Originally posted by EvilMix Well I don't know what to do. Now everything I need went from $892 to $982 and two of the parts are out of stock. I need the parts here by next Friday. :$
Well, it may not be all the same as Quiz's build, but I just did one up on Newegg.CA (which has excellent parts availability, even though shipping may be a bit more):
Not so hard... everything you need except a video card, and second storage hard drive
I went cheap on the case, dropped to 8G of RAM to keep the price low - that's a good deal on a 250G SSD, so I picked it up, you could drop to 120G and save some cash there. The motherboard and CPU are "entry level" - if you want to overclock you'd need something a bit heartier on the motherboard, and bump to the K edition CPU. I put a basic aftermarket heat sink on there, but running stock you could do without.
Hey thanks a lot dude, just to double check, all of those work together and will not explode when I try and build it? And they will work with the GTX 560 video card? Also, how much do you think shipping would be? I have $1005 total to spend on an awesome PC, should I get what you posted there or try and replace a couple better parts? I need like $35 to buy a surge protector. Other than that all of my money is for the PC I'm building.
Originally posted by EvilMixWell I don't know what to do. Now everything I need went from $892 to $982 and two of the parts are out of stock. I need the parts here by next Friday. :$
Hey thanks a lot dude, just to double check, all of those work together and will not explode when I try and build it? And they will work with the GTX 560 video card? Also, how much do you think shipping would be? I have $1005 total to spend on an awesome PC, should I get what you posted there or try and replace a couple better parts? I need like $35 to buy a surge protector. Other than that all of my money is for the PC I'm building.
Should work together, 99% chance they won't explode. It's your money, that will game pretty well - there isn't really a faster CPU for gaming right now, your 560 is still a decent video card, and that SSD is ~very~ nice. The power supply will hold pretty well any single video card you decide to upgrade to later on (although I wouldn't SLI on it), and the case is adequate for a mid tower.
If I were to upgrade anything that's probably what I would do - bit better case. Aside from jumping into overclocking stuff, you aren't going to do a whole lot better parts-wise.
Originally posted by EvilMixWell I don't know what to do. Now everything I need went from $892 to $982 and two of the parts are out of stock. I need the parts here by next Friday. :$
Hey thanks a lot dude, just to double check, all of those work together and will not explode when I try and build it? And they will work with the GTX 560 video card? Also, how much do you think shipping would be? I have $1005 total to spend on an awesome PC, should I get what you posted there or try and replace a couple better parts? I need like $35 to buy a surge protector. Other than that all of my money is for the PC I'm building.
Should work together, 99% chance they won't explode.
Hey long do you think that PC will last me? Will it run most of the new games on high settings? And do you think it's better to get 8gb or 16gb of ram? I also render videos and upload them to Youtube.
Originally posted by EvilMixWell I don't know what to do. Now everything I need went from $892 to $982 and two of the parts are out of stock. I need the parts here by next Friday. :$
Hey thanks a lot dude, just to double check, all of those work together and will not explode when I try and build it? And they will work with the GTX 560 video card? Also, how much do you think shipping would be? I have $1005 total to spend on an awesome PC, should I get what you posted there or try and replace a couple better parts? I need like $35 to buy a surge protector. Other than that all of my money is for the PC I'm building.
Should work together, 99% chance they won't explode.
Hey long do you think that PC will last me? Will it run most of the new games on high settings? And do you think it's better to get 8gb or 16gb of ram? I also render videos and upload them to Youtube.
edited my above post a bit
~CPU should be good for 4ish years at least, if not longer. Your current 560 video card still has a couple of years left, and this PC will be more than likely fine for a video card upgrade 2 years from now. A 3570 with a 560 will run damn near every game on high (if not maxxed) at 1080p, and will probably do so for the next 2-3 years, and be perfectly functional past that just by notching down the settings a touch or upgrading the GPU.
4G of RAM right now is plenty for 98% of all computer users. 99.5% can't use past 8G of RAM if they tried to - simply because most of the software out there is still 32-bit and can't use more than 2G per application anyway. 16G right now is overkill - it's just cheap enough that it doesn't matter much. If you end up needing to upgrade to 16G later on, you can easily do so, and there is a good chance it will be cheaper than doing it right now.
