New PC Best Practice

[Galbadine]

I am having a new PC delivered (https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/39tDQV) it's being bought for me as a gift. It's aim is good gaming and a good deal of future proofing, whilst giving me a first foothold into enthusiast level PC systems. By that I mean I'll be learning some overclocking, installing a HDD etc. All of which is new to me, so noob questions, instead of noob mistakes is my aim :-)

The goal is 2 monitors or an ultra wide, and a tv hooked up, gaming plus streaming video is highly likely as I share the room it is in. Won't be twitch gaming, more likely RTS, turn based etc. But that's more relevant to the monitor...

Its arriving with a 10% cpu overclock, no GPU overclock, all drivers and mobo BIOS/UEFI up to date as of today. 20th Jan '17.

 

Now the question:

New computer arrives, windows 10 home only.

I want to check over what I have received, ensure it is what is on the invoice and is working as intended, what should I consider?

Setting up: there are 100's of setting up guides, I could read them all and combine the advice that sounds applicable and good, but is there a good one I should know about?

Any tools/apps you think would be useful to my aims?

 

Thanks for your time guys, I'd rather ask and do it right than have to ask how to fix it later.

 

[Droidbot]

ninite is helpful as hell

[Sauron]

Cinebench is a good benchmarking tool to make sure your parts perform as they should. Use msi afterburner to check cpu and gpu temperatures to make sure the coolers work as intended. Run memtest86 a few times to check that the ram is good.

[Silver47]

First thing I'd do is installing a couple of diagnose programs, such as Speccy or Aida64 and check their readings on your system. Next you should consider some stress-tests, like Prime95 for your CPU and something like FurMark for your GPU. Let them run simultaneously for half an hour and then check if them temps on your components are good. Last but not least you could run some benchmarks, such as 3DMark Firestrike and Unigine Heaven.

[Galbadine]

 

Speccy or Aida64 to list components and spot any issues with them.

MSIafterburner for temps and OC controls.

Prime95 for CPU stress testing  and finding insanely long prime numbers.

Furmark or cinebench for GPU stress testing. 

-With both of these I can compare my results with those of others and also test stability for future overclocking.

Take some benchmarks using 3DMark, Firestrike or Unigine Heaven. Good for future reference when overclocking GPU.

And Ninite for quick essentials installation.

 

Thanks for that! 

 

Anyone think of anything that misses?