if you want a budget pc, just buy one. when you build one, build a high end system as thats where building your own actually saves you money. Buying windows alone is$100 to $150 of your build money. you really are better off buying one prebuilt then adding graphics card and more ram

The real benefit comes from making high end systems, thats where you really save money. not so much on low end pc though. once you have one its much cheaper to upgrade then buy a whole new pc so your hdd, ram, etc can be used again, if not obsolete by the time u upgrade



as for specs i run a 6 core with 16gigs of ram and a 2 gig ddr5 graphics card. Kinda sad my 2 year old pc blows 2 as yet unreleased console away completely.

i5 3570K 4.5GHz
EVGA GTX 680 SCS2
Gigabyte Sniper M3 mobo
8 GB ram
Samsung 128 GB SSD
1 TB HDD

Win 8

All in a small form factor case.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512 MB
4 GB PC2-6400 (4 x 1 GB)
Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320 GB

That's what inside the box. Outside?

BenQ E2220HD 21.5" monitor
Logitech Classic Keyboard 200
Logitech Pilot Optical Mouse
Sennheiser PC 151 headset
1 TB Western Digital external HDD
some random 2.1 speakers

I guess that's about it. Oh wait, I'm running Windows 7 64-bit. Now that's it! And yes, I'm primarily a PC gamer despite my bad specs. I haven't played the newest games in a while, although I haven't run into any trouble just yet whenever I've wanted to play something newer (Total War: Shogun 2, for example, runs just fine).

On a single screen at 1080p...not even close.  Nvidia handles RAM usage better than AMD and where an AMD card uses 2500 MB of RAM, you will see the Nvidia one use 1500 MB.

Also I'm not one of those guys that has to run every game absolutely at max only to generate heat and use more power. 4XAA + 16XAF on a 24 inch screen is plenty for a nice image while gaming...

With that said, I do game on 3 monitors, which could become a bottleneck a year or two down the road. So I may get the 4GB models...

See sig, I have others for difference purposes scattered around the house at difference specs from laptops to desktops. Waiting for Maxwell GPUs ATM. Oh and also 15TB of network storage on 1000BASE-T speed is nice :P.

IF you're not going to max out games, why get a new two 770's? It's aslo been confirmed that maxing out textures will use more than 2gb on BF4. Also, I saw a lot of people complaining about almost using 2gb wih their 680 in 1080p, my 7950 has never been over 2gb either. 

IF you're not going to max out games, why get a new two 770's? It's aslo been confirmed that maxing out textures will use more than 2gb on BF4. Also, I saw a lot of people complaining about almost using 2gb wih their 680 in 1080p, my 7950 has never been over 2gb either. Also I'm pretty sure a few games will already be using more than 2gb ram with your set up. A lot of games this year will also use more than 2gb ram with max settings. Especially amd games. 

I've seen bf3 map packs get to about 2gb in some rare cases. BF4 is confirmed to be optimised for AMD. That means they aren't going to tone down textures for RAM. So yes, it's going to use more than 2. Crysis 3 uses 1.8 or 1.9gb on nvidia cards. 

I didn't know that the system requirements were already out for bf4. recommended doesn't ever mean maxed out though. That's the settings to run it well. Also, those requirements aren't very specific. I'm talking max textures and everything else that is heavy on RAM usage will almost certainly use more than 2gb ram. All the signs point to it, when I've seen bf3 map packs getting close to 2 gb. Crysis was also getting close to 2gb. Assuming the Bf4 will be the best looking game when it comes out (past trends say it will), it's going to use decently above 2gb on max. So back to my original point. It's a bad idea to get a 770 sli because it's barely going to utilize all that horse power with only 2 gb ram. Especially when talking about a 3 monitor setup. Also that upgrade is hardly worth it if you have two 7950's already.

i7 2600k 3Ghz
650 Ti OC 2GB
8GB 1600Mhz RAM
1Tb HDD