i3-8100 & GTX1060 Build Spec & Advice

[speeddeed]

Hi,

I have never built a PC before and know very little about gaming. My son will be 14 soon and I'd like to buy all the components necessary to build a machine and give them to him for his birthday - we can then build it together. He currently uses an HP gaming laptop (i5-6300HQ & GTX950M) and mostly plays Fortnight, Overwatch etc.

I spent all day yesterday watching you-tube and reading articles on building a PC. I'm thinking of the following base components:
i3-8100 (latest socket so we can upgrade the CPU in years to come)
GTX1060
500GB SSD
8GB Ram
Corsair 570X case and (for kerb appeal and upgradeability)
We already have a budget full HD monitor which he currently uses with his current laptop.

My key questions are:
1. Does this base spec seem in balance?
2. What specific Motherboard should I use? What are the factors here?
3. How does one decide between all the various GTX1060 brands out there? e.g. a Zotac NVIDIA GeForce GTX1060 6GB is £209 but you can pay much more for other GTX1060 6GB cards...
4.Will this be considerably faster than his current laptop?
5. It seems to me that if we go slowly and carefully we should be able to build a PC together - am I missing something here?

I really appreciate any advice on any of these points.

Thanks very much indeed!

 

[speeddeed]

Thanks very much Danny75.

I don't have a fixed budget, but I'd like to spend as little as possible but give myself a sensible upgrade path for years to come. I thought that if I bought a motherboard that had the latest intel socket then I can pop-in a better CPU later. If I start with a GTX1060 then I can pop-in a better card later.

I realise the £150 on the Corsair case is somewhat crazy in relation to everything else, but again he'll be living with this for many years so I thought why not splash on that at the outset because he can keep that for years and years and he will definitely love the aesthetics.

So, case aside, I'm looking for something pretty budget, but which will have a practical upgrade path for years ahead. So I guess I'm thinking case and motherboard are key, with budget components slotting in to start which can be upgraded piecemeal moving forwards. My logic (as a complete newbie) was to start with a case and motherboard which will last for 10 years, and all other components can be upgraded over the years. It seemed a GTX1060 and i3-8100 would give a very appreciable performance improvement over his HP laptop. I guess that is the key question - will he see much improvement...

Does that make sense?

Thanks again for your advice!