Cheers mate - I wrote on his wall.

Anyone got suggestions for cases and PSU's?  They are confusing me enormously.  I like simplistic above all - but I am worried about either not fitting my components, suffocating them with heat, or having a PC that sounds like a jet taking off.

GPU: Gigabyte Nvidia GTX 750ti - $189

CPU: Intel Core i5 4440 - $214

Case: Antec 300 - $82

Mobo: Asrock B85M Pro 4 - $89

PSU: Antec 520W High Current Gamer PSU Modular Extreme - $99

RAM: G Skill 8G(2x4G) DDR3 1600Mhz PC12800 RL 9-9-9-24(CL9D-8GBRL) $99

HDD: WD Black 1TB - $92

Optical: Asus DRW-24D3ST OEM SATA 24X DVD-RW Black - $20

Total = $884

All prices are from: www.umart.com.au

I would consider this a high quality, power efficient, cool running budget rig. You cannot overclock (easily) using this motherboard or CPU, however overclocking your CPU usually necessitates the purchase of an aftermarket CPU cooler ($).

The PSU is of high quality and is frankly overkill when you consider that the video card included can draw all of its power from the PCI-E slot. It's also modular (you'll thank me later). If you want to future-proof more for a beastly upgrade later on then I would recommend a Corsair HX series PSU, a full sized mobo, and a bigger case. This will of course cost you more.

Don't worry about specs too much, as long as you have a i5 Ivy Bridge or higher and a decent graphics card. I would say starting point would be 7870 or the 660, if you have the extra cash look into getting a 7950 or 670 if possible. Either way, you don't need a 780 or 290x unless you really have some cash to blow. pay good attention to motherboard and power supply though. Make sure you get at least 700W Bronze certified power supply to ensure you will have a reliable power supply that can take any upgrades you make to your PC. If you can afford modular go with that, if not don't worry about it, it's just a little more work. If you have no plans on OCing, don't waste money on the OC capable processors and coolers. Make sure you get a SLI/Crossfire capable motherboard in case you decide you want to upgrade down the road. That is all I can reccomend, really. Good luck, I'll try to post a build for you later today or maybe tomorrow :)

Edit- http://pcpartpicker.com/p/37Qnt

That's a very good set, maybe better than what you are looking for, but it should set a precedence of what it should look like. It has a 750W Bronze semi modular PSU, a 270x graphics card (which is very good, not the best card in the world but defenitiely top tier), and a crossfire/SLI capable motherboard. You can probably find similar parts for cheaper, I just threw this together while doing some college essays :P. The RAM especially is really expensive in my build, you could probably find that for cheaper somewhere (also, don't bother going over 8gb. Most games won't ever use more than 6gb, and when the do start to you can just buy another stick of ram). Good luck PC building, it can be a lot of fun your first time :D

Nice, thanks mate - I can get to the Syd office there fairly easily.

Out of interest, if you were going to go with the more expensive options which PSU mobo and case would you use?

P.s.  Did you try Supreme Commander?  Thoughts?

Mobo: Asrock Z87 Extreme4 - $179 - supports SLI for beast mode. I have the 2012 model in my rig.

Case: Corsair Obsidian 550D - $199 - Absolutely silent. Pretty much my dream case. Not the biggest, but more than roomy enough and built to perfection.

PSU: Seasonic 760XP II - $220. You just can't go wrong with Seasonic. Super efficient, super quiet and backed with a 7 year warranty. It's worth spending the extra just knowing that this PSU will outlast all your other components. As soon as the warranty expires on my Corsair PSU, I'm getting one of these.

Another great PSU is the Corsair HX 850 but I can't find it on the Umart website. 

And yeah I've tried a little Supreme Commander. Reminds me of Total Annihilation. I'm really just learning the ropes at the moments. Seems pretty great so far though.