Somebody said that getting an SSD will improve my computer by 4x. Is that true? Isn't it just like a harddrive? Why is it so important? I don't think this PC I have is using one now.
Originally posted by EvilMix Somebody said that getting an SSD will improve my computer by 4x. Is that true? Isn't it just like a harddrive? Why is it so important? I don't think this PC I have is using one now.
You don't need an SSD for gaming. They only real benefit it provides is faster boot times and, for games, faster loading times. You can get a good 7200 rpm HD that holds 4x as much as an SSD for the same price or less. As for the rest, if this is being used primarily for gaming, you can go the AMD route for your CPU rather than Intel and save some money to put towards a better video card, which is what its all about for PC games. Your gaming performance is much more dependent on your video card than your cpu. And unless your plan to overclock your cpu, you don't need to buy a heat sink. The one that comes with the cpu will be fine.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
Originally posted by EvilMix Somebody said that getting an SSD will improve my computer by 4x. Is that true? Isn't it just like a harddrive? Why is it so important? I don't think this PC I have is using one now.
Well its more of a speed thing. Windows will boot alot faster, games will load much quicker. Writing files to the drive is faster. It really saves alot of time once you have one. You'll not think alot about it after awhile but if you use an SSD for 1-2 weeks then go back to an HDD then you'll understand.
Originally posted by Aori Originally posted by EvilMixSomebody said that getting an SSD will improve my computer by 4x. Is that true? Isn't it just like a harddrive? Why is it so important? I don't think this PC I have is using one now.
Well its more of a speed thing. Windows will boot alot faster, games will load much quicker. Writing files to the drive is faster. It really saves alot of time once you have one. You'll not think alot about it after awhile but if you use an SSD for 1-2 weeks then go back to an HDD then you'll understand.
It won't give you better frame rates, or let you turn on more graphics options. So in that sense, it doesn't make games play any faster.
But - yeah, what Aori says is true - anything that hits the hard drive will be very much so noticeably faster: game start times, game zoning/level loading times, Windows boot times go down by a lot, and even some seemingly small and unrelated actions like clicking the Start menu or right clicking on a file folder pops up faster. It makes a computer feel a whole lot more responsive, and it's very hard to go without one once you get used to it... like going back to dial-up after you've been on DSL.
Originally posted by EvilMixSomebody said that getting an SSD will improve my computer by 4x. Is that true? Isn't it just like a harddrive? Why is it so important? I don't think this PC I have is using one now.
Well its more of a speed thing. Windows will boot alot faster, games will load much quicker. Writing files to the drive is faster. It really saves alot of time once you have one. You'll not think alot about it after awhile but if you use an SSD for 1-2 weeks then go back to an HDD then you'll understand.
It won't give you better frame rates, or let you turn on more graphics options. So in that sense, it doesn't make games play any faster.
But - yeah, what Aori says is true - anything that hits the hard drive will be very much so noticeably faster: game start times, game zoning/level loading times, Windows boot times go down by a lot, and even some seemingly small and unrelated actions like clicking the Start menu or right clicking on a file folder pops up faster. It makes a computer feel a whole lot more responsive, and it's very hard to go without one once you get used to it... like going back to dial-up after you've been on DSL.
Sweet, okay nice. I figured I'd tell you guys what I do on my PC. I'm on WoW a lot, I always have Youtube open listening to music, maybe on hotmail, and checking out this site or another site that's WoW related. I want to be able to play the newer games (GW2, Tera, ect) but I haven't been able to.
Like I said before, I also record gameplay, render it, and upload it to Youtube, rendering through Sony Vegas. And that's what I do on my PC. Another big thing I'd like to be able to do is be able to record ANY game, new or old with Fraps and be able to hold a 60 FPS. The computer I'm running on now, even after lowering resolution and messing with settings can't even get a 25 FPS while recording Minecraft, let alone any other game.
