I just got a good amount of money from Christmas and I've decided to buy my parts for a gaming computer on boxing day. These are the specs I have:
CPU: AMD FX-4300
GPU: MSI Radeon 7970 2GB or EVGA GTX 660 2GB
RAM: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2x4gb) DDr3
Power: Corsair Enthusiast Series 650w 80+ Bronze
MotherBoard: ASUS M5A97 LE R2.0 AM3+
Memory: 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm Bare-Drive (Although I'm thinking about buying an SSD and using that as my boot drive)
Case: BitFenix Ghost ATX/Mid tower
Additional: Windows 7 home premium and a 15 dollar optical drive
Notes: I'm looking to play games like SC2, Planetside 2 and BF3, they don't need to be at ultra graphics, meduim is fine with me as long as frame rate is good. Plus, I want to be able to upgrade parts in the future, so I chose a motherboard that I think will help me if I eventually want to add ram or another graphics card.
Any help you can give would be amazing! Thanks so much and Happy Holidays :)
I can tell you that 7970 will smoke that 660 if you can afford it. Also with prices of SSD these days it is almost unnoticeable adding a small boot drive to your rig, and the performance you will get is far better than with the mechanical hard drive alone
I'll work on one right now I suppose so you have some options if you want that, I'll try to make an intel build with an nvidia I guess, or ATI if the price is right.
Here you go, fits right into your budget at 965$, includes a SSD + 1tb of storage, i5-3570k, 8gb of 1600 9cas ram, a 7970, a good case with some great air flow capabilities, CD/DVD Drive, and a nice heatsink that you can easily get that Ivy Bridge to 4ghz on.