re: Build the Best Gaming PC Your Money Can Buy: A Detailed Guide (Updated Sep 2014)

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I did. The entire thing, because yeah I wanted to know, but it still doesn't help. I feel like I'm going to miss some random "F" in Radeon - FHG 860FXblahblah and get the completely wrong part based on that. Like you said, things change daily, and even if you have some static information about intel's line of i5 Core 870GFX, two days later you may need the 870HFX instead (all gibberrish, yes).

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That's what I've tried to address with the new approach to the sample builds at the end of the guide. I've provided links to pre-sorted parts for every budget level. With the exception of maybe the case, it makes part selection fool-proof as far as compatibility. What changes daily are prices. That's why the part lists with specific model numbers are useless. What you're not understanding here is that I've selected those parts based on set objective criteria and lowest price. If the part list contains a Sapphire 100363VX-2SR, but 2 days later I suggest the Sapphire 100363BF4L, it's not because the first one is no longer "the best." It's because it changed price overnight. There is no mysterious level of expertise and hours and hours of dedication coming from that decision.

Same with something like RAM. Today I might suggest the G.Skill F3-12800CL8D-8GBXM. An hour from now, the G.Skill F3-12800CL9D-8GBSR2 might be cheaper. Tomorrow morning at 6:30am, there might be a better deal on the Corsair CML8GX3M2A1600C9. This knowledge comes from a simple narrowing of search options on PCPartPicker, sorted by price. All three of those kits are 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz CL9 kits, as specified in the guide. They will all perform the same at their rated settings, as will the other 50+ kits on PCPartPicker that meet those criteria.

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But am I sure that EVERY Gigabyte board is worth it? They don't make ANY clunkers? If that's true of the guide, that's ok, but I'd rather know the exact high quality part rather than sifting through every motherboard Gigabyte offers and reading reviews and trying to find the right one.

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There's more than one "right one" among more than one "right brand." No matter what you choose, there will always be 100 other people who would've suggested something different. There's not much more a "guide" can do for you in terms of determining if a particular model of a particular brand is good or bad. I can say that for most components, brand quality is overblown and exaggerated, and practically irrelevant if you don't have advanced hardware knowledge. The guide tells you the general criteria of features, and you can use that to easily find, for example, a handful of motherboards that are perfectly fine. You narrow it down further by utilizing the budget chart and knowing what you ought to be spending on a particular component. Even if you're left with 25 choices, there's still no secret "this-is-the-one-you're-supposed-to-get" choice in there that only the experts know about.

Video card selection is slightly more complicated, but in my opinion, the hardest part is choosing the GPU (NVIDIA vs. AMD, GTX 760 vs R9-280, 780 vs 780 Ti, etc). Once you narrow it down which GPU you want, the guide explains the difference in all of the various AIB offerings.

But I know there are a lot of choices. I don't take issue with anyone posting a build list and asking for advice on the parts chosen, or even asking someone to help choose the right model of whatever. The issue I have is your statement that the part list at the end was the most useful part of the guide. If that's the case, I have no idea what you were expecting from the other 29,000 words.