A few sparse tips:

Considering most 8th gen consoles have 8GB RAM, we'll end up with games that will need a PC with at least 10GB to run comfortably, but the practical RAM size next to 10GB and using just a couple of modules is 16GB, that is 2x 8GB modules, so go for it.
If you dont' have space problems, avoid minitowers and desktops and choose a mid or even full tower case with a clean internal layout, you'll work on it infinitely better and you'll have better cooling too, not to mention you'll be able to reduce noise too, equipping it with large, low-rpm fans.
As full metal cases are the best for cooling, you can use some products to reduce propagation of vibrations to them, preventing them from amplifying noise too much, here you can find some ideas about the products (just to get some ideas, you can find them probably at better prices at many other online and brick and mortar shops): http://www.acousticpc.com/noise_reduction.html . In the kits I have bought last time (from another shop) there are also those plastic or rubber screws, but I preferred to use the metal ones with just plastic washers, or plain screws and those silicone gaskets, to have more robustness and to ground fans and power source through the case to prevent possible build-up of electrostatic charges, dangerous for components.
If you aren't a graphics and power whore, mid range graphics cards and CPUs offer the best value for money.
Regarding motherboards, you can get even high quality ones at very good prices: choose a full-ATX one, if the case you'll choose can house it (except the smallest ones, most can), you'll have plenty of slots and connectors.

To choose GPUs and CPUs you can also have a look at the latest Tom's Hardware hierarchy charts available, here's the March 2014 one for GPUs: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-7.html

That's mostly a US-only issue, Australia the prices aren't inflated, in-fact at one point the 290X were 50% cheaper than the USA.

Use Staticice.
http://www.staticice.com.au/

My suggestion however is that, despite how attractive MSY's prices are, avoid them like the plague, I swear their "Support staff" is run by babboons, they're on the best of days incompetent when it comes to warranty's and support.

PC Case Gear are highly regarded with Australian PC gamers, they have great warranty and customer service, however their 2% card charge can bite, I stick with them as I am impatient, also a bonus how most of my orders arrive within 2 days, despite me living half-way across the continent.
AusPCMarket are another quality store, no hidden charges either, everything includes freight, card charges etc'. - Can get EXTREMELY pricey when building an entire PC, but can be fantastic value for a once-off part.
They have in the past also had new GPU's available for sale before official launches. ;)

http://i.imgur.com/dCWtXZV.png



You could lower the price by reducing the Powersupply to a Corsair GS-600 or CX-600 which would shave $50 off the price, but I personally wouldn't, the HX series comes with a 7+ year warranty and as someone who has had a Corsair HX 650w and a HX 850 and 950 V1, they punch well above their weight, would handle dual Radeon 270X's and a Core i5 with ease.

You do sacrifice some things to reach this price point however, like Overclocking on the CPU, 4 sticks of Ram and Dual-GPU's.
You could switch to an AMD FX 8320+Socket AM3 Motherboard to keep within the price constraints and gain all those extras, but you loose out on CPU performance with additional power consumption.

Don't.
The great thing about the PC is that once you use all your Ram, information is then swapped to the Hard Drive/SSD.
Over the last few years I have jumped from 4Gb to 8gb, 16gb, 32gb and now have 64gb.
Not once has memory capacity ever been a limiting factor strictly for gaming. (Exception would be the move from 4gb to 8gb.)

The only time I would recommend going for 16Gb is if it's a build you intend to keep for half a decade or more as DDR3 is only going to become more expensive as production shifts over to DDR4, but the flip-side is, you should find abundant amounts of DDR3 second hand in places like Ebay.

PSU can be a little ambigious.
I would choose a Corsair HX/AX 650w PSU over a 1200W Shaw PSU.
Quality is more important than sheer wattage as the Shaw would likely spark and catch fire before even exceeding real-world 500w whilst the Corsair could hit 700w.

Regardless of how difficult it is to overclock, having the option should be included on the checklist, what you might not be comfortable doing/not knowing  today may well be an option in years time.
Plenty of gamers that I personally know have stuck with Core 2 Quad processors because, even though they might be 6-7 years old... They are more than adequate of running any game you throw at them once you overclock them, prolonging the gaming systems life.

It's not "just a number" it's the frequency that the ram operates at it's part of what determines the bandwidth.
At this present time however, DDR3 1600mhz is indeed the sweet spot, for a short time 1866mhz Ram was the sweet spot untill prices inflated.
Taking advantage of the extra speed isnt difficult either, most new motherboards support DDR3 speeds in excess of 2133mhz and if they don't, it's nothing overclocking can't fix.

There is a 3rd and 4th option.

A Hybrid drive like the Seagate Momentus.

Or an SSD cache drive like the Sandisk Readycache.