Cases that include power supplies are my first choice when building on a budget. For instance, Antec's NSK 4480B comes with the company's high-efficiency EarthWatts 380, giving us a solid PSU and a 0.8 mm-thick steel chassis for only $100. But I wasn’t confident that a 380 W power supply would be enough in thise situation.
Case: Rosewill Redbone U3
Slightly thinner (and consequently more prone to flex) than Antec’s solution, Rosewill’s Redbone U3 saves us a bit of cash that we plan to spend on a beefier power supply. And, unlike competitively-priced solutions, the U3’s front-panel USB 3.0 connectors give me the I/O I've been requiring from all case review submissions lately.

Read Customer Reviews of Rosewill's Redbone U3
With three included fans, the Redbone U3 also offers potential cooling advantages over its competition. That makes us feel a little better, particularly in light of the CPU and GPU cooling limitations we're facing at the $1,000 price point (remember, I'm used to competing with two grand, at least).
Power Supply: Antec Neo Eco 520C 520 W
An 85% efficiency rating qualifies Antec’s Neo Eco for an 80 PLUS Bronze certification, though the company doesn’t apply the Bronze award to this part. It still gives us the added wattage we need to satisfy our maximum theoretical load requirements.

Read Customer Reviews of Antec's Neo Eco 520C
According to 80 PLUS, it takes around 630 W of draw from the wall to generate this unit's 520 W output rating, due to energy lost as heat during conversion. That’s really important to remember, since input power is also used in our efficiency calculations.
CPU Cooling: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus

Read Customer Reviews of Cooler Master's Hyper 212 Plus
Cooler Master’s familiar Hyper 212 Plus doesn't necessarily qualify as a high-end performer, but instead provides adequate cooling performance at a great price. Its capabilities make it a great match to a moderately-efficient CPU like the Ivy Bridge-based Core i5 in today’s build.
- Can $1,000 Buy A High-End PC?
- Graphics, CPU, And Motherboard
- DRAM, Storage, And Optical Drive
- Case, Power, And CPU Cooling
- Hardware Installation
- Overclocking
- Test Settings And Benchmarks
- Results: 3DMark And PCMark
- Results: SiSoftware Sandra
- Results: Battlefield 3 And F1 2012
- Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim And StarCraft II
- Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Results: Adobe Creative Suite
- Results: Productivity
- Results: File Compression
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Could We Have A Value Winner At $1,000?
Now instead of insults I can tell people "Don't be a stoogie". Thanks!
Otherwise, not much wriggle room here. Nice build!
Using the drive performance measurement to reflect program load times means loading all the programs on the SSD. And that explains why SSD capacity wasn't sacrificed to make more room in the budget for an HDD.
Looking from another perspective, these two builds, with two different builders, with $200 difference, just show(again) how much better price/performance wise are Intel CPU's and AMD GPU's.
I see your point, but I'd rather see slower game loads and better FPS , than faster game loads and lower FPS. And, the OS is accelerated in both cases anyway.
But hey, I'm on board with the 7870 Myst Edition CrossFire suggestion...I'll see if we can make it happen!
I think theres something to be said about the value at above $1000 though.. past this price range, people really start caring about having a nice case, nice cooler, etc that are more than just performance but aesthetics too.
Most likely they'd end up with a similar ugly case that no one would really want, possibly the same memory and hard disk, but the heart of the system would always be different.
Besides, people love rivalries. Sure, AMD processors blow in absolute performance, but they're cheap, and maybe the video card can save the day against the evil Intel/NVIDIA empires. It's a lot more interesting than testing two essentially identical machines, except for the hard disk.
Do it for different price ranges, and it might even be more competitive. $500, $750, and $1000 might not all have the same winner.
Pair a AMD CPU with a Nvidia GPU. So its expensive and may not perform as well.
(I will be extremely happy if this build performs well)