New $800-$850 Quiet Gaming PC for son

wolflord86

Honorable
Apr 21, 2013
3
0
10,510
Apprx Purchase Date: ASAP
Budget Range: $800 to $850 USD after rebates
System Usage: Gaming
Parts NOT required: keyboard/mouse, OS (have new copies of Win7 and Win8 to use), Speakers, Monitor
Country: USA (Seattle WA area)
Parts Preferences: Case lighting, blue LED lights that are "cool"
Overclocking: Not needed
SLI/Crossfire: Not needed
Monitor Resolution: not sure but perhaps 1920 x 1080 etc
Addtl Comments: Would like to have this be a quieter PC but doesn't need to go overboard to get to zero noise, would like the case to have a window or something similar as this is for 11-year old son who wants the case to be "cool looking", loves the blue LED effects, at the moment primary use is for MMORPG gaming like Guild Wars 2 / LOTRO (as well as Minecraft of course), but I may use it sometimes for latest FPS games
Doesn't need to be $300 GPU but would be nice for gradual upgrades down the road as he matures into wider variety of games a few years from now
 
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3470 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($188.79 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock H77 Pro4/MVP ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($82.55 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($55.25 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($58.98 @ Outlet PC)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB Video Card ($204.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master HAF 912 ATX Mid Tower Case ($55.99 @ NCIX US)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 600W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.98 @ Outlet PC)
Total: $791.52
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-04-21 16:17 EDT-0400)

case comes with some fans, if it is not enough light, buy additonal separate led case fan :) enjoy
 

wolflord86

Honorable
Apr 21, 2013
3
0
10,510


Since I don't need to buy the OS ($90) in this budget, would it be worthwhile to upgrade / add an SSD into this?
 


Yes.
 

wolflord86

Honorable
Apr 21, 2013
3
0
10,510


Any suggestions on how to split the workload between the HD and SSD (OS on SSD, etc)? How large of an SSD to aim for based on that?