OK... Here is a system made of all quality parts, will beat current consoles, and has USB 3 and includes a retail version of windows 8.1
Total: $580 (+ tax)
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/jcJY23
This is also very upgrade-able. You can upgrade the CPU, GPU and RAM easily in next couple years and the system can be a beast. I would recommend changing the case of you wanted to get into overclocking though.
You can look up the parts, but I already have. Everything is high quality, with the case being the "lowest" but still isn't a bad case and provides very good features for the money. This would be a very reliable build.
Try and forsake the windows 8.1 OS from feralshadow's build and put that money in the GPU or the CPU, you'd be able to add $95 towards the other components. Try not to bottleneck too!
I would agree if you already have access to a copy of windows 8. Put that money toward getting a GTX 760 (or 960 if its out at the time of reading this) and an i5 and you got yourself a very good gaming machine.
If I were to have a budget of $1000. nothing more. what kind of builds can you be put together? I would like to see if someone could build the best possible rig for under this price. (not including OS)
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/LVmyLk Here you go. Good starting point. If you need windows thats a 100 more. Or we need to re-adjust this build. Or you could find windows for cheap maybe on black friday. Or ask for it for X-mas and run steam OS for a few mouths. I love the choices PC freedom gives you.
But ya 550$ after rebate's. Supports this gen and next gen intel chips. Has the new M.2 SSD support. Also sata express. Good onboard audio with 600ohm headphone support and swapping op amp. Supports two GPU's in both SLI or crossfire. And they have two 8x electrical PCI-E slots so you can choose what slot to use if you have 5 slots in your case. Love that.
I see this all the time. I work in the industry. Messed with all the SDK kits and units. I will say I am a little bias toward the PC. But I need to bust some myths. First the CPU cores on the consoles are really weak. Even a fast AMD quad core can beat them. And the the little Cheap GTX 750 Ti beats both consoles to death. Games may be optimized for more constant smooth game play.(thats not been the case so far) That is easy knowing what every machine has. But if where talking about raw horse power. Yes a 500 dollar PC will beat out both consoles. But there is no special hardware. No ASIC's inside. Just cheap parts off the self. And they run like really cheap PC's.
Nothing special and that is the problem with them.
Also the Gigabyte board comes with software called smart switch. It puts the windows 7 start menu back in windows 8. Just use 8. The back end its better and starts up faster than 7. If you don't like smart switch Logan swears by a program called start is back. Its really good and only costs 3 bucks I think.
No MadeofWood you did good. 750 Ti does beat the PS4. I know the number of cores are higher and sounds like more. But the Maxwell GPU's have 40% more efficient cuda cores than Kepler. And have more L2 cache as well. So at 1080 and below its not hitting the frame buffer as much as Kepler did. So it being only 128 bit bus is much less of a concern. If you give up some nice effects and lighting or shadow resolution you may be able to get better textures on PS4. But that's about it really. And not by that much.
combined almost everyone's build. tried my best to keep it close to $1000. the monitor pushes it over. I would love to hear what everyone thinks. my first time bringing parts together like this so any suggestions would be amazing. Thanks.
I fiddled with the components to try to get a smaller form factor and an SSD. The power should be the same unless you really wanted a much higher overclock. These components should get you a decent overclock easily..
Overall performance should improve with an SSD anyway.