@gussrtk
Aeacus is not uptight his points are valid:
-OP did not state how much he can go over by. MIRs are a hassle, and unless OP explicitly states that MIRs are allowed, I would not bother.
(also @vapour)
-7th gen intel is ONLY a gen behind. Literally no point in arguing about "Oh, 7th gen is old since 8th gen came out". The performance difference is neglible, only core count, and most games don't use more than a few cores. On top of that, Everything is hit by meltdown/spectre either way. Even if most of the performance difference will lie in syscall operations(virtualization), both get that small penalty in general usage.There's nothing wrong with staying one gen old. If a Haswell Chip was suggested, that's another story.
-A gen old i5 is VASTLY better than the r3. Making the r3 a low aim is fine, but I would think you put too much faith in single generation gaps to call a i5-7400 a low shot.
@OP
-My suggestion would be a Ryzen 5 based build, but I would wait out for Zen two, which launches in a month or two. As stated above, the performance increase should be atleast 10%, due to AMD fine tuning how Memory works with the CPU. Ryzen loves fast RAM, Ryzen 2 will allow for much faster RAM that is actually stable.
Back to the actual Original Question:
-I assume you are in the U.S, since you used the $.
-You have not yet made any mention of your hard budget cap(with MIR, no MIR)
-No statement of whether you need a copy of Windows, a mouse, a keyboard, or a monitor. All of these vastly impact the build you get.
-16 gigs of RAM isn't needed for more than gaming. I don't think you need 16 unless you plan on more than just general gaming. This was not stated, so I went with 8 gigs.
PCPartPicker part list:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/8Pbz8K
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/8Pbz8K/by_merchant/
CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1400 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($154.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350M Pro4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($74.49 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: *Team - Vulcan 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($102.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($46.69 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: *Gigabyte - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB G1 Gaming Video Card ($336.17 @ PCM)
Case: Fractal Design - Focus G Mini (Black) MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($54.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - G 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($66.59 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $836.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-01-15 00:10 EST-0500
This build falls under 850, has no MIR, and provides upgradeablility. Add a SSD or more RAM later on.