I wanted to build a high-end ATX PC without a liquid cooling solution. This PC is meant for gaming, some RDP work, some coding, etc. with slight-overclocking. As of this time, I've yet to try OCing since the brunt of my time has been taken dealing with Windows 10 installation bugs, firmware driver issues, and other nonsense. Ironically, the hardware assembly went off without a hitch despite taking a long time to decide on drive cage and fan placement.

CPU:

Many sites recommended me to snag an i5 or go with the i7-6700K and truth be told I would probably recommend the same to somebody else wanting to do a high-end build. Fortunately for me, budget concerns aren't really an issue and Intel happened to drop i7 prices in anticipation of AMD Ryzen. This happened to work in my favor at this particular moment in time.

CPU Cooler:

The DH15 came highly recommended as the best non-liquid cooler on the market. It runs a little expensive, but it was honestly worth it. I wasn't too interested in AIO coolers because of the risk of leakage, but as I do more research, those problems shouldn't really occur if enough care is taken in installation. The fans on the DH15 are ugly though. They're ugly in their distinct way. It might be part of Noctua's marketing strategy.

Motherboard:

I wanted a Z270 chipset MOBO that had WiFi and Bluetooth. I have Bluetooth devices and I may move in the future. There's no guarantee that my PC's location has easy access to a LAN port without running a cable so a WiFI adapter is very useful.

Memory:

Very practical reason. It was on sale on Amazon and was the cheapest of the high memory clock DDR4s.

Storage:

I made sure to get a NVMe m.2 card after recommendations on r/buildapc. It's not extremely noticeable compared to a regular 2.5 SSD, but at 500GB the performance benefit relative to price begins to peak. I would not recommend purchasing a 2TB Samsung 960 PRO unless you have some serious coin to throw around.

I got the 3TB Seagate because it was cost efficient. I doubt I'll ever fill it up.

GPU:

The 2nd hardest purchasing decision. The 1080ti was just released and 1080 prices had just dropped when I decided to make this build. I ultimately got this one because all aftermarket 1080's received a pretty significant price drop and ASUS happened to offer a $30 rebate for this card in that month. The one drawback of this card is that much like many new generation graphics cards it is big and difficult to wire after installing the MOBO and card into the case.

Case:

Absolutely the hardest decision. No matter what performance or price you get, nobody wants to have an ugly looking PC. I considered a NZXT S340 or a Corsair 400/500 series, but snagging a FD Define R5 was a really good decision in retrospect. It's very spacious and configurable for any type of setup that you want. Optical drives and hard drive cages can be removed to improve airflow. At $110, it's a steal for a very sleek looking case that doesn't look gaudy.

PSU:

I probably could've gone for a 650W 80+ Gold, but meh. This was only slightly more expensive compared to the other parts and this future proofs me in case I want to do SLI.