I've been looking into building a $1,000 gaming PC (excluding the cost of the monitor and peripherals), and I came across this build on pcpartpicker and was wondering what you all would change about it, while keeping it within the $1,000 range. Because some of the guy's parts, like the power supply, are recycled from a previous build/purchase of his, and aren't ideal.
Right off the bat that SSD seems a bit pricey, and I'd go GSkill on the memory to save a few bucks. I don't really have time to look into what SSD I would use over that, just first blush seems like you can snag a better deal.
-So I would go OCZ for the SSD. Their cheep and they have surprisingly good write speeds.
-Its good to have a lower CAS Latency on the ram (say 1333Mhz at CAS11 vs 1333MHZ Cas24). The thing is this only benefits you if you overclock your ram. I'm running my 1333MHZ DDR3 RAM at 2200MHZ and its awesome. Overclocking ram takes a long time and feels scary. If you don't know how to (or know anybody that knows) then you might as well invest in the higher speed. Just an FYI. Also @TheBoognish is right, GSkill is some decent ram.
-The 7970 ins't a bad card, but might as well get something new.
Also, if you don't want to OC your ram please at least make sure you turn on the XMP profile so you're not gimping yourself and actually getting the speeds you want. It's sad how many people don't do this and truck along at 1333 oblivious to this reality.