I have done a lot of research, and know what I want to get out of the machine, but am having a hard time sorting through all the video cards names and performance and trying to understand what is really the best bang for the buck. This is going to be hooked up to a monitor and TV, and is going to replace the xbox 360, and be used as a media center (hence the large hard drive. I live in Canada and these prices are from PC Part Picker Canada, and I do not want to spend much more than 1000 dollars, so if you have any tips to get more performance for the same price (or less) any tips with be much appreciated. After doing enough reading I am kind of stuck on the CPU but anything else is available to be changed.
CPU Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core $214.99
CPU Cooler Antec Kuhler H2O 620 Liquid $52.99,
Motherboard MSI B75A-G43 ATX LGA1155 $89.24
Memory Mushkin Blackline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 $59.99
Storage A-Data S510 Series 120GB 2.5" SSD $104.99
Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM $129.99
Video Card XFX Radeon HD 7870 2GB $237.55
Case NZXT Phantom 410 (White) ATX Mid Tower $99.99
Power Supply Cooler Master 450W ATX12V $53.98
Operating System Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) $89.98
its not a bad build but if you can go with an fx 8320 cpu $154 amazon and a msi 970(no usb3) or asus 990x evo(usb3) and put the savings into the gpu to get a 7950 you will get $150 in free games and have the same cpu prefrormance as the i5 for gaming and you will have a better cpu for multithreaded workloads.
your psu is to week you should go with a 600w-750w
The Build looks solid, the only thing I would REALLY stress you do is get a different motherboard with a overclockable chipset, Z77 or Z68. I would reccomend this motherboard especially if you can get the sale http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=26_722&item_id=047869
The other thing I would say is, if you want to save money, there are safe ways to get Windows 7 for free which are very easy which could allow you to upgrade other things like the motherboard, add more RAM or do whatever you want.
Thanks a bunch for you speedy reply. I was unsure of how the quality of the motherboard effected everything, and thought that i might be going a little cheap. I feel good about this build now and will probably order this up tommorow with a different mobo and beefed up PSU
Thanks for the tips, The PSU was part of a deal, and the build said I would only be using 375 watts, but looking at other builds I thought that 600 was almost a standard.