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3,000 limit on a new prebuilt system, begging for recommendations!

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I hate asking what you'd get for (X) amount of dollars, has to be the oldest most stale topic ever... but I have to. I've got a limit of 3k, need to include a monitor and preferably a keyboad and mouse in there and will be used for gaming. Speakers not at all essential I use a headset. Blu-Ray player and insane Audio not essential. I would love to build my own pc, however I know not a soul that can help me. I'm in the military and sadly there is a dirth of nerds like me in my career field (I'm a cop). I'm buying a new PC when I get home from Bagram in mid-april, the good thing about deploying is you save a lot of money. I am setting myself a limit of 3k, and here's what I'd really like the PC to be capable of... 1. Play SC2 on max settings against multiple opponents online with a great framerate and no lag... 2. Play Crysis on highest settings with good framerate.... 3. Play Modern Warfare 2 or Black Ops on max settings with no issues online. 4. Be able to play games a year or two from now on max settings hopefully.

I am dying for a computer that can handle demanding games because I have never had one. I spent 1500 on a Dell XPS back like 6 years ago and that was the best desk top I had... It could handle Counter-Strike Source and Half-Life 2 on decent settings pretty good... but It couldn't handle games like Oblivion very well. It had a GeForce 6800 256mb so what did I expect but I don't know crap about upgrading things myself. I've researched endlessly online about building your own PC problem is I don't know anyone that can help me not screw up installing an OS on to my system and navigating BIOS which I have never touched. Additionally I have no f'ing idea if I should get 2 GPUs in crossfire or sli setup or just one really banging GPU. A lot of what I've read on this site seems like it would be better to get a single GPU thats really good vs two that are a step down.... No matter how much research I have done I still feel clueless.

Here's what I have been considering but I know odds are I'd be 100% making a mistake and I'm praying you guys will help me...

Maingear F131:

CASE - MAINGEAR F131 Chassis With One-Piece Aluminum Front Construction w/Acoustic Dampening
COOLING - MAINGEAR LiquidX 1750 Supercooler
POWER SUPPLY - 1000 Watt Silverstone ST-1000G 80+ Gold Certified Modular Power Supply ROHS
CPU - Intel® Core™ i7-960 3.2GHz Quad-core with Hyperthreading
MOBO - Asus® Sabertooth X58 Supporting SLI/CrossFire, USB 3.0, and SATA 6G
RAM - 12GB Patriot® Viper II (Sector 7) DDR3-1600 Enhanced Latency (3x4GB)
GPU - EVGA® GeForce™ GTX 580 Superclocked 1.5GB GDDR5 w/ PhysX (I have no idea what level superclocked means its overclocked to, they don't say, shady I know)
HDD - 64GB Crucial® RealSSD™ C300 SATA 6G (w/TRIM)
HDD 2 - 1.0TB Samsung F3 7200rpm 32MB Cache SATA
OPTICAL - 24X Dual Layer DVD RW Drive w/ LightScribe Technology
AUDIO - 7.1 Channel High Definition Surround Sound Supporting S/DIF Optical and Coax Out

Monitor - 21.5" Samsung B2230H 1920x1080 LCD Monitor

OS - Windows 7 HE

Price Tag: $2,877

Thanks to any helpful souls in advance!




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Where's home ? If it's New York area, or ya gonna be passin through on way to, I would be happy to build for you (no charge)

Item Price Component

Case - $160 - Antec DF-85 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
PSU - $150 - Antec CP-1000 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
Case Fans - $15 - Antec 120 mm Fan http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
MoBo - $260 - ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution Currently unavailable
CPU - $330 - Intel Core i5-2600K Currently unavailable
Cooler - $40 - Scythe Mugen 2 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
TIM - $5 Shin Etsu 751 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
RAM - $155 - (2 x 4GB) Mushkin CAS 7 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
GFX - $530 - EVGA GTX 580 Black Ops Edition http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
GFX - $530 - Same
HD - $65 - Spinpoint F3 1TB 7200 rpm http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
SSD - $185 - OCZ Vertex 2 3.5" 120GB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
DVD Writer - $22 - Asus 24X DRW-24B3L w/ LS http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
OS - $140 - Win 7-64 Pro OEM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
Monitor - $180 - ASUS VE247H 23.6" LED http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
Keyboard - $65 - Logitech G110 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...
Mouse - $53 - Logitech G500 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Cost $2,885

The single 580 (fastest card on market atm) would handle just about anything ya can throw at it today, maybe save the bucks and get a 2nd one come XMas, saving $530....or get twin 570's which again are more than enuff for anything ya can throw at it and save $360 on the cards + another $30 dropping down to the CP-850

The case / PSU are selected based upon climate your subject to.....inlet air filters, lots of fans, physically oversized PSU that pretty much humbled silentpcreview.com's "hot box".