I'm big on having 50-60 FPS. It's a must for me as I mainly PvP and every second counts. Like I said, I have about $980 to spend on a new PC, it has to cover parts, shipping, tax, all of that. I'm in Canada and I already have a GTX 560 and Windows 8. Thanks.
Quizzical already listed you great hardware that was within your budget. For the money you have available you wont be getting any better.
If you want an uber rig that can max out every game, run 60 fps while frapsing PvP then you will probably have to up that budget some. Probably in the video card department. Something like a 7950 or 680. Which adds around $300 plus at least. But you can always upgrade video later.
With your stated budget buy what Quizzical listed. He knows his stuff. Thats a good solid gaming system and will be one for awhile.
Well, 50-60 with FRAPS ... maybe doable, but your gonna have to turn down some graphics options, and probably the resolution a good deal.
You may have to settle for 30-40 with FRAPS, or dropping down to 720p resolution, or turning off FRAPS when your doing PVP that counts. A 560 can game well enough to run on high, but once you throw in the stress of FRAPS, there's a lot more hardware at play there.
Your going to have to take your budget, and what you can get is what you can get... There's no practical difference between what Quiz put together, what I put together, or what anyone else who puts together hardware would do on that budget - a few items may get swapped, but the basics are all the same, and that's based on what generation of hardware is available at the time, and your budget. You can't do much else except spend more money, roll the dice on overclocking (and learn a lot more about your hardware), or wait for newer/faster/better hardware.
I will add that what Rid and Quiz offered is basically the same given the time at which they were offered. Both builds are more than enough to meet the needs of the modern PC gamer but if your personal needs are that of Frapping your gaming sessions, then yes, you might need a better card that will cost a bit more. You can find AMD 7970 and Nvidia GTX 670 cards anywhere between 300-400 USD these days which are a bargain when you think about the gaming power they possess in the current market. That said if you wish to have said power and are willing to wait until the next gen cards come out you MIGHT save a bit of cash.
I'm not sure how much NCIX will charge for shipping, but those prices are all in Canadian dollars, and they're based in Canada. If you need to cut back a bit to fit a strict $980 budget (and I'm guessing it's a strict budget, or else you'd have said $1000), a cheaper motherboard is probably the best place to cut back. Depending on how much capacity you need, with a 240 GB SSD, you might be able to skip the hard drive entirely.
If you get this, then you plan on upgrading the video card in the future whenever you decide that it isn't good enough anymore. That might take you a few years, but the rest of the system should still be decent then.
I'm also assuming that you already have a surge protector, since you have the rest of the normal peripherals. If you don't, then you'll need one.
Also, if you dislike your keyboard, it's cheap to get a different one. You probably don't need anything fancy, and most desktop keyboards will work fine. Laptop keyboards are dicier, but that's due to the form factor.
You might want to replace that, as at least some Ultra power supplies are junk. Even at stock speeds, you've got some high wattage hardware, and overclocking might well be running the power supply out of spec. For a power supply that I wouldn't trust even if you keep its wattage draw within the claimed requirements, that's a very bad thing.
Originally posted by EvilMix Crap, looks like the ram has been sold out, I'll be ordering it all tomorrow but idk which ram to get.
Almost all RAM is made in one of just a handful of foundries, so it's all really just about the same.
All your really paying for are the packaging (the pretty colors on the heat spreaders, the box it comes in), and most importantly, for the warranty & support.
RAM is the single most likely component to be shipped faulty, because it's very static sensitive and has a lot of exposed connection points. Aside from making sure that you have a good return policy with the company you buy it from, and at least enough warranty support to get you out to 90 days, RAM is pretty much all the same.
Make sure it's compatible with your motherboard (DDR3), that the stock voltage is low (1.5V or less), the timings are tight (9-9-9, CAS latency of 9 or lower). The clock largely doesn't matter (or at least not nearly as much as the other numbers do), anything at or over 1333 (10666) is fine, but they tend to charge a lot more as they crank the clock up, and this only really matters if your using integrated video (and you are not).
I trust Kingston for most of my personal computers. I've used Mushkin, Corsair, Crucial, and G.Skill before without issue as well. No brand is impervious to being DOA, but with these brands, it's relatively painless to get a replacement.
