I just wanted to make this post (rant?) for noobs like myself who might be looking to build a PC in the near future. I just pulled the trigger on my build and I had some stuff I guess I wanted to share. I think actually buying all the components was the part I underestimated the most. I normally buy from Fry's or something like that so I admit I wasn't accustomed to getting things online. Like most of the builds here I used PC Part Picker for my prices and now I know that it tends to be too much of a crutch at least for me. I know as I was compiling the partslist I definitely had a false sense of security with regards to what the up front cost would be. For example the case I wanted to pick up which was a Zalman was listed at $44. I knew there would be a $20 rebate so it was going to be around 60 up front, but once I got to checkout there was like a $17 shipping fee and by the time I worked tax into the equation I was looking at around 85 for a zalman case which I just was not going to do. Apply this to the ram from newegg (damn promo wouldn't go through), cooler and psu and i was about done. I ended up just ordering everything from amazon and lucky for me everything I wanted had amazon prime so free 2 day shipping (except for the graphics card which will not be here in 2 days unfortunately). So at the end of the day I opted to pay more than I wanted to for a better case and pay slightly more to get everything from amazon. Did I over pay a bit? Yes. Did I save myself the headache of registering for 5 different websites, jumping through promo hoops and getting surprised by the check out price? Yes. I may have approached this differently if I didn't have amazon prime available to me, and I am fortunate to have the financial ability to pay a bit more for convenience. So for those who really need a budget build I highly recommend looking carefully at what you are going to buy and what hidden costs might be associated with that. I know my lack of research came back to cost me money although at this point I'm not that upset about it.
This is what I ended up with: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2HNmw
I was going to call it "The Poor Man's Shield" since I play a lot of dota but given the price I'm not quite sure the name is apt anymore. At any rate I hope someone can learn from my mistakes:)