Clueless and looking to build my first Rig

[Drvillain]

Hey guys, I've looked and most of this is really confusing to me, so I guess I need someone to "hold my hand" through this whole process. I'm looking to spend no more than $1400, and I don't see me using this PC for anything other than gaming. Help is appreciated!

[CrAzYsIm]

For $1400 you can get a high end PC.
Im at work ATM but if no one else posts I can compile you a nice build later tonight

[Drvillain]

For $1400 you can get a high end PC.
Im at work ATM but if no one else posts I can compile you a nice build later tonight

Thanks a lot! It is very much appreciated

[CrAzYsIm]

Case: Newegg.com - COOLER MASTER Storm Scout SGC-2000-KKN1-GP Black Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case $70
Motherboard: Newegg.com - ASUS P8Z77-V LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard $190
CPU: Newegg.com - Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I53570K $230
RAM: Newegg.com - G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL7D-8GBXH $50
PSU: Newegg.com - CORSAIR Builder Series CX500 V2 500W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply $60
GPU: Newegg.com - EVGA 02G-P4-2678-KR GeForce GTX 670 FTW 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card $410
HDD: Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $110
SSD: Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-128G 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $100
OS: Newegg.com - Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit - Operating Systems $100

Everything came to about $1,335

Now you can make changes. I went with all high end parts. You can go with lower prices items to save some money. You can go with a lower end motherboard and save about $50 there, A cheaper case and save another $20 there. Since your going to be using this as a gaming machine I went with the an i5 instead of an i7. The hyper-threading that the i7's have wont be useful to you in gaming, if you were going to do heavy video encoding or photo editing then I would've went with the i7. At the same time since this is a gaming machine I went with a high end GPU (like top 2-3 GPU) You'll be able to play any game at max detail for some time. If you eventually plan on adding a second GPU than you'll need a bigger PSU. You can go with a smaller HDD and save about $30 there. With the lower priced parts it would be about $100 difference in price but that will be up to you. Also all the parts I listed are from newegg, other sites might have them cheaper and if there is a microcenter store close to you, you can save some good money on a CPU/motherboard combo.

[Drvillain]

Case: Newegg.com - COOLER MASTER Storm Scout SGC-2000-KKN1-GP Black Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case $70
Motherboard: Newegg.com - ASUS P8Z77-V LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard $190
CPU: Newegg.com - Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I53570K $230
RAM: Newegg.com - G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL7D-8GBXH $50
PSU: Newegg.com - CORSAIR Builder Series CX500 V2 500W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply $60
GPU: Newegg.com - EVGA 02G-P4-2678-KR GeForce GTX 670 FTW 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card $410
HDD: Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive $110
SSD: Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-128G 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $100
OS: Newegg.com - Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit - Operating Systems $100

Everything came to about $1,335

Now you can make changes. I went with all high end parts. You can go with lower prices items to save some money. You can go with a lower end motherboard and save about $50 there, A cheaper case and save another $20 there. Since your going to be using this as a gaming machine I went with the an i5 instead of an i7. The hyper-threading that the i7's have wont be useful to you in gaming, if you were going to do heavy video encoding or photo editing then I would've went with the i7. At the same time since this is a gaming machine I went with a high end GPU (like top 2-3 GPU) You'll be able to play any game at max detail for some time. If you eventually plan on adding a second GPU than you'll need a bigger PSU. You can go with a smaller HDD and save about $30 there. With the lower priced parts it would be about $100 difference in price but that will be up to you. Also all the parts I listed are from newegg, other sites might have them cheaper and if there is a microcenter store close to you, you can save some good money on a CPU/motherboard combo.

Awesome, it's within my price range so it looks good. I think I might just pull the trigger after finding a bigger PSU. Would the SeaSonic x750 Gold 750W, do the trick if I wanted to add a second GPU in the future?

[CrAzYsIm]

Yea any good quality 750w PSU should suffice. Seasonic, XFX and corsair being examples of high end companies

[SpicySnow]

IF you haven't purchased yet:

Alot of the prices he picked out aren't exactly the best for those parts...
You could just pull the model numbers / item names and just search for the same thing elsewhere.

You should take a look at pcpartpicker / amazon / tigerdirect / fry's Ads / microcenter* to try to find some better prices.

camelcamelcamel.com is a price tracker and really useful for understanding the usual prices and rise/fall patterns of any particular item.

[Drvillain]

IF you haven't purchased yet:

Alot of the prices he picked out aren't exactly the best for those parts...
You could just pull the model numbers / item names and just search for the same thing elsewhere.

You should take a look at pcpartpicker / amazon / tigerdirect / fry's Ads / microcenter* to try to find some better prices.

camelcamelcamel.com is a price tracker and really useful for understanding the usual prices and rise/fall patterns of any particular item.

Thanks for the advice, I actually used pcpartpicker just to try and get the best deal. I'll most likely order the parts tomorrow. You guys were a big help.

[SpicySnow]

pcpartpicker's prices aren't always current. I've noticed that you can get significantly better prices by going to each individual retail site manually. Especially since sites like newegg have special promotion code prices etc. that aren't always picked up by pcpartpicker.

Also, the 660 Ti is coming out like. tomorrow? So hold off on the 670. The 660 Ti is rumored to have the exact same specs as the 670, except slightly lower memory bandwidth and costing $100 less. Which in performance, translate to somewhere around 8% less performance according to tweaktown at somewhere like 25% less cost. OF course, you want to check a more reputable source: such as tom's hardware. [Which I believe will also be released tomorrow]

[CrAzYsIm]

The benchmarks for the GTX660Ti have been released, its $299 and performance it between 10-20% behind the GTX670 or 15-25% the GTX670FTW edition.
Its an excellent $300 card tho and outperforms the AMD counterparts for less money.