Ok thanks man, do you know any that's decent that would work with the other parts that Quizzical picked? It looks like I need 16gb of ram.
For gaming purposes, you don't need 16 GB of system memory. On a large enough budget, I'll include it just because it's gotten cheap.
More to the point, it doesn't really matter which particular memory kit you get. What matters are the specs. The most critical thing by far is to get a kit with exactly two memory modules, as opposed to one or three. (Two of the same one-module "kits" will also work if that happens to be cheaper.)
1.5 V is the stock voltage for DDR3, so it's probably best to go with that. You want at least 1333 MHz (which includes nearly everything), and I usually recommend 1600 MHz just because it's basically the same price as 1333 MHz. Latency timings are in a number of clock cycles, so higher latency timings at higher clock speeds isn't necessarily higher latency as measured in nanoseconds. Lower latency timings are better, but most of the latency it takes for a CPU to access system memory isn't due to the memory module.
If you haven't already made the purchase, this looks nice if you want 16 GB:
Originally posted by EvilMix Well I don't know what to do. Now everything I need went from $892 to $982 and two of the parts are out of stock. I need the parts here by next Friday. :$
Well, it may not be all the same as Quiz's build, but I just did one up on Newegg.CA (which has excellent parts availability, even though shipping may be a bit more):
Not so hard... everything you need except a video card, and second storage hard drive
I went cheap on the case, dropped to 8G of RAM to keep the price low - that's a good deal on a 250G SSD, so I picked it up, you could drop to 120G and save some cash there. The motherboard and CPU are "entry level" - if you want to overclock you'd need something a bit heartier on the motherboard, and bump to the K edition CPU. I put a basic aftermarket heat sink on there, but running stock you could do without.
Hey thanks a lot dude, just to double check, all of those work together and will not explode when I try and build it? And they will work with the GTX 560 video card? Also, how much do you think shipping would be? I have $1005 total to spend on an awesome PC, should I get what you posted there or try and replace a couple better parts? I need like $35 to buy a surge protector. Other than that all of my money is for the PC I'm building.
Yeah, what Ridelynn linked you will work. He knows his stuff. Some of the parts I picked a few days ago are better than what he picked, but that's why my build is also more expensive.
Originally posted by EvilMix Somebody said that getting an SSD will improve my computer by 4x. Is that true? Isn't it just like a harddrive? Why is it so important? I don't think this PC I have is using one now.
A solid state drive will mostly function like a hard drive, except a lot faster. If you want to load a bunch of things at once off a hard drive, it has to stop and physically move the drive head and spin the platter to the next spot between each read, and that typically takes on the order of 10 ms. One could argue that it's actually 5 ms here or 15 ms there, but an SSD is about 0.1 ms--and yes, that is a decimal point there.
10 ms doesn't sound like much, but if you want to read or write hundreds or thousands of things at once (as is common when loading a program or zoning in a game), at 10 ms each, you get to sit there and wait. That's what loading screens are for. Multiply 0.1 ms by hundreds or thousands with an SSD and it still doesn't amount to much.
Perhaps more significant is the quicker reaction time of an SSD just doing what you need right away rather than hesitating slightly. 100 ms isn't much, but you'd sure notice if your ping time in a game changes by 100 ms. Think of an SSD as being kind of an offline equivalent of greatly reducing your ping time in an online game. That's hard to measure, but easy to feel.
When you use an SSD for the first time, the computer just works, and it might not seem magically fast. But if you go back to a hard drive after a bit, you'll really notice the difference and want your SSD back.
On the videocard i'd suggest NVidia 6xx cards due to FXAA.
You could get 2x 660ti, you should not get a cheap mainboard, go with intel processors as they are top for games.
While Nvidia GeForce 600 series cards can force FXAA through drivers, AMD Radeon HD 5000 series cards can force MLAA through drivers. But in both cases, you shouldn't, as doing it through drivers means that it can't be aware of the geometry of the scene--and more importantly, which things shouldn't be blurred, such as text and UI components.
