I'm hoping to build a gaming PC in the coming months but I have never done anything like that before. I'm trying to do this on a budget, 500-700 dollars, but I have no idea how realistic that is.  I may be forced to abandon that notion if it simply cannot be done. It is my intent to get Skyrim up and running with some of these beautiful mods I've been hearing about, but I don't know how to go about assembling something from the ground up to pull it off.  So, few things.  What do I need/what do you recommend?  Where would I get those things?  What price should I expect for them?  And most importantly: what do I need to do in order to keep the PC performing well (antivirus, internet use, etc.)?

I appreciate all your feedback.  

http://techreport.com/review/23814/tr-windows-8-system-guide/2

Just switch the i3 to an i5 and the GPU to an HD 7850 if you have the cash.

Right, so assuming you have M&K&Monitor

Here are the things you need

Case
Motherboard
CPU
GPU
RAM
Storage
Maybe disc drive?
Power supply

So basically, I am not sure what the best components are for that price, but BUY FROM NEWEGG if you are in America... I don't actually live there, but everything I hear is that that is the place to buy

As for what you need, I am not sure quite what to reccomend, but to play Skyrim up and running with all the mods, you might struggle on that budget, maybe look at these

http://www.geforce.co.uk/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-670/performance

The GTX 670 is roughly $400 I think and that seems to be what you want to get Skyrim running at the maximum with all the mods

Skyrim with mods is not that taxing on the system, I have lots of post processing injetcions, shade amplifiers, texture packs and draw distance mods activated and I'm running it all fine on a HD6950 2GB.
The system req's for Skyrim is a lot lower than many contemporary titles.

Check this site out. You can customize, and compare the specs with games to suit your budget.

http://www.ibuypower.com/lobby.aspx

There's a lot of great feedback here; thanks everybody!

Will be reading through all of these links later today. Just tagging the threead because i'm at work. I'm in the same situation as the opp. I'd say my budget is 800 max. Would like to stay under 7. Interested in Skyrim and a lot of open world games (mostly single player).

Do you want an Intel or AMD processor?

Here are some things you can go cheap on:

Case
RAM (cheap as it is)
Disc drives
you can also get a small motherboard (micro ATX) instead of one that has 2 or 3 graphics lanes.

I'd say 700 is a better bet to be honest and yes you can do that. Likely it will need to be an AMD computer for that price though. AMD is good so no harm in that.

Anyone care to share their thoughts on AMD vs Intel? I'm looking at an i5-3570K and wondering if it's a bad idea to get an AMD equivalent cpu instead.