and the speed. Lower timings -> lower latency, higher speed -> lower latency. In theory the lower the better, but generally the sweet spot is 1600MHz CL9. 1600MHz is supported by all motherboards, some go to 1866MHz, but above that you're looking at overclocking motherboards and the premium for those is much better spent on the CPU (unless you're overclocking anyway, in that case bring the 2400MHz RAM). CL9 is pretty much the lowest you can get for 1600MHz, anything lower and both price to performance and availability take a huge hit.

Speed vs Size shouldn't be the decision.
Think HDDs. You could afford either a fast 1TB or a slow 2TB HDD. Which one do you get?
If you need less than 1TB you get the fast one because it's faster, if you need more than 1TB you simply have to get the 2TB one, speed doesn't help you when you run out of space.

Again, the average user should do fine with 8GB RAM. If you needed more you would know it. If you're on a tight budget you can go for 4GB and add another 4GB later when you run into problems or can easily afford it.

#16
You know that RAM latency is measured in nanoseconds.
That's a million times less than the 1ms a 1000Hz mouse gives you.

Buying 1866MHz memory (you didn't specify voltage and timings btw) to run it at 1600MHz is retarded. If you want 1600MHz CL7 then buy RAM that is binned for 1600MHz CL7. It is guaranteed to run at 1600MHz CL7 1.5V. If you don't have to run it <=1.5V then just get 2133MHz CL9 1.65V. Same price as 1866MHz CL9 atm and both higher bandwidth and lower latency than 1866MHz CL8 or 1600MHz CL7.

I realize this is PC Parts, but I didn't want to make a new thread so yeah.

Is running TF2 at 720p or 1080p (with fps config) doable on an i5 5200u with integrated HD 5500 graphics? Google indicates Yes, but I would love some confirmation!

http://teamfortress.tv/post/411195/my-fps-config

Short answer: yes

Long Answer: Just how bad are you wanting to play TF2 on either the shittiest lowest settings or deal with low FPS?

I don't care how crappy the game looks although I would prefer avoiding No Hats. I also want at least 120 fps, even on a 60hz display the game always feels choppy below that (for me, at least).

idk about 120fps, you'd probably get over 60, but I can't be sure

OK thanks. I'll see if I can get something instead with a weak dedicated card like an 840m

So I built a computer recently and I somehow bought an extra gpu. I decided to keep it because I don't really care about the money. Can I put it in my current build to add any performance? or would it not really be useful? do I have enough power to use it?
Specs: GPU , MOBO , PSU , CPU

#23 Yes. Not sure about the PSU holding up, but you can definitely connect both GPUs together. If you have an SLI cable (I think it comes with the mobo) connect the GPUs together with it and plug the other GPU into the mobo in another PCI slot. It will give you better performance, yes. Useful? Depends on what you're using it for.

#23 if the extra gpu is a GTX970, no, despite the high quality of ur PSU, the power required is too high to be handled by it

#23
What do you mean "somehow"?
Which GPU is it? If it's a 970 aswell you can go SLI. The mobo is compatible and the PSU is sufficient on stock clocks.
However you won't be able to do any crazy overclocking.

#25
And if the GPU isn't a 970, yes?
CPU: 88W TDP
GPU: 2x 145W TDP
Even with all the rest added in this build won't even touch 480W (nominal +12V power). Although the PSU is able to handle higher spikes I wouldn't overclock too hard.

Whats the best budget GPU out right now (100-200€ range)?

100-200€ is a really wide range. With a 200€ GPU you're looking at more than double the performance compared to a 100€ GPU. I mean even if the 200€ GPU has the better price to performance ratio that doesn't make it any cheaper. So you need to know how much performance you actually need.
I mean with 100€ you're looking at a 260X (worst case 260), with 200€ you're looking at a 285, maybe 280X. To cover the whole range I'd have to list a lot of GPUs, so try to be a bit more specific.

Gonna necro this shit with a question of my own. So far I've seen that skylake has been pretty disappointing in terms of benchmarks. So with that in mind, I had wanted to upgrade to one, possibly an i7, as I want to stream more but have minimal input lag while retaining decent stream quality. As the improvements seem minimal, could it be worth it for me to just upgrade to an older i7, maybe even as old as sandybridge simply because I have sandybridge CPU now?

Cheapest option would be a Sandy/Ivy Bridge i7.
It's about overclocking though. If you've got a P67/Z68/Z77 motherboard there's not enough of a performance difference to justify Skylake.
If you can't overclock it gets complicated.