If FXAA is implemented as a post-processing effect in OpenGL or DirectX or whatever, then the programmer can customize it and tell it which parts to blur and which to leave alone. That makes it work much, much better, as then it smooths the jagged edges without blurring things that ought to be sharp. But that also makes it run on any card that supports the API used, regardless of vendor--and including some cards that are very old by now. Being usable on more hardware is a good thing, of course, but it's not a reason to get a GeForce 600 series card.
The GeForce GTX 660 Ti tends to be a poor value for the money, as third bins of a GPU chip tend to be low volume parts, so Nvidia doesn't have to offer a good price to get rid of the chips. If you want to go with Nvidia, the cards that are often a good value for the money are the GeForce GTX 670, GTX 660, GTX 650 Ti, and GTX 650. But a GTX 650 Ti isn't any faster than the original poster's current GTX 560, and while a GTX 660 is an upgrade, it's not a large enough upgrade to really justify it.
The choice between Intel and AMD on a processor is basically one of fewer, faster cores or more, slower cores. In a well-coded game that scales well to as many cores as you've got (which actually isn't that hard to do for games), they're basically equivalent. In a badly-coded game that can't put very many cores to good use, extra cores that don't get used don't do you any good, so the Intel processor is better, at least if you're looking at an Ivy Bridge quad core.
The advantage of a Core i7-3770K over a Core i5-3570K is hyperthreading. If you can't put more than four cores to good use, Windows won't even use hyperthreading, but it can increase performance by up to 30% in programs that scale flawlessly to eight cores. There are some programs where that's a big deal, but games aren't among them.
For the next several years, if a game doesn't run well on a Core i5-3570K, it will probably be because it's a badly-coded game that can't use all of the cores--so adding hyperthreading won't help a bit. Games that do scale well to four cores and still can't run well on a Core i5-3570K are going to find an awfully small audience in the near future. If Moore's Law survives long enough, then games might start to show up 8 or 10 years from now where a Core i5-3570K performs poorly because it just doesn't have enough CPU cores. But the solution wouldn't be a slight gain from hyperthreading in a CPU bought today; it would be to replace the system with a brand new 12- or 16-core processor, or whatever we'll end up with by then.
I'm not sure how much NCIX will charge for shipping, but those prices are all in Canadian dollars, and they're based in Canada. If you need to cut back a bit to fit a strict $980 budget (and I'm guessing it's a strict budget, or else you'd have said $1000), a cheaper motherboard is probably the best place to cut back. Depending on how much capacity you need, with a 240 GB SSD, you might be able to skip the hard drive entirely.
If you get this, then you plan on upgrading the video card in the future whenever you decide that it isn't good enough anymore. That might take you a few years, but the rest of the system should still be decent then.
I'm also assuming that you already have a surge protector, since you have the rest of the normal peripherals. If you don't, then you'll need one.
Also, if you dislike your keyboard, it's cheap to get a different one. You probably don't need anything fancy, and most desktop keyboards will work fine. Laptop keyboards are dicier, but that's due to the form factor.
I don't know why you suggested such a junk CPU!
With the sales on now you can get an I7 for 330$
CPU 330$
Hard Drive 100$
Ram 80$
OP 85$
SSD 150
Case 70
MOBO 100
PSU 50
965$
i got that I5 and it runs stupid fast, i dont c what u call it junk for sum of us dont have money to throw away on I7's. considering i got mine for 190 shipped im laughing at your and your overpriced I7 lolz. Got my I5 overclocked to 4.6hrtz
Also i have been using my Ultra 550 PS for year with NO ISSUES plus they have a LIFETIME warrenty...
i can cut that cpu price u listed in half and have enough to get me a 560TI video card
For 900 bucks i can build a top of the line PC, just have to know where to look and not be willing to buy new
Also i have been using my Ultra 550 PS for year with NO ISSUES plus they have a LIFETIME warrenty...
The risk of a bad power supply isn't that the power supply might die. It's that it might take everything else in your system with it. Ultra's warranty doesn't cover everything that the power supply destroys, and if it does fry your system, do really want to collect on warranty service and see if an identical model does the same to your next system?
Maybe it will work just fine. But it's an unnecessary risk.
