NGamer

LMAO...
 
Gotta "love" spell checker changing it from aesthetic to atheistic... 😬

There's a reason they're called "desktop" PC's you know!

More cores, more threads = more heat, period. Especially when put under a load.

The RTX 3060 is entirely a tier lower in performance than the 3070 as it uses a lower end chip (GA106 for the 3060 vs GA104 for the 3070 and 3060 Ti)
 
So strictly talking gaming as I don't have any experience with the non-gaming related workloads, people get too caught up in VRAM. There is never a time a 3060 will outperform a 3070. I'd suspect the 3060 doesn't even have the performance to properly even use 12GB. You'll hit other bottlenecks first.

I was just playing Doom Eternal last night and was a bit surprised that it was using up almost 11gb or vram according to Afterburner OSD. 1440p, no fps cap, HDR, RT, Ultra Nightmare settings, to be fair.

40%-45% faster @1440p compare to 3060
Very rare cases, like maxing out Doom/Dying Light 2@4k with RT. 
 
Depend on your video editing workload. Most of the time 3070 is the better option. 
Photo editing won't saturate that 8GB VRAM imo.

More animation than just photo or video editing. Photo editing to my knowledge won't get anywhere close to 12GB of VRAM without doing something that would be better suited to 64GB of RAM. Video editing under certain conditions would benefit from 12GB of RAM compared to 8GB, but it's also in the weird location where there aren't many situations where 12GB of RAM will be enough and 8GB isn't, for the most part either you need 8GB or you need 20GB. Animation does scale a bit more linearly, hence why I specified blender specifically. 

3D compute where you need 12GB of VRAM to render a scene. For a budget blender card the 3060 makes sense. 
 
For gaming, never. 

The 3070 is much faster.
 
When pigs fly. 

the 3070 is a faster gpu, so it can calculate more in a given time than the 3060. This means the 3070 will have more fps in almost all games
 
If a program/game needs more than 8gb of vram. Then it will either crash or get much slower as it has to use system memory. I don't see this to likely be a big issue in games.

Sounds like it's the just the nerves of never having done it before. What do you have for a parts list so far?
If parts don't work when you first build it, then we figure out which part and why and then you go and get it fixed. If you buy from somewhere like Amazon where doing a RMA(Return to Manufacturer Authorization) is really easy, you ship it back to Amazon, and they ship you a new one. There's a small chance you have to go through the original manufacturer like MSI or Gigabyte but it's very easy usually to get it done through the seller. 
As far as making it your own and building a piece of art, if you don't need peripherals like monitors and keyboard and mouse it'd be kind of difficult to use up a $3000 budget. This leaves room for "Those fans would look better in my case" Or "I didn't think I wanted RGB, but I'd like more" to add it later. 
 
Edit: Posted early:
I don't think anyone here is going to tell you to spend all $3000 of your budget or that you have to build one if you're not comfortable. Prebuilts are a lot easier. You get a little less performance per dollar with them, but between one warranty, one person to contact with issues they're a lot easier. Building your own computer isn't for everyone. Whether it's for you or not is your choice. 

Then dont build a pc. Just buy one.
 
I wouldnt ask you to do your own auto maintinence if you had no idea how to trouble shoot issues or any experience or confidence. Same with computers.
 
Either practice on some cheap/free computers first and get some real experience, or just have someone else do it.
 
Definitely not going to tell you to blow 3k on parts if you have no confidence or experience and are doubting anything. To recommended otherwise is irresponsible

just try your best to get most recent parts keeping future proofing in mind like getting i7 processor for example or getting minimum 16 GB ram and for your power supply get at least 1000 watts gold rated is good no need to go higher from sea-sonic and forget about it. for graphics get the 3080 or 3070ti i mean to say high end but whichever is comfortably in your budget. i was feeling the same when i built my first PC back in 2010 and i did not have much resources, nowadays its easy to get help from online sites like this one and redit is also useful. what i did which ever part i choose to buy i search it on YouTube and check reviews from your subscribed channels. go easy on spending first time because when you get into stuff you gain knowledge overtime and then you can update your existing setup with more parts you feel like will better your experience for example display, fans, cpu cooler . so just go for it even if you make mistake you are learning from them.

