I'm a PC guy at heart and have owned gaming PCs since 1995 but I've been stuck with the PS3 in the past 3 years out of convenience since I think PC gaming honestly is very complex and it takes tons of time and energy to maintain your computer to be up to date and make the games work properly, you are constantly in battle against patches, drivers, viruses, bugs and crashes to desktop etc.

Anyway, I plan to get heavily into PC gaming again very soon (mostly because next gen graphics aka PS4Bone are a dissappointment and because CGI Quality and Zarx and others have promoted PC gaming so well on these forums).

Now I wander, what parts should I buy? What general ecommendations do you have?

I'm leaning towards a Radeon R9 290 together with an AMD FX CPU, possibly the FX-8350 at around 170 Euros. I do not know which CPU would be optimal though. I do not plan to play with multiple GPUs or multiple moniters and 1080p is my prefered resolution (am I right in that most cheap 2560x1440 moniters have slow latency?)

I wanna avoid Intel as much as possible because I'm an AMD fanboy. I've only owned AMD/ATi products since 2003. Nothing Intel, nothing Nvidia.

How much RAM is the way to go? I do not plan to overclock.

Should I buy an SSD drive to run Windows on? A few years ago I remember that read speeds and stuff were a problem and Intel had the best SSD drives, but today, is brand still an issue or can I just buy the cheapest one?

Should I buy Windows 7 or Windows 8?

Are there quality differences between internet routers? (in the past I had a wireless cheap router but internet to my network was very unstable).

AMD CPU is fine if you don't want PS2/GC/Wii emulation.

8gb of DDR3 is enough, it's the easier component to add more later if you need it.

SSD will greatly reduce the boot/loading times, it takes me around 10 seconds for a cold boot (I'd recommend a 120gb at least if you are going to buy one). It isn't a must have IMO, go for it if you have the spare cash.

Windows 8 is showing some performance advantages. As long as you take some time to learn how to use (or avoid) metro, it is a good OS. http://pcgameshardware.de/screenshots/original/2013/10/Battlefield_4_Windows_7_vs_8_v2-pcgh.png

What Mohasus said.

I am currently running AMD 8350, Radeon 7970GHZ, 8GB G.Skill and 120GB SSD for OS Drive and my most most important games.

Also running Windows 8 and would not go back to Windows 7 for anything.

The R9 290 is supposed to be an amazing card for the price but it's also very loud. That wouldn't bother me much but it might be important to some.

Custom R9 290s are out.

So beautiful.

well use my sign, thats a good pc, just change the cpu for an AMD solution, you are not going to regret it. and yes console graphics are simply dissapointing this time. Drives for AMD cards are not a problem today.

That is indeed very sexy.  Most reader reviews are still calling the custom models loud, though, seemingly because the card runs very hot.  They're also expensive, with $500 the lowest I see on Newegg.

With that FX-8350 CPU you should be fine, but unlike what others have said, I'd plan in advance and go with 16GB of RAM from the let go.

About the SSD, it helps immensely in making the system quicker and snappier, but judging by the size of the current games, choosing it will depend on what kind of gamer you are. If you are those that unistall its games once completed, then a 120GB or better a 240/256 GB one should be more than enough. But if you are one of those that keep installing them and forget or aren't too thrilled about uninstalling them (because then you'll have to re-install or re-download, etc.) then you are better with a 64 or 120 GB SSD for Windows and other programs and get a 1TB HDD just for the games.

And the R9 290 should serve you right for most (if not all) the console gen, so it's an excellent choice. And if you're worried about its noise and temperature and feel that you can do it, you can always try the NZXT Kraken, as long as you have room in your case.

http://www.legitreviews.com/nzxt-kraken-g10-gpu-water-cooler-review-on-an-amd-radeon-r9-290x_130344

If it can tame a 290X, it should take care the 290 without a problem.

Yeah, I'm that kind of guy. That helped a lot. The right way for me seems to be small SSD combined with a big ordinary HDD for game installs.

Watercooling sounds too expensive though. Noise isn't a huge problem since I plan to game with headphones on mostly.

In your sig it says 1800mhz RAM. But speed of RAM is still totally irrelevant unless you overclock the CPU, correct? I won't overclock.