While I love both consoles and PCs, your hardware costs for the PC are extremely flawed.

For starters, a good case, power supply, DVD drive and cooler can be re-used for 10+ years. Seasonic Power supplies have 7 year warranty, cases don't really get worse over time (you just need to dust clean them) and DVD drive is not even necessary, but very cheap. If you get a Noctua CPU cooler, they will send you new brackets for any new CPU socket for the cost of shipping forever. So every time you get a new motherboard, you can reuse your Noctua CPU cooler.

The main things you need to worry about are CPU+motherboard+memory+GPU (of those 4, the GPU is the most important).

Right now you can get 8GB DDR3 for $25-35. That's plenty for any PC game.

You compared a $700 next generation console, but I think they'll be more like $350-450. Either way, you shouldn't be comparing today's PC hardware to 2013 console. In 2013, you can just buy a $225 Core i5 Haswell on a new $150 Motherboard and 8GB DDR3. A card like HD7950 (or similar level of performance) will probably cost you $200 or less by summer 2013. Add even a $25 cooler and this system overclocked will smash PS4/Xbox 720 into the ground. The core 4 components (CPU+mobo+ram+GPU) will be about $600-610.

As I said since most of us PC gamers upgrade, we just care about these 4 core components, nothing else (and perhaps a 128GB SSD for $60 for Windows). All the other components such as case, PSU, DVD drive, mechanical drives we can reuse even if they are from 2008. Plus, we can resell our old CPU+motherboard+ram. The beauty is that ram stayed at DDR3 for the last 4 years, so we wouldn't even need to buy new DDR3 for Haswell architecture next summer. Reselling old parts, even if they net $200-300 means our new GPU + new platform will cost us $300-400 out of pocket = what a new console costs.

The next point you missed is that consoles like Xbox have Xbox Live that costs $50 a year and over 6-7 years that's easily another full CPU upgrade. I am not going to deny that if you are only now entering PC gaming, you'll have additional costs such as buying case, PSU, Windows and monitor. But if you have been gaming on a PC for a long-time, the incremental costs of upgrading are not a lot if you are smart about it. For example, a $225 Haswell i5 @ 4.7-5.0ghz will not be slower in games than a $1000 Core i7 3970X.

There are plenty of solid reasons why console gaming is better - convenience, exclusive titles, social gaming in friends with split-screen multiplayer, easy of use as not everyone knows how to build a PC, but your actual costs of PC gaming hardware are exaggerated since you picked top of the line components. You can still get better graphics than a PS4 with a solid $500-600 PC upgrade next year. And also, PCs can be easily connected to the same 50-60 inch HDTV.

Personally, I am going to get next gen consoles and still game on my PC because I just love gaming in general and wouldn't want to miss out on exclusives console games, while playing FPS, strategy and all cross-platform games on the PC.

and I say more research is needed, philosophy you listed is brute force and pure money which makes no sense for gaming when it's more about fine tuning what you are looking for. games are not CPU bound these days, so as long as you have a decent ivy bridge i5 or i7 with pcie3 support, you are already fine for the years to come. PC gaming is not about buying workstation grade hardware then hoping things will work out in 5 years, that's the method of people who don't know how it works and they are not fit for PC gaming to start with and either they learn or I would strongly urge them to stay as far as they can.

Name the game that does what I said instead of giving a blank response.

This is 100% wrong. No experienced PC gamer does this. What you describe is actually the opposite of PC enthusiast gaming philosophy -- that's what noobs or people who don't understand PC gaming do.

