Now you're picking at straws.

To be fair, that build wouldn't necessarily be on par to the PS4, and maybe the XOne. You'd need to up the CPU to an i3 at least, and the GPU to be a 270x to compare to the PS4. It would add another $80 or so to the build. This would then give the PS4 value as it has had since launch. As far as building the PC, I'd imgaine those buying the parts should be comfortable building it.

As some have already said, the savings come from the games. I assume most of the PC sales come from Steam sales, which means huge savings compared to console games even when they go on sale. Personally, I prefer console because I tend to enjoy the exclusives more than say the average multiplat.

I really don't know.  I guess it's easier to say I don't want to because of the cost than admitting you don't know how to do it and prefer the convience choice instead.

To me consoles are just a poorman's gaming system, unless it does something unique like the Wii U or a handheld. The only reason why I ever got a PS3/4 was to play exclusives. If you are a working adult that games then there is no reason not to own a nice gaming PC since you can play at higher resolutions/frame rates/graphic fidelity

another big disadvantage - or should i say characteristic - of the PC, are the plenty o' buginfested and less refined games its buggin the hell out of me.

no one can tell me differently. i ve neen playing on PC for some time now (16 years) and its a huge difference. i never had this much trouble on any console.

Outside of not wanting to? I don't like gaming that much on my PC...is that reason enough? I like my entertainment set up and don't feel the need to go sit in front of my computer that is an entirely different room and play. Or sit on my laptop and do it. I would rather sit on my couch or lay in my bed and play on my con sole of choise......that sounds like more than enough reason to me....As a working adult that games I disagree with your post lol.

I agree with you that this gen is less high gen then other games, and yes that does mean you don't have to spend as much on a PC to get a ''next gen'' console like experience. But that's not all, progress in PC power has just slowed down a lot in recent years. Especially price-performance wise.

Let me give an example: I still have a AMD HD5850 1gb in my PC. That card launched 6 years ago in 2009, and cost about € 230. It was the most popular card back then.

Right now the most popular card in that price range is probably the Nvidia GTX 960 2GB. That card is just about twice as fast as the HD5850, and it has twice the memory etc. So about a doubling in price/performance in 6 years.

Now if i look back to 6 years before the HD5850 in 2003, i owned a Radeon 9700 128mb AGP. Know that card cost about € 300 euro's. Comparing that to an HD5850 it is probably about 20 times faster than that 9700, and it packs almost ten times the memory. And it's actually cheaper to.

As you can see there has been a huge slow down in progress. And looking at consoles allthough PS4 uses a mid-end gpu from well over three years ago, a current € 200 9600 GTX is barely any faster. Again compare that to an HD5850 witch released three years after the PS3(a console with higher end specs), the HD5850 runs circles around the PS3's 7800/7900 gpu and has twice as much video memory as an entire PS3 system(at 5 times the speed).

Which of those is a lie?

I agree with you absolutely, you can clearly see the effect of diminishing returns. Though the difference in power between this gen and last gen is pretty big. That's why i am glad they didn't go overboard with more expensive hardware. Let's say Sony hade gone for a GTX 680, that's like twice as fast as PS4 i think? At most probably You would not have seen much difference(there is notable difference between PS4 and XBone either). So if that would have made PS4 cost € 500 it would not have been worth it. Not to mention it would have heated up like a toaster.

I have my doubts where high-end PC gaming will go from here. 4K VR gaming could be a pretty big leap, but with the current progression in calculating power it will be a long time before that becomes playable. Let alone affordable. Other than that i don't see it.

So indeed no surprise you are seeing affordable PC rigs pop up more and more, not much use shelling out more cash.

Have to say pretty cool reading over the OP on this experience, hear it over and over again from people who do the custom PC build route to cheap HD gaming (work in IT support, so their mistakes pay my rent)

There is some great guides out there on places like Toms hardware http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/motherboard-selection-guide,3900.html which can help you get started and explain a few of the issues you run into (like what socket numbers mean or various ram types) but the easiest and most common way of getting it all up and running is just to do what you did, buy some parts and then see what's missing and build your rig from there. Then at the end of the day you've both built your own PC and hopefully learned a few bits along the way which you can put into doing it the next time or knowing how to replace individual pieces to upgrade what you bought.

At least it didn't end in complete disaster, I've seen it all from damaged sticks of ram being broken to fit into slots to some real horror shows with CPU/Thermal paste.... one person put the Paste into the socket and then pressed the CPU down into it, was a PGA or Pin Grid Array too (the one with 700+ holes) so each of those with thermal paste pressed down into them as he mashed the CPU down onto the paste, was pretty hard not to laugh cos I felt so bad for the person who done that, wish I had taken a picture but I was trying to make the person feel a bit better at the time.

But yeah cool to read your journey to being a PC builder, hope it didn't put you off doing it again in the future.