That was exactly how I did it some years ago. After 4 or 5 times fixing the X-server after an update (thanks nVidia!) I switched over to Arch. Installed Arch following the Wiki for about 2 hours… failed and started the process of installation again (in about 1.5 hours :P) and succeeded. By failing and trying again I’ve learned a ton. My advise for less frustration: go with Team Red. In my experience AMD graphics cards are much more linux-friendly.
Read through it… strange.