The difference between a Core i5 3570K $225 @ 4.5ghz and a $1000 Core i7 3970X @ 4.5ghz will be nearly non-existent in 99.9% of PC gaming titles. Using your logic, you would waste $775 on nothing. HD7950 for $280 with a 5 min overclock is faster than a $500 GTX680. Using your logic, you would waste $220 extra on GTX680 for no tangible benefit because you don't want to learn valuable money saving techniques in PC building.

http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/his_7970_iceq_xsup2_ghz_edition_7950_iceq_xsup2_boost_clock,13.html

Furthermore, if you actually cared to learn about PC gaming, you would have known that with AMD graphics cards, people can make $$ through bitcoin mining (although this is now basically dead). But that means for the last 3 generation, a lot of PC gamers in North America got their AMD GPUs for free. Why is that? Because through bitcoin mining, AMD cards make coins that can be converted to real world currency. Many of us got $800-1,500 of AMD GPUs for free using this tactic for the last 3 years. That's just 1 example of being savvy. Again, all this information is public to anyone who is a PC gamer and can be found readily on PC gaming forums. Even without this perk, one understands the importance of price/performance when building a PC. Your scenario considers a no-compromise PC. What you end up with is spending $1,500 extra to get more marginal performance that won't really change your gaming experience ($1000 i7 6-core vs. $225 i5 and $1000 GTX690 vs. $280 HD7950 for 1920x1200).....people who game at 1920x1200 aren't stupid enough to spend $1000 on a CPU and $1000 on a GPU setup.

Also, you are comparing apples to oranges. GTX690 is $1000 but that card is used for 2560x1600 or multi-monitor gaming. You realize games like Call of Duty Black Ops 2 run at 880x720 or below? Why are you comparing a PC that can play on 3x 1920x1200 monitors to next gen consoles that are barely going to give us real 1080P? 

If you read Digital Foundry's comparisons, their 400 pound PC always beats current consoles in games in both performance and image quality:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-black-ops-2-face-off

Next year, a person can just upgrade this PC with a new graphics card. Better yet, they can resell the CPU, motherboard and GPU and reinvest that savings into new parts. You keep missing 4 key parts:

1) Reselling old PC components to fund at least a part of future PC upgrades

2) Upgrading and focusing on price/performance (meaning GTX660Ti delivers 80% of the performance of a GTX680 for $250 less or getting parts that can perform as high-end products with 5 min of overclocking like HD7950 @ 1100mhz). Similar to your flawed $1000 CPU comparison as a requirement to future-proof

3) Savvy PC gamers do not future proof with expensive parts. They buy what they need and upgrade more frequently instead of wasting $ with a build you described unless they are wealthy.

4) The PC you keep describing is so much more powerful than a console, yet you assign no added value to superior graphics or performance. If you are NOT going to assign any value to superior gaming experience such a system provides, then you can easily build a PC for 1/4th the price of $3,500 and it wouldn't look any worse than a $400 next gen console. 

You have also conveniently ignored that Xbox 360 and PS3 broke, especially the former. People who always had the latest console must have paid at least $299 + $200 to replace their Xboxes are RROD out of warranty and for PS3, it was $499-599 at launch & some of those failed with YLOD. OTOH, PC components have 3 year warranty and some of them like PSUs have 7 year warranty. If you get a PS4 and it fails on you in 13 months from launch, that's going to be a $400 paperweight. If you get a new CPU, motherboard and GPU, most of those have 3 year warranties. Memory has lifetime warranty.

What a silly request. You're asking CGI to tell you what games personally gave him those feelings? What in the world would that accomplish? All you could possibly gain out of this is hearing his list, saying "oh yeah well they didn't give me those feelings," and then walking away feeling as though you've won something.

I need to upgrade my cards here pretty soon. I'm running two 5750s in Crossfire. But Crossfire has led to consistent problems with game flickering and screen tearing and honestly playing games like Crysis 2 and Metro 2033 on max settings is giving me some decent lag dips. What would be a good single card to get that would give me a large boost over this setup?

Sell those cards, and get a $280 HD7950 with 3 free games. Spend 15 min to overclock it and you got HD7970 Ghz / GTX680 beating level of performance.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202006

Here is a thread to help you max the card out:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2259333

Ya, and sell those 5750s :)

Oh must be uk thing then, games out at 29.99 instead of the console counterparts which are priced at about 37 on average, in pound sterling, even then the sales come pretty quick and at ridiculous discounts, even outside the autumn steam sale.

