No life.

Excellent: $1400 Good: $950 Passable: $750

So Op how's the sex life going? Op? OP???

I actually just built my first gaming pc like a week ago. My build is as follows: -Bitfenix Prodigy Mini ITX case (small tower, only one PCI express slot for a video card, all you need really) -Intel Core i5 4670K Haswell (K means it can be overclocked but I don't see much reason to do that) -Asus Z871-Deluxe Motherboard (The only reason I got this over cheaper ones was that it has double the 4-pin fan connectors as most mini itx motherboards)(just as a note, look for a board with built in wifi, otherwise you will have to buy a card for wireless support) -EVGA GeForce GTX 760 (4GB DDR5 Ram, it will handle anything I throw at it on max settings) -EVGA 600 watt power supply (you could replace this with pretty much anything...my roomate got a corsair 600 watt...it doesn't really matter as long as you have the right connectors) -Samsung 840 Series SSD 128GB (the only thing this drive has on it is my OS)(as a note check which SSDs have good read/write speeds...Samsung is pretty good but there are others) -Western Digital Green 2TB (This is where all if my data is, applications are kept on the solid state drive though) -G-Skill 16GB Ram (1600 MHz but that is plenty)(realistically I don't need 16GB) -20 Dollar Asus Optical Drive (just a DVD-R) I also bought a big ass 230mm case fan to promote more airflow, but the whole thing stays pretty cool anyway. I'm actually surprised it took me this long to build my own PC since I have a CompSci degree but I have my MacBook Pro for literally everything but gaming so I wanted a cheap/small gaming rig that could handle high quality games. I think the whole thing was a bit over 1000 bucks. I acquired all of the parts over the period of about 3 months and bought everything through Newegg . Just wait for sales and don't worry about buying the biggest or baddest of anything. Hope this helps, building your own pc is a fun experience any techie should have.

A screwdriver, some zip ties, and google.

I'll drop the good brands here. The specific parts depend on your budget. I'm assuming you don't want a build recommendation. --Only brands I would definitely recommend-- [b]Motherboard[/b]: Asus, MSI, ASRock [b]CPU[/b]: Intel, AMD [b]GPU (Nvidia or AMD)[/b]: Asus DirectCU II, EVGA ACX (CLASSIFIED if you've got the money), MSI Lightning [b]CPU Cooler (air)[/b]: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO, Noctua NH-D14 or NH-D15 [b]RAM[/b]: G.Skill, Corsair [b]SSD[/b]: Samsung [b]HDD[/b]: Western Digital [b]PSU[/b]: Corsair, Seasonic [b]Case[/b]: Whatever the hell you want. Just make sure it has really good airflow and cable management