Unfortunately I'm stationed ain Sumter, South Carolina and home is Arizona. Definitely appreciate the offer though lol... I'd donate a kidney to have someone show me how to build a pc without f'ing it up.

I saved your build list to my desktop, if I can read enough to figure out how to do it myself by April maybe I can lol... the idea of buying all the parts and installing them and then hitting the power button just to see a blank screen scaes the hell out of me since I'm sure most pc related products are mostly non-refundable these days and I wouldn't know how to troubleshoot myself.

What's impressive about our list is the fact that I'd gave 2 580 GPUs AND a larger Monitor for roughly the same price... I really need to lear how to build one myself. Putting in all the parts seems easy enough, it's a matter of matching up socket numbers for the cpu and mobo as far as I've read but it still intimidates me... and like I said I have no idea how to get the OS up and running.

Forgot to add I dont care at all about looks of the pc... purely about performance. Neon Ligts and windows and all that jazz aren't worth anything to me personally. I'd rather put the money in hardware.

Jack - Questionbout the cooler.. which is gonna demonstrate how ignorant I am... where does it go in the case? Obviously I know where the case fan goes but the cooler looks pretty big and I know nothing about them and their installation... :(  Oh and big question about the SSD and HDD... how do you determine where the OS is stored when you install it, and also what do people typically use the SSD for? The games they are currently running? Do you put the OS on the HDD or the SSD?
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ok: You put the OS and things that you run all the time on the SSD, load times are very, very fast on an SSD. You won;t see FPS improvements, but programs will load faster and aything that uses a lot of swap space on the hard drive will run faster as well (Usually really large photoshops, for instance)

By April, when you buy, Sandy Bridge will be back on the market, as will Zambezi, the new AMD processor which is rumored to be a match for Sandy Bridge (I saw one leaked benchmark suggesting a stock 3.5 GHz Zambezi was faster than an overclocked (4.0 GHz) 2600K. While I take one leaked benchmark with a grain of salt, it does suggest they'll be at least similar in speeds

Thanks for the info ScrewySqrl, I figured t was the case with the SD... I can't believe how much they cost for the amount of space provided but load time improvement is a much needed thing for a while in pc's. The CPU helped but not that much for the prices.

The build JackNaylorPE listed is perfect. Far better things than the Maingear rig are available at that budget..although if it were me :

1. I'd wait for AMD's new lineup to be launched.

2. I'd also consider going for an i7 2600K. There's not much price difference between the two ($100), so with the huge budget you have, why not go for the best thing ? (Oh, JackNaylor probably meant i7 2600K, I just saw the price. $330 is the price for i7 2500K, and the i5 2500K is 100 bucks cheaper)

3. I'd not worry much about inability to assemble. If you do fail, you could always hire a professional or a college student to do it for you. And nothing you do can make you ruin the components, unless you try to overclock.

4. There's a very good monitor, Dell 2410, costs ~$500. The display is top notch, but there might be lag, as IPS panel monitors like 2410 have higher response times than the cheaper TN panels. The Asus monitor is probably gonna be very good, but if you have a soft spot for high-quality displays, and if somebody can confirm that the lag times aren't significant, that's a monitor you could have a look at.
I'd recommend you to try to tear apart your existing CPU (if you have any) and try to put it back together. That's what gave me confidence, and although I haven't assembled any new rig, I know I can pull almost anything off. There's nothing much to it, really.

4. The coolers - the CPU cooler sits above the CPU on the motherboards (You have to join it properly by first applying the thermal paste, and then using the correct method, secure it firmly to the processor), and the case cooler is attached to the 'walls' of the case.

5. No need to be confused about the socket numbers and all. The motherboards that are recommended support the processor that is recommended by the same user. That's the first step in choosing the motherboard. :p 

Any other questions, feel free to ask.
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