Advice on <$1000 upgrade-able PC

Approximate Purchase Date: within the next couple of months

Budget Range: Under $1000 including peripherals and OS

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Home, surfing, movies, usually light gaming of older titles such as King's Bounty, World of Goo, but occasional purchase of newer titles ie Skyrim, Mass Effect, Civ 5

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: newegg, any other trusted e-retailer

Country: USA

Overclocking: Maybe

SLI or Crossfire: No

Monitor Resolution: 1440x900

Additional Comments: My purpose in building this PC is mainly simplicity of build and future proofing as much as possible on a somewhat restricted budget. I am currently not doing any real modern gaming, but it is possible at some point in the future. Therefore, I am planning on going the integrated graphics route until such a time when I do need a more powerful solution, at which point I will be able to buy whatever GPU is fastest in the $150 range.

In choosing the 3570k and ASrock extreme mobo, I was thinking it may future proof me a bit as I read these allow more headroom for possible future OCing as opposed to a 3450, but I do not have OCing experience to know if this is indeed the case. But most importantly, the Intel HD 4000 of the 3570k should allow me to do some light gaming.

As far as the hard drive goes, I am planning on a single drive solution to prevent headaches of RAID. Since I may wait a couple of months before taking the plunge I put ~200+gb SSDs on my watchlist as opposed to say, a 500gb Caviar Blue. Since I do not store large files on my computers, nor many games at a time, I am figuring the 240gb SSD may be enough, and prices will continue to fall making it more of an attractive alternative to HDs.

I have a super old desktop lying around the house, with mouse and keyboard, and a clunky 4.1 speaker system. I would love to replace them all as they are old and beat up, especially the sleeker 2.0 speaker setup as money allows. My current Hanns-G 19" 1440x900 still looks crisp and will relieve the integrated graphics as well compared to a 1080p display. However, the larger displays are on watch as well, to upgrade at some later point along with a dedicated graphics card.

I have pasted what I tentatively come up with below. Suggestions and replacements are very much welcomed.


Component Product Price

Mobo ASRock Z77 Extreme6 $175
Processor Intel Core i5-3570K $240
Memory 2x4GB G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3 1600MHz $47
Graphics Integrated HD 4000 (GeForce GTX 560) $0 ($170)
Sound Integrated $0
Storage 256GB Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD2 $180
Optical Lite-On iHAS124-04 $18
Power Antec Neo Eco 520C $60
Case Cooler Master HAF 912 $60

Monitor Existing (Acer H274HLbmd 27") $0 ($280)
Speakers Creative T20 Series II 2.0 $65
Peripherals Logitech G400 + G110 $50 + $55
OS Windows 7 64 bit $100

Core System Total $780
Core System + Necessary Peripherals $1,050
Core System + Necessary Peripherals + Monitor $1,330
Core System + Necessary Peripherals + Monitor +GPU $1,500