Ty

Get in line

I'm the front of the line.

I will snap your neck

keep talkin dirty to me

Get out of me thread noobs !!!

Hasn't that been shown to matter only marginally?

Marginally sometimes, I say it depends more on the location, but does that mean it's a good reason to just have a bunch of airflow obstruction within the case? Try it Urself and test it. Why rely on being shown.

Its nice to have cool airflow from the front go right through the back and top of ur case w/ minimal shit in the way. Nn optical drive, hdd bays, wires, obstructing the airflow and why cases these days are designed a way that's not in the airflow way. But that's just me I guess

Ok so related question, what about actual placement of the tower in my room? My desk has a "spot" for where the tower is supposed to go, but it has walls on both sides and some of the back is covered, I'm guessing that's not good for air-flow. Should I just keep it outside/beside my desk?

And again, how do I know which cases have a PSU cover and which don't?

also:

GPU: Seeing that there are several different GTX 1060 6GBs, how do I know which one to get, or do I just get the cheapest? Some have 1 fan, some have 2?

some of the back is covered, so there's a way for air to exhaust, but is ur desk against a wall? like would the warm exhausted air just hit a wall? or is ur desk in middle of the room, so there's a way for the warm air to ventilate?
If it's against a wall, it wouldnt matter if it was placed in there, or beside ur desk/outside ur desk. Since both positions would still hit the wall... having both sides covered isn't bad. It's more about the front and back.

only way to tell if the cases have psu cover is actually seeing the case through pics or in person, but the common quality cases that have those psu shells are p400 and s340's.

For the gpu, you pretty much get the cheapest and highest model you can w/o paying over too much. Kinda hard to explain this, but each company has higher models like for Asus = Strix -> Dual -> Turbo.
As long as you avoid FE versions, you should be fine. They look like this: http://media.bestofmicro.com/J/U/594282/gallery/10-GTX-1060-FE-ISO_w_600.jpg
So using the example above, i'd avoid Asus Turbo models, since they're FE design and only look at Strix/Dual but you also compare it with EVGA's/MSIs models etc. and pick the best price per model imo.