Comments
On the videocard i'd suggest NVidia 6xx cards due to FXAA.
You could get 2x 660ti, you should not get a cheap mainboard, go with intel processors as they are top for games.
On the OS, i'd suggest to go with windows 7_64 because windows8 is still in (driver-)development and may cause a reduced game experience.
A SSD is nearly a must, it makes your PC ~4x faster.
Btw, there is mainly no need to overclock if the system is optimised halfaway.
10 years ago we clock'd the P-III to hell, but nowadays we're in the future already.
20 years ago it needed 3 days to compile a linux kernel on Amiga, today it needs 5 minutes.
... just saying ^^
Hey thanks a lot dude, just to double check, all of those work together and will not explode when I try and build it? And they will work with the GTX 560 video card? Also, how much do you think shipping would be? I have $1005 total to spend on an awesome PC, should I get what you posted there or try and replace a couple better parts? I need like $35 to buy a surge protector. Other than that all of my money is for the PC I'm building.
Should work together, 99% chance they won't explode.
It's your money, that will game pretty well - there isn't really a faster CPU for gaming right now, your 560 is still a decent video card, and that SSD is ~very~ nice. The power supply will hold pretty well any single video card you decide to upgrade to later on (although I wouldn't SLI on it), and the case is adequate for a mid tower.
If I were to upgrade anything that's probably what I would do - bit better case. Aside from jumping into overclocking stuff, you aren't going to do a whole lot better parts-wise.
Hey long do you think that PC will last me? Will it run most of the new games on high settings? And do you think it's better to get 8gb or 16gb of ram? I also render videos and upload them to Youtube.
edited my above post a bit
~CPU should be good for 4ish years at least, if not longer. Your current 560 video card still has a couple of years left, and this PC will be more than likely fine for a video card upgrade 2 years from now. A 3570 with a 560 will run damn near every game on high (if not maxxed) at 1080p, and will probably do so for the next 2-3 years, and be perfectly functional past that just by notching down the settings a touch or upgrading the GPU.
4G of RAM right now is plenty for 98% of all computer users. 99.5% can't use past 8G of RAM if they tried to - simply because most of the software out there is still 32-bit and can't use more than 2G per application anyway. 16G right now is overkill - it's just cheap enough that it doesn't matter much. If you end up needing to upgrade to 16G later on, you can easily do so, and there is a good chance it will be cheaper than doing it right now.
You don't need an SSD for gaming. They only real benefit it provides is faster boot times and, for games, faster loading times. You can get a good 7200 rpm HD that holds 4x as much as an SSD for the same price or less. As for the rest, if this is being used primarily for gaming, you can go the AMD route for your CPU rather than Intel and save some money to put towards a better video card, which is what its all about for PC games. Your gaming performance is much more dependent on your video card than your cpu. And unless your plan to overclock your cpu, you don't need to buy a heat sink. The one that comes with the cpu will be fine.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
Ahh, okay. Faster is better haha.
It won't give you better frame rates, or let you turn on more graphics options. So in that sense, it doesn't make games play any faster.
But - yeah, what Aori says is true - anything that hits the hard drive will be very much so noticeably faster: game start times, game zoning/level loading times, Windows boot times go down by a lot, and even some seemingly small and unrelated actions like clicking the Start menu or right clicking on a file folder pops up faster. It makes a computer feel a whole lot more responsive, and it's very hard to go without one once you get used to it... like going back to dial-up after you've been on DSL.
Sweet, okay nice. I figured I'd tell you guys what I do on my PC. I'm on WoW a lot, I always have Youtube open listening to music, maybe on hotmail, and checking out this site or another site that's WoW related. I want to be able to play the newer games (GW2, Tera, ect) but I haven't been able to.
Like I said before, I also record gameplay, render it, and upload it to Youtube, rendering through Sony Vegas. And that's what I do on my PC. Another big thing I'd like to be able to do is be able to record ANY game, new or old with Fraps and be able to hold a 60 FPS. The computer I'm running on now, even after lowering resolution and messing with settings can't even get a 25 FPS while recording Minecraft, let alone any other game.
