I know how it feels to be quite new around here and everyone tells you something different.
Do manual tier 1! No, use software! Do only PR 3+ and OBL under 5! No, do Pr1 + and OBL under 50! Magic Submitter is best! No Ultimate Demon is! No GSA is! No, scrapebox is cause I like blasting!
I know how it feels and you know what's the toughest shit? That you will have to find out yourself.
During this recent Penguin update, even hardcore white hat sites were slapped, just like the black hat ones. If you are way too paranoid and want to really avoid the penalty, then do your Tier 1 manually and it will take you 5 - 10 times more time. If not, then use software like Ultimate Demon, which is decent for Tier 1, or Magic Submitter etc. Read reviews and you will be wiser.
But considering that you are new and you have tons of time, doing Tier 1 manually isn't that bad idea. What you need at this point is some software for Tier 2 and Tier 3. GSA can handle both of those really nicely, BUT! Remember that it's not like you pay $90 for GSA and you are good to go. I don't know what you budget is, but when buying GSA SER you HAVE TO buy also GSA Captcha Breaker which is what? $120? Without this piece of software, the captcha costs will eat you. Then GSA Seo indexer is a nice addon too and it's just like $20 or so. BUT! Yeh another but. You will need proxies. There are tons of nice providers here, most of them suck big time. After switching like 5 - 6 proxy providers, the best one so far were BuyProxies, 30 semi dedicated proxies should do the trick for you, that's another 30 a month or so. And one more thing, if your bandwidth or PC suck, you will have to get a VPS, which is like 20 bucks a month so always consider all the options and always have a plan. Even when it's about buying a software. Hope this helps.