Most issues that come up with computers are fixed with the same few solutions. 
You have a few options. Do you want to build and learn how to build/troubleshoot? Get a cheap old computer from a thrift store. Have a friend find a common issue online and have them cause that issue in that computer without telling you what they did. Repeat for different types of issues. Feel free to use the internet and forums to help with the troubleshooting. If you just want to build one and learn, you can do that as well. (Computer throttling, not POSTing and crashing under load are some very common ones that end up being a few basic things to fix usually) 
Is your doubt "I've never done this before and don't know where I'd start?" or is it "I'm afraid I'd make things worse?" Either way, you can learn your way around it.  

Well, for starters, in building your own, you should learn enough in the process, and for anything you can't grasp, you can always ask questions here.
 
The process is generally pretty simple, though for some setups, you may want to sequence assembly differently than you might for others. Me, I don't really have the patience to do it for a living, though I can generally build my own and keep it going. And I have a form of autism, likely Asperger's Syndrome, which means I have limited focus and retention. So I'd like to think that if I can do it, you can do it.

Try building one on pcpartpicker, then share the link here.
If there's anything that is iffy, people will speak about it.
Then you will learn from it.

Everybody's been in the same boat once.
My first PC build BSOD right, left, up, and down. Back then youtube wasn't a thing yet, solid tech reviewers rare.
Looking back, I should've learned more before building somehow.

RAM, as long it's not over 3200mhz for DDR4, little chance it won't work.
You can go to motherboard page and look at their QVL list for RAM, and buy one that they included in the list if it makes you feel safer.

CPU & Motherboard, just make sure the socket is right, and the vrm & chipset can fully juice the CPU that you choose.

Motherboard & RAM, make sure the DDR version match each other. Check motherboard website for compatible RAM speed.

CPU & RAM, Make sure the CPU support the speed of the RAM of your choosing, or make sure the RAM speed supported by the CPU.

VRAM isn't the only decider for GPU performance. Nvidia adds VRAM as they see fit. 
 
Unfortunately limiting the 3070 to 8GB seems to have been a bad move on their part.

For DDR5, it's even worse, there are only disadvantages to using 4 sticks rather than 2. At least according to the last video of Buildzoid's that I saw on the subject.
 
There is a significant speed penalty to using 4 sticks instead of 2.

If you buy single rank dimms, four will give you a dual rank setup. Memory Rank is not often talked about in PC upgrade discussions, especially because you won't see it advertised on the store page for memory, but in memory sensitive applications it might improve performance by like 10%.
 
On the other hand, it is easier on the memory controller to use less dimms, but that typically becomes more of a concern with very high speeds.
 
Edit: I also recall early Intel 12th gen issues with 4-dimm compatibility. Even with quad kits, systems would fail to post quite a lot. Not sure if those have been ironed out by now.

Ah... yes, I think that is where the confusion is...
 
Thanks!
 
 

I had an industrial 1.5 Eaton with a loud 80mm fan on the rear... eventually took it out because of the noise. I'm not running one right now, but like, there is more to VA's when it comes to UPS units. Such as what kind of sine-wave it uses, which connections it comes with (for monitoring, etc).

I have literally hot glued SSDs to any flat surface I could find in an old pc, and then gave up and just left them dangling around the place.
Nothing moves in them, they’re like a really fancy USB stick, so they can kinda go wherever, pick them up, shake them, so long as the cable doesn’t disconnect you can spin them around like a fan if you want.

I'm not showing you the 3 ssd's led on top of each other in my case...😆

they can go wherever they work best for you. they have no moving parts, so as long as you aren't repeatedly smashing them around where physical damage is a concern, they are fine even if dangling in the back of the case

An SSD can be a bit loose, just make sure the drives themselves are not piled on top of one another because they do need a very small amount of breathing room to stay cool. Several drives stacked on top of one another might cause temperature problems.