I'm big on having 50-60 FPS. It's a must for me as I mainly PvP and every second counts. Like I said, I have about $980 to spend on a new PC, it has to cover parts, shipping, tax, all of that. I'm in Canada and I already have a GTX 560 and Windows 8. Thanks.
Quizzical already listed you great hardware that was within your budget. For the money you have available you wont be getting any better.
If you want an uber rig that can max out every game, run 60 fps while frapsing PvP then you will probably have to up that budget some. Probably in the video card department. Something like a 7950 or 680. Which adds around $300 plus at least. But you can always upgrade video later.
With your stated budget buy what Quizzical listed. He knows his stuff. Thats a good solid gaming system and will be one for awhile.
Thats my advice
Well, 50-60 with FRAPS ... maybe doable, but your gonna have to turn down some graphics options, and probably the resolution a good deal.
You may have to settle for 30-40 with FRAPS, or dropping down to 720p resolution, or turning off FRAPS when your doing PVP that counts. A 560 can game well enough to run on high, but once you throw in the stress of FRAPS, there's a lot more hardware at play there.
Your going to have to take your budget, and what you can get is what you can get... There's no practical difference between what Quiz put together, what I put together, or what anyone else who puts together hardware would do on that budget - a few items may get swapped, but the basics are all the same, and that's based on what generation of hardware is available at the time, and your budget. You can't do much else except spend more money, roll the dice on overclocking (and learn a lot more about your hardware), or wait for newer/faster/better hardware.
I don't know why you suggested such a junk CPU!
With the sales on now you can get an I7 for 330$
CPU 330$
Hard Drive 100$
Ram 80$
OP 85$
SSD 150
Case 70
MOBO 100
PSU 50
965$
You might want to replace that, as at least some Ultra power supplies are junk. Even at stock speeds, you've got some high wattage hardware, and overclocking might well be running the power supply out of spec. For a power supply that I wouldn't trust even if you keep its wattage draw within the claimed requirements, that's a very bad thing.
For gaming purposes, you don't need 16 GB of system memory. On a large enough budget, I'll include it just because it's gotten cheap.
More to the point, it doesn't really matter which particular memory kit you get. What matters are the specs. The most critical thing by far is to get a kit with exactly two memory modules, as opposed to one or three. (Two of the same one-module "kits" will also work if that happens to be cheaper.)
1.5 V is the stock voltage for DDR3, so it's probably best to go with that. You want at least 1333 MHz (which includes nearly everything), and I usually recommend 1600 MHz just because it's basically the same price as 1333 MHz. Latency timings are in a number of clock cycles, so higher latency timings at higher clock speeds isn't necessarily higher latency as measured in nanoseconds. Lower latency timings are better, but most of the latency it takes for a CPU to access system memory isn't due to the memory module.
If you haven't already made the purchase, this looks nice if you want 16 GB:
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=73133&vpn=F3%2D12800CL10D%2D16GBXL&manufacture=Others&promoid=1033
or this will work if you'd rather save some money by going with 8 GB:
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=70136&vpn=KHX1600C9D3B1K2%2F8GX&manufacture=Kingston&promoid=1033
Yeah, what Ridelynn linked you will work. He knows his stuff. Some of the parts I picked a few days ago are better than what he picked, but that's why my build is also more expensive.
As for a power supply, you could also try this:
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=67325&vpn=HCG%2D620M&manufacture=Antec&promoid=1033
A solid state drive will mostly function like a hard drive, except a lot faster. If you want to load a bunch of things at once off a hard drive, it has to stop and physically move the drive head and spin the platter to the next spot between each read, and that typically takes on the order of 10 ms. One could argue that it's actually 5 ms here or 15 ms there, but an SSD is about 0.1 ms--and yes, that is a decimal point there.
10 ms doesn't sound like much, but if you want to read or write hundreds or thousands of things at once (as is common when loading a program or zoning in a game), at 10 ms each, you get to sit there and wait. That's what loading screens are for. Multiply 0.1 ms by hundreds or thousands with an SSD and it still doesn't amount to much.
