$1000 Fresh Build - opinions?

Picture is broken. Don't know.. what

Everything looks alright, but if I were you, I would just rip off win 7.

With the money saved, I would get a 7850 as it's only $165 right now I believe, or get a 7970, as your build is $1000.

GPU is pretty much fine as it is. it'll do well in most MMORPGs at medium, if not the highest settings.

CPU is as good as it's gonna get for gaming, if she's not into overclocking. the i5-3450 isn't so bad either, especially if it's relatively cheap at where you're buying. she really won't need an i7. by the time she does, she'll be better off buying a new CPU+motherboard.

speaking of which, you could go for a cheaper H77/B75 motherboard seeing as you're getting a non-OCable i5 if you wanna save up on cash;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

she could get by with a 550W PSU with the current build, and that's considering she'll add a moderate amount of modifications over your build, but i guess better safe than sorry. she might want to upgrade the GPU later.

-- As great as the ripped copies of Windows 7 come.
It's more so peace of mind for me knowing it's legitimate, god forbid something goes wrong.
-- Comparisons between GTX550ti and Radeon 7850 in price/performance?

-- The motherboard chosen is a Z77 chipset, would the little extra cost not be worth it coming up from a H77 or B75?

-- As far as a 620w goes. I'm very comfortable with the little extra cost in order to prepare for next gen's GPUs...

GPU - your picture shows me a 650 ti. was it supposed to be a 550ti? nevertheless, the 7850 will perform a whole lot better against the 650ti, and is worth the money if you can spend on it. otherwise the 650ti is fine;




(note that the 650ti should perform somewhere between a 7770 and a 6870.)


motherboard - Z77 shines best when you pair it with an overclockable CPU, like the i5-3570k or the i5-2500K, and is definitely worth the money then. otherwise, if it's relatively cheaper, an H77 or a B75 board will suffice, with very little to no performance drop. only reason to grab an Z77 is if there's a feature there you like about it not present in the cheaper boards i.e; thunderbolt, 8x/8x crossfire/SLI support, more USB3.0's, etc. or when that's the cheapest ivy bridge motherboard available. note that you also more or less sacrifice build quality, though in some cases. customer reviews help if you're scared about it.

while still on the subject of motherboards, once you have decide what to get, make sure you double check with the manufacturer's website on RAM and CPU compatibility, just to be sure. in the worst case scenario, the latter is fixable with a BIOS update, though you may require a compatible CPU to do so. the former may require you to replace with a compatible RAM

Where are you buying these exactly...?

- RAM and PSU look overpriced.
- Motherboard is... okay; but that case is wasted on a microATX board.
- SSD isn't worth it IMO. More or less half of that capacity would go to the OS alone, not to mention it looks overpriced for a 60gb unit.
- GPU is arguably not that great for the whole budget as well.
- CPU... the 3570 - It's either the 'K' version or not. If you're getting a locked CPU, then get the 3450 or 3470. A 0.2GHz loss isn't even noticeable in real life play.

I buy all of my items from PCCaseGear,
I've known one of the employees there since my Vanilla WoW days, so he's always been able to take care of everything for me.

Even if it is over-priced a little bit - from my personal experience the customer service is worth it  

Okay, the prices kinda make sense now.
I'd like to point out your original build actually tallied up to $1083.

Here's a more sensible build with a much much more powerful GPU with great overclocking capability(though you won't have to, at least not for a long while).

Intel Core i5 3470 $189.00
http://pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&...

ASRock H77-PRO4-MVP Motherboard $97.00
http://pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&...

Corsair Vengeance CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 $46.00
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_i...

Gigabyte Radeon HD7870 2GB Overclocked $255
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_i...

Plextor PX-128M5S 128GB SSD $95.00
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_i...

Antec VP550P 550W Power Supply $65.00
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_i...

NZXT Phantom 410 Mid Tower Case Black $129.00
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_i...

Acer S220HQLBD 21.5in Widescreen LED Monitor $124.00
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_i...

Samsung SH-224BB/BEBS SATA DVDRW Drive OEM $19.00
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_i...

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit with SP1 OEM $95.00
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_i...

Total: $1114

Only $31 more than your original build.
Now if you'd like to stay below $1100, you can opt to get the cheaper 7850 instead. Even that's more powerful than the 650 Ti.
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_i...

Thanks so much your all of your help.

I did end up swapping the Z77 mobo for the ASRock h77.
And replaced the GTX550ti with the Radeon 7870.

For now I think the 60g SSD will be more than enough for just Windows and LoL.

THanks again, appreciate everything!!!

For both just OS and LoL, it would be okay.
But you'll find in the future it's too small. You realize it's not actually a 60gb usable unit right?  

And even then, Intel 330 isn't really that great.