Originally Posted by m4a1mustang

OK Kaien,

Since your budget is $1000-$1500, I decided it was high enough to go full Intel. I think at the $1000+ range there's no reason not to go Intel over AMD as you get the best performance. When you get under $1,000 I think there's a bit of a gray area where you could go either way, and then below $750 or so I think that's when AMD chips really shine.

So, for a $1,000-ish build with Newegg pricing:

Case: Antec 300 Mid Tower $69.99 (you could pick whatever ATX case you felt like using. I just used the 300 as an example)
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68-V/Gen3 $189.99
Processor: Core i5-2500K $219.99
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3-1600 (2x4GB) $45.99
HDD: WD Caviar Black 7200rpm Sata III $129.99
GPU: Sapphire 2GB Radeon HD 6950 Dirt 3 Edition $279.99 (I like this card of all the other 6950s because it has the BIOS switch that unlocks the shaders to 6970 levels, and it's got a great cooler allowing you to OC it past 6970 clocks if you so desire)
Power Supply: Corsair TX750 $129.99

Total: $1,065.93 excluding OS and accessories

That would be a pretty nice rig for single monitor gaming. If you wanted to spend more you could replace the i5-2500K with an i7-2600K and maybe get a second GPU to run in Crossfire if you plan on using a 3 monitor gaming setup like me, and/or add a SSD for your OS and programs.

The thing that pisses me off right now is that HDD prices have gone through the roof because of the drive shortage. A 1TB HDD used to be pretty cheap, now they run over $200. That's why I only chose the 500GB HDD for you... so you can just wait and add more space later at a cheaper price if you need to.

Anyone else have some thoughts?