Building has never been easier, but it's never been harder either, so trust me, I'd know. I'm a living legend. I'm totally self-taught, and I thought I'd start a discussion on the matter, because I read a lot and there is a lot of discussion on the topic, but let me wax over what is required: It takes a lot of work and planning to be a professional gamer. Effective time management, a substantial degree of self-discipline, and an art commitment are requirements for players. You also need to learn software and hardware, but the reason this has been placed in the motherboard section is because what you base your build around is the motherboard, and no other parts. I'm totally self-taught, and I don't know everything, and sometimes I rely on the Internet, or word of mouth, or general collection of the knowledge base to survive, but I do my research, and that's the secret to my success. I'm not a nerd, and I didn't grow up wanting to build computers either, and my machine is my greatest teacher, and she even has a name, and I call her Flow, but really what all this boils down to, this jumping from being a console boy to being an elite gamer is really quite simple: Learn your software, then learn hardware, and you can do that while you have a working machine, so use that as your opportunity to expand yourself, and hardware can be learned quite easily if you pay attention to the culture of hardware in general, so all manufactures branch out into unknown territory, like for example: Logitech, they're known for their mouses. I wouldn't buy a Logitech motherboard if they made one. I'd buy an MSI or ASUS or something to that effect, but you get my point, so your decisions should be based around that kind of logic, and sometimes you might take a chance on a manufacturer, and that's your choice, but try to keep to a few simple rules: Only buy stuff from big name brands, so don't buy cheap parts, and try to pull from the middle, this way your machine, even though it might be fancy or expensive, is inexpensive, because you're doing your own work, and you just learn your way through all the processes, and building a computer is like a set of instructions, and all your parts come with them, so pay attention, but some aspects of building don't come with instructions, because we're problem solvers, so do your research to become a builder or designer, and I'd try to be a builder first and a designer last, so copy your first build, but learn from the experience, and modify it and make it your own, and that's how it's done. That's how you become a builder of things and not a destroyer of them, and from being a console boy to being a builder of machines, and it's really that simple, and use the Internet to fill in the gaps.
