Building a gaming PC for under $1000 USD. I would appreciate your opinions/suggestions

[Dark Ride]

Greetings!

I'm building a new PC but since I haven't built one in quite a while I am a bit out of the loop when it comes to hardware. So I would like to hear your opinions: anything I could swap out to make this a better build?  It's mainly going to be used for gaming and the usual every-day tasks such as internet browsing, movies, music, etc.

 

P.S.

I already have a monitor, gaming headphones/mouse/keyboard.

 

 

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($319.99 @ Newegg) 

Motherboard: Asus Z97-A ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($143.99 @ Amazon) 

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory  ($77.99 @ Newegg) 

Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($54.98 @ OutletPC) 

Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 770 2GB Superclocked ACX Video Card  ($301.98 @ Newegg) 

Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case  ($54.99 @ TigerDirect) 

Power Supply: Corsair CX 600W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($44.99 @ Newegg) 

Total: $998.91

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-06-15 05:28 EDT-0400

[Xahid]

its already excellent build, just add a SSD for operating system (at least) for better performance.

[Seahorsepip Veteran]

Yeah you can get a 250gb ssd for a pretty good price these days, at least games will load fast with it.

[SinsOfCube]

Ditch the i7 and go for an i5 and use the money saved for a SSD. The i7 doesn't give better gaming performance than a i5, in just about any game.

[Phouchg]

Might drop CX600M, take CS450 instead. Crazy price on Newegg, too, but even without rebates pretty much the same. Trading much less headroom (but still enough) for better efficiency.

Might drop 4770K, take 4590 non-K to free up money for an SSD - a computer without one might as well be from 2007. The board doesn't need be that expensive, too, or else I'd wish to hear the reason behind that exact choice (other than "it's Asus").

[Dark Ride]

I have to check if I can squeeze an SSD into the budget. What would you recommend for a decent but cheap SSD?

[SinsOfCube]

A Samsung 840 Evo or Crucial MX100.

The MX100 is cheaper, but you'll want to go for the 256GB version, the 128GB version has lower speeds. Also the MX100 has lower write speeds than the Evo, but it's the read speeds that are most important.

[Dark Ride]

Might drop CX600M, take CS450 instead. Crazy price on Newegg, too, but even without rebates pretty much the same. Trading much less headroom (but still enough) for better efficiency.

Might drop 4770K, take 4590 non-K to free up money for an SSD - a computer without one might as well be from 2007. The board doesn't need be that expensive, too, or else I'd wish to hear the reason behind that exact choice (other than "it's Asus").

Thanks for the suggestions. At first I was actually considering the 450, but I like the extra headroom for potential future upgrades.

 

As for the i5 vs. i7 debate... I understand that i7 doesn't offer a substantial enough performance increase over the i5 in most current games. But I'm optimistic that down the road games will take more advantage of quad-core CPUs. I'm trying to think ahead and make this system as future-proof as possible. 

[+PeterUK MVC]

Some of the new DX11 games for High/Ultra settings are needing more then 2GB on the GPU so you might want to go with a card that has 3GB or 4GB of course the GPU has to be powerful enough to handle them settings.

 

If your not going to overclock just get the i7 4770 non-K

 

Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI is cheaper good option.

[CG-88]

What sort of games will you be playing?

 

I think the rig looks good, only additions would be an SSD just to install the OS on and programs, and then maybe go for the 4gb 770.

 

With that setup you will be able to play games like BF4 on ultra no problem, I have the 4gb version of the card you selected but an AMD processor and I get good performance.

[Roger H. Veteran]

I'd go with the i5 as already said too but yeah I don't game much :p

 

The MX100 is a great buy so the money saved from the I7 can go there.

 

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Also since you are in CT, Amazon charges us for tax now too so if you were saving $10 by going to Amazon, you want want to stick to Newegg/TigerDirect instead as you'll get combined shipping for cheaper total pricing :)

[Dark Ride]

Ok, so I'll throw in a Crucial MX100 256GB SSD and I'll keep the rest as listen in my original post. Thanks to everybody who responded, I really appreciate it.

 

 

I'd go with the i5 as already said too but yeah I don't game much :p

 

The MX100 is a great buy so the money saved from the I7 can go there.

 

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Also since you are in CT, Amazon charges us for tax now too so if you were saving $10 by going to Amazon, you want want to stick to Newegg/TigerDirect instead as you'll get combined shipping for cheaper total pricing :)

 

Thanks for the info, I didn't know about the tax charge... too bad I already ordered. But I'll keep it in mind for next time.