New and first time budget gaming build. Need advice.

[Waitforit]

Hello guys, I'm preparing really early for my PC build. And I need your opinion on how well my PC would perform in terms of gaming and maybe tell me if I could get some better parts for the price I have in my wallet. The main reason I'm preparing now is because prices don't go down very often in our country (Philippines) and shops have new components every two weeks, and these new components are too expensive for my budget. And prices are different here, some more expensive and some are cheaper.

Let's assume that: $1 = Php 42
My budget: $600 = Php 25200

Approximate Purchase Date: On December 2012

Budget Range: $600. But if you suggest another build, let's just make it $550 to be sure.

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming, surfing the internet, watching movies. And yeah, I DON'T do video editing.

Are you buying a monitor: No

Parts to Upgrade: None

Do you need to buy OS: No. Because maybe I can get a Win7 as a freebie from the store here.

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: For your convenience, you can use Newegg.com when you suggest parts.

Location: Philippines

Parts Preferences: Any will do. My main concern is on the CPU.

Overclocking: No if Intel (too expensive) Maybe if a budget AMD processor would be a good for the next 1-2 years (Phenom II x4 965 BE is on my mind right now)

SLI or Crossfire: No

Your Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080



Here are the parts I'm considering to buy (prices are from my local store and converted to USD):

CPU: Intel Core i3-3220 = $130
GPU: ASUS HD7770-DC-1GD5-V2 Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 = $147
MOBO: Asus P8H77-M LE I can't find it in Newegg, the link is from Asus' website. = $110
RAM: Just a Corsair Vengeance 8GB CL9 @ 1600 = $49
PSU: An old one, it's the Corsair VX550w. I'm surprised the shop here still advertise that they still have those on stock. = $63
Case: NZXT Gamma = $42
HDD: Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GB = $68

Total: $609

I am confident that my build is really nice. And I expect It to serve me for a max of 2 years. But I'm open for any suggestion coming from you guys

Additional Comments: Can I run BF3, Crysis 1 and 2, Skyrim on a mix of Med-High settings with my processor and GPU with the resolution of my monitor?

And also, in terms of gaming, how would I expect my processor and video card to play games in the next 1-2 years w/o making upgrades? Should I still be playing games on 2014 this PC, even on the lowest settings possible?

My main concern is how would this PC last, because I'm saving my money for me to build a really, really good PC with the Haswell/Broadwell processor from Intel in the future. And I just really wanna play those new games out there in single-player, because the multiplayers that I play are not much demanding, so I think it would run it just fine.

Just tell me what you think about my build, or changes I should make. I'd be happy to know.

 

[santaclaws]

Go to PCHub, I bought my parts there

An i3 provided you have a decent graphics card to begin with should be fine for most of today's games.

 

[Waitforit]

I know an i3 would be a great choice today. But I think after a year or two, this processor will not handle the games that are going to be released at that time.

 

[geofelt]

I think your build is a very good one.

The i3-3220 is a strong cpu for gaming. Very few games use more than 2 cores, and game developers want the largest possible audience for their products. They will not develop games that need 4 cores if thy can help it.

If you can manage a stronger graphics card, that would be even better. The graphics card is the real driver of a gaming pc.
Since the market is so competitive, you may well see better price performance by December.

I see no reason why you could not use a H61 based motherboard that will be less expensive. Here is a link to the differences between H61 and H77: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1155

A small savings might be possible with different ram.
Fancy heat spreaders are not much use to 1.5v ram, and faster ram is nor that useful. Worth perhaps 1fps.
Read this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4503/sandy-bridge-memory-scaling-choosing-the-best-ddr3
Something like this would work well: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231422

I like the case, and psu. The psu will support a 28nm graphics card as good as a GTX680

If you do not need to store lots of big filles, consider a SSD instead of a hard drive. SSD prices are dropping and now are <$1 per gb. A 120gb SSD will hold the os and half a dozen games. You can always add a hard drive later.
I would look to Intel 330 or Samsung 830 first for quality.

Do you need to add a DVD drive?

 

[Waitforit]

@geofelt

Okay, so I would stick with the i3-3220. And yeah, I'm also considering the 7850 2gb to get better performance, would my CPU allow me to use the full potential of this GPU? SSDs are one of my option, I'm still thinking about that. One thing I like about the H77 board is that it supports PCI E 3.0 Which I also read that it improves performance of the GPU. About the RAM? I think I'd stick to that, because in my place the difference of those Value Series are very close to what I'm planning to buy. I don't need to buy the DVD drive, because I can just get it for free from my friends. )

 

[geofelt]

@geofelt

Okay, so I would stick with the i3-3220. And yeah, I'm also considering the 7850 2gb to get better performance, would my CPU allow me to use the full potential of this GPU? SSDs are one of my option, I'm still thinking about that. One thing I like about the H77 board is that it supports PCI E 3.0 Which I also read that it improves performance of the GPU. About the RAM? I think I'd stick to that, because in my place the difference of those Value Series are very close to what I'm planning to buy. I don't need to buy the DVD drive, because I can just get it for free from my friends. )

To address your questions:
Here is a set of gaming tests using a 7970. The i3-2100 shows up very well, and the i3-3220 is even stronger:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-fx-pentium-apu-benchmark,3120-10.html

I love the SSD's. They make everything you do seem so much quicker. Not a big help for gaming, but windows maintenance and everything else is much quicker. A 120gb ssd will hold the os and half a dozen games. With a 180gb ssd, you may not need a separate hard drive at all.

Current top end graphics cards do not push the limits of pcie 2.0, let alone 3.0. It is a non issue as far as graphics performance goes. Here is one article on that: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/07/18/pci_express_20_vs_30_gpu_gaming_performance_review/1

Agreed, ram is cheap, and the difference in price is minimal.
No game will use more than 2-3gb by itself. 8gb is the sweet spot.