I'm just going to say, if you build a PC just to play games, then you are missing the point, since it's able to do much more than just gaming, consoles are essentially toys with limited functionalities, PCs are toolsets that are open and flexible. The cheapest way to do things is actually just to buy a good PC for 5 years and ignore consoles all together since you can do work, play games, hook it up to a big TV if you want, and have the best bluetooth options, etc, a lot of people are still stuck in the past with the PC is "teh hardz" to get to work mindset which is really not the case these days, nor is it expensive for the performance and power saving you get these days. Now, if you are strictly talking about gaming, I'd say an 800 dollar machine nowadays can last you about 4-5 years(mine is a little more than 1k,) I have over a hundred Steam games and most of them were on sale for 50-90% off, that's easily 3500-4000 dollars I've saved on games that were not very old at all(within 1-2 years), you do the math, Because I've spent the same amount of money on my PS3 and Wii, but my gaming libary is nowhere the size of my PC /shrug.
I also run a lot of VMs at once and do a lot of other shit, gaming is only a part of it.
