05-22-2014, 03:14 PM
SSD is mandatory, that goes without saying. I also think that the GTX 770 is the way to go. I prefer nVidia over AMD, and the support is better too. A cheap case and internal storage should only cost about $150 combined, plus an SSD which would be around $120 (assuming he's going for a basic 120GB model). Then you have a motherboard, where a decent one that will hold up to what he wants to do will be around $180 maximum. A 4th gen i5 will run him $200. A good set of 8GB 1600MHz RAM will be up to $100.
We're at $750 at this point. Now is where the GPU comes into play. The cheapest new version of a 770 is around $350. A GTX 760 is around $260, and is much better value for what you're paying. That would bring the total to $1010. You can skimp on some of the other items, but if you want true quality, I'd look for things in that price range. I'm also assuming he'd be getting a standard 2TB hard drive for storage, which is around $85. If not, you can cut that out of the price. You could find motherboards for $120 or even around $100, but you'd be missing some features/quality in those. The RAM could be found for about $70-$80, which isn't really a big deal. The only surefire prices are the SSD and the CPU, those won't change. It's up to how much he wants to spend (obviously).
Here's a great site that I use, you can check prices and performance of different GPUs and CPUs. There's even a "Best Value" chart, which I use a lot to give recommendations to people. It's made up of tons of people's real life benchmarks, so it gives realistic results. Hope I helped a tad.
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/
We're at $750 at this point. Now is where the GPU comes into play. The cheapest new version of a 770 is around $350. A GTX 760 is around $260, and is much better value for what you're paying. That would bring the total to $1010. You can skimp on some of the other items, but if you want true quality, I'd look for things in that price range. I'm also assuming he'd be getting a standard 2TB hard drive for storage, which is around $85. If not, you can cut that out of the price. You could find motherboards for $120 or even around $100, but you'd be missing some features/quality in those. The RAM could be found for about $70-$80, which isn't really a big deal. The only surefire prices are the SSD and the CPU, those won't change. It's up to how much he wants to spend (obviously).
Here's a great site that I use, you can check prices and performance of different GPUs and CPUs. There's even a "Best Value" chart, which I use a lot to give recommendations to people. It's made up of tons of people's real life benchmarks, so it gives realistic results. Hope I helped a tad.
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/