Perhaps more significant is the quicker reaction time of an SSD just doing what you need right away rather than hesitating slightly. 100 ms isn't much, but you'd sure notice if your ping time in a game changes by 100 ms. Think of an SSD as being kind of an offline equivalent of greatly reducing your ping time in an online game. That's hard to measure, but easy to feel.
When you use an SSD for the first time, the computer just works, and it might not seem magically fast. But if you go back to a hard drive after a bit, you'll really notice the difference and want your SSD back.
While Nvidia GeForce 600 series cards can force FXAA through drivers, AMD Radeon HD 5000 series cards can force MLAA through drivers. But in both cases, you shouldn't, as doing it through drivers means that it can't be aware of the geometry of the scene--and more importantly, which things shouldn't be blurred, such as text and UI components.
If FXAA is implemented as a post-processing effect in OpenGL or DirectX or whatever, then the programmer can customize it and tell it which parts to blur and which to leave alone. That makes it work much, much better, as then it smooths the jagged edges without blurring things that ought to be sharp. But that also makes it run on any card that supports the API used, regardless of vendor--and including some cards that are very old by now. Being usable on more hardware is a good thing, of course, but it's not a reason to get a GeForce 600 series card.
The GeForce GTX 660 Ti tends to be a poor value for the money, as third bins of a GPU chip tend to be low volume parts, so Nvidia doesn't have to offer a good price to get rid of the chips. If you want to go with Nvidia, the cards that are often a good value for the money are the GeForce GTX 670, GTX 660, GTX 650 Ti, and GTX 650. But a GTX 650 Ti isn't any faster than the original poster's current GTX 560, and while a GTX 660 is an upgrade, it's not a large enough upgrade to really justify it.
The choice between Intel and AMD on a processor is basically one of fewer, faster cores or more, slower cores. In a well-coded game that scales well to as many cores as you've got (which actually isn't that hard to do for games), they're basically equivalent. In a badly-coded game that can't put very many cores to good use, extra cores that don't get used don't do you any good, so the Intel processor is better, at least if you're looking at an Ivy Bridge quad core.
The advantage of a Core i7-3770K over a Core i5-3570K is hyperthreading. If you can't put more than four cores to good use, Windows won't even use hyperthreading, but it can increase performance by up to 30% in programs that scale flawlessly to eight cores. There are some programs where that's a big deal, but games aren't among them.
For the next several years, if a game doesn't run well on a Core i5-3570K, it will probably be because it's a badly-coded game that can't use all of the cores--so adding hyperthreading won't help a bit. Games that do scale well to four cores and still can't run well on a Core i5-3570K are going to find an awfully small audience in the near future. If Moore's Law survives long enough, then games might start to show up 8 or 10 years from now where a Core i5-3570K performs poorly because it just doesn't have enough CPU cores. But the solution wouldn't be a slight gain from hyperthreading in a CPU bought today; it would be to replace the system with a brand new 12- or 16-core processor, or whatever we'll end up with by then.
i got that I5 and it runs stupid fast, i dont c what u call it junk for sum of us dont have money to throw away on I7's. considering i got mine for 190 shipped im laughing at your and your overpriced I7 lolz. Got my I5 overclocked to 4.6hrtz
Also i have been using my Ultra 550 PS for year with NO ISSUES plus they have a LIFETIME warrenty...
i can cut that cpu price u listed in half and have enough to get me a 560TI video card
For 900 bucks i can build a top of the line PC, just have to know where to look and not be willing to buy new
The risk of a bad power supply isn't that the power supply might die. It's that it might take everything else in your system with it. Ultra's warranty doesn't cover everything that the power supply destroys, and if it does fry your system, do really want to collect on warranty service and see if an identical model does the same to your next system?
Maybe it will work just fine. But it's an unnecessary risk.
Windows 8 on my brand new laptop... runs everything perfectly fine. Anything that claims to not support Windows 8, can be run in Windows 7 mode...
Anyone mention to the OP that a quality video card is going to run him 1/3rd his budget?
I noticed someone posted a long part list and left out the video card which is in the top 2-3 most important items of a gaming rig lol...