I think pc is. Much better option if you're really into gaming quite a lot , with so many f2p options available and broad range of gaming spectre such as Indie games, mmorpgs etc there is plenty to keep you occupied, and in quite a lot of cases, the multiplats are obviously better with higher frame rate and graphics due to less limitation on hardware. Of course upgrading is a bummer, but theoretically the components last just a long asthe console counterparts, at seemingly better results.

Fair points.

How much have you spent out of pocket over the past 10 years for your gaming PC?

An individual may have replaced their Xbox 360 if it had the RRoD, however there was a 3 year warranty for that and Microsoft also extended the standard warranty to 1 year.  So if a replaced console broke within the year, it was replaced.

There are a lot of people however that still have their original or initial replaced console. 

There is a benefit to purchasing higher end equipement, and that is very much the fact that game requirements change.   I don't disagree that you can have a good gaming PC at a lower cost, and I ever said you'll get better performance (resolution, FPS, or fidelity) from a console.  I said the games you buy on day one, as well as those you buy 10 years later will work just the same.

The specs I offered weren't as far over the top as you would like to assume.  Only the latter configuration was significantly over the top in terms of gaming needs and simply because I wanted to get my post done.  However, the two other configurations were reasonable gaming PCs and the prices were fair.  Even if we dropped the prices by $1000 each, the prices would still be significantly more than the cost of a PS2 & PS3 (Gen 7 & Gen8) or an Xbox & Xbox 360.  There is no way the P4 as configured could have met the recommended specs for Crysis.  It would have been short memory, and you ran the possibility that the in 2007 you might not have been able to find a compatible video card depending on if it was PCI, or AGP.  Not to mention, unless it was actually a workstation motherboard, you wouldn't have any hint of dual cores.  So you're pretty muched forced to upgrade the system.  Could the price have been reduced by purchasing upgrade components, such as the motherboard, memory, HDD controller, video card, etc?  Yes.  It doesn't change the fact that a Core Duo processor would have been expensive, as well as the memory, and as well as the GPU.  Worse, that time frame out, you wouldn't have gotten much at all for your P4 and or memory. 

Could you do a i5 for $500.  Sure, but you're still three PCs out.  Even if you upgrade, the amount of money you would have gotten for the previous systems memory, CPU, GPU, etc would have been a pittance. 

Please, show me the numbers that prove that PC gaming is less expensive and a better value over a 10 year period.  I beg you!  Prove me wrong, since you obviously know more than I do.  I will GLADLY capitulate to anyone who can prove to me that PC gaming is less expensive and a better value over a 10 year period.  Just do the math and show me the numbers.

TBH, 10 years is a bad comparison since the graphics department was rather lacking on consoles before the 7th gen so they were very different eco systems, I'd prolly say that it shouldn't really count until 2006 when the PS3 came out. The graphics fidelity differences were way too high before the 7th gen that they mostly didn't even have the same games, only really shitty looking ports on consoles.

My good ol' Athlon 64 x2 4400 did last me like 5 years as a gaming rig before I sent it to the shitter though, rest are all my play machines because I have money to burn, I've built like 3 different Core i5s with a lot of different parts and memory ETC then is using one as a file server, 1 as my live stream machine, and handed one to family for shits and giggles(I'm basically sponsoring my bro's gaming rig). I totally destroyed an i7-860 cause I OCed it too high, then my MSI Mobo burnt out because of it and other motherboard can't even read the CPUID on that CPU anymore LOL, that lasted about a year, was a fun toy.

My current machine is the actual one that'd last me another 5 years, I'd say the total cost is like, 2500 USD or so, but the 2 SSDs I got for 500 each at the time, which is like, 380 now I think. I don't just do gaming though, I do a lot of video and audio and 3D modeling shit on it. I'm actually in the IT field so I go above spec for a gaming machine ATM, most people don't need to spend 2500 to make a gaming machine last 5 years, this is purely for a lot of VMs really.