evil smile, post: 70030, member: 1896 Wrote:you gotta spend around 200 on a monitor and around 50 on peripherals.

Thanks for the input! I won't be buying a new monitor and peripherals. I have a widescreen LCD I got for free, a razer Tron mouse which I like and I don't really care about the type of keyboard I use haha. I would be willing to go up another $100 for a significant boost in power!

Fuzzy Izzie, post: 70034, member: 9457 Wrote:Building a gaming PC in that price range is more than doable, and the system evil smile recommend would handle Skyrim in high settings without a glitch.
Two questions:
1. Do you already have any parts you can work with? Like an older computer with a useable case, HDD, PSU, keyboard, mouse, screen, etc.?
2. Besides Skyrim and CSS, what else might you use this computer for?

1. Same as above! I won't be ripping any older parts because my current computer is a laptop: 13" Dell Studio XPS 13
2. High definition porn? Hahaha kidding. I'll probably be using it for internet surfing, schoolwork (not heavy rendering stuff); my main concern is that I want to be building something that won't get completely outdated with the next wave of PC games. I'll also want to play it on CS GO, but if it handles Skyrim, I'm sure it'll handle GO.

DK, post: 70091, member: 3039 Wrote:What do you already have? Like, monitor, PSU, GPU, etc..? or is it a laptop?

WITHOUT HDD or SDD. Total = $648.93*

Same as above! I won't have any internal parts I can rip off, but I have peripherals. Which would be better for gaming? An SSD or HDD?

There are so many processors / gfx cards out there, is there some sort of easy to see ranking chart of current models out there?

Thanks for the input so far guys! Sorry if I have a lot of stupid questions, I'm trying to learn about building too through this process and want to make sure I understand why I'm choosing each part