Here are the parts for our $600 powerhouse
The case: NZXT Tempest 210 -
The NZXT Tempest 210 is a roomy mid-sized case that, thanks to its steel body, is both lightweight and should last you longer than just this build. It's large enough to accommodate all but the largest components, and roomy enough to move your hands around inside without too much of a squeeze. The case is loaded with grips to easily remove drive bays inside without a screwdriver, slots to route your cables through cleanly, extra fan grills for superior airflow and cooling, it's just a nicely designed case. You also get a pair of 120mm fans for your money, an enlarged CPU cut-out to accommodate after-market cooling, and front-side audio and USB ports (including a front-side USB 3.0 port) are a nice bonus in this budget case. Plus, our own Whitson Gordon swears by NZXT cases, both for their interior space and how easy it is to install and remove components from them.P
The power supply:
Corsair Builder Series CX430 430W Power Supply - Most PC builders, especially starting off, tend to completely overestimate how much power their components will actually need. This 430-watt power supply from Corsair should be enough for our components (which will draw around 350W, leaving room for more power draw under load), and Corsair is a trusted name. Pay attention to warranties and return policies as well, but try to make sure you're getting the right amount of juice for the system you're building. If you have a few more dollars, step up to this 500W model for a few more bucks. There are some great calculators on the web that will help you determine how big your power supply should really be, like the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator.P
The CPU:
AMD FX-6300 Six-Core 3.5GHz AM3+ Processor - We're flipping the script this time around and going with one of AMD's Vishera CPUs. We struggled with this decision a ton, as we usually do, but here's the clincher—if you're building a solid, multipurpose PC, the FX-6300 offers a solid multi-core system that performs well whether your goal for this build is PC gaming or general, more multipurpose use, which makes the system more applicable to people who could use the extra cores and may not necessarily be gaming. We honestly could have gone either way on this. This Intel Haswell Core i3-4330 is a bit more expensive, but offers more power per-core than the FX-6300, while the FX-6300 packs more cores. If you're a gamer, read up on the titles you play and see how they benchmark. We're not about to settle this debate here—frankly, if you want to go Intel, do it. It's a stellar buy and you won't regret it. This thread over at the buildapc subreddit and this thread at Tom's Hardware both run down the pros and cons of each, and there's plenty of opinion to go around. These benchmarks from AnandTech shows the FX-6300 offers some performance gains over the last i3 we had in this build, although the Haswell i3-4330 isn't included there for comparison. Choose what suits you best.P
The motherboard:
ASUS M5A97 R2.0 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Motherboard - This motherboard offers great power management and a stellar feature list for the price. It packs 4 dual channel memory slots, six SATA II ports, six USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, 8-channel audio on-board, and gigabit Ethernet. There's no on-board video (but that's okay), but it does include overclocking features if you want to make use of that FX-6300's overclocking capabilities. We didn't design this build with overclocking in mind, but the door is open to you if you're interested. Best of all though, if you do decide to upgrade this system beyond its current capabilities, this motherboard will give you the room to add an SSD, more memory, a beefier graphics card, or whatever else you'd like. Want an alternative? A few more bucks more gets you the Gigabyte AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gbps USB 3.0 ATX Motherboard (GA-970A-UD3P), an equally feature-packed board. If you're going Intel, like we mentioned you could in the previous section, swap this out for the similarly-priced, similarly feature-packed ASRock Z87 PRO3, which is overclocking friendly and gives you room to grow, even if the i3-4330 we mentioned is locked and not overclocking friendly at all.P
The memory:
G.SKILL 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1600 RAM - RAM prices are still higher than we would like to see, so we're keeping our $600 at 4GB right now. This is a solid 4GB kit from one of our favorite memory manufacturers, and it fits into our budget. Our board is dual-channel, so we want to make sure we take advantage of it, and we've already explained why we're starting with 4GB. If you have more to spend, replace this kit with the more expensive Corsair Vengeance 8 GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) 240-Pin Memory Kit and get a solid 8GB in there. It would put us over our budget, but it's a worthy upgrade, and the board can support up to 32GB total.P
The storage: Western Digital 7200RPM 1TB Hard Drive -
Hard drive prices have stabilized a bit, and if you catch a sale, you can do well enough to pick up an SSD for your mid-range system along with a standard spinning, high-capacity hard drive. This $65 1TB model is speedy at 7200RPM, sports a 64MB cache, and is affordable enough that we decided to use it again in our $600 build below. If you have a different brand allegiance when it comes to drives, try this similar Seagate 1TB model. Whichever you choose, make sure you make note of the warranty, and, of course, keep your data backed up. Every hard drive fails, it's just a matter of when.P
The graphics card:
AMD Radeon R9 270 2GB Video Card/NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 2GB -
Either of these cards will be more than enough to power 1080p gaming without much hassle. The R9 270 is one of this generation's best bang-for-the-buck graphics cards, and the GTX 660 is a killer card that's on par with the R9 270 (Thanks to Sangeet for suggesting it over the 650 Ti Boost we had earlier!) Either one is a great pick, and if your favorite titles are games like Crysis, Skyrim, Remember Me, Saint's Row: IV, Call of Duty: Ghosts, or any of this generation's other graphically challenging games, you'll be able to turn up the settings without dropping so many frames it makes the game horrible to play. If gaming isn't your goal at all, and instead you prefer watching HD video on large displays, you won't have a problem here either. P