i'm not afraid to build. i've done it in the past. can i build something better than this for cheaper or the same price? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883103853 i realize the psu is under powered but i don't plan on upgrading the video card for atleast 2-3 years.i also will need windows so take that into consideration when looking at this. it's been years since i've been a pc gamer. probably around 10 but looking at both of the new consoles and being ready to upgrade i'm leaning well towards pc. to me it seems like this is better than anything i could build for the money that would last me as long. then again its been a very long time since i've pc gamed. i would also like to use this for basic video editing...very basic and quite possibly twitch streaming so i can be a cool person that gets popular on youtube and twitch and never has to work a real job again other than just being a silly goose in front of a camera. i am done typin

That's actually not a bad build. i7 might be overkill, but its way better than the usual prebox gaming PC where they put a $1000 CPU inside and a $50 GPU. You might be able to save a tidly bit of money building it yourself, but it doesn't look like much. Maybe around $100 if you pinch your pennies.

The Acer brand has me hesitant given their low budget origins, but their newer ultrabooks are super sexy so they may have turned around.

It has no SSD which is a shame.

The CPU is totally fine and the GPU are good. There is enough RAM for gaming. It has DVI and HDMI.

Seems like a solid package to me.

ok then one last question for you. if given the chance to get the same build for 200 bucks cheaper but with a gtx 760 would it be worth it? they offer that. just saying. from what i've read the 770 will well outlast the 760.

@crapneck: I'm not too sure about performance between the two cards but the 770 will obviously be the higher end card. If you want to save some money and don't mind turning settings down a bit, the 760 will do you fine.

Don't worry about future proofing too much since in two years something that was amazing will only be good. When the r9 290x came out for like $550 it was matching the performance on the Nvidia Titan which sold for $1000 only a year before. Similarly I spend $250 on my AMD HD 7850 when it came out and Nvidia's new 750ti costs $100 less, gets the same or slightly better performance, and requires no extra power just PCIe slot power.

Definitely lacking an SSD, either a big one for everything or a smaller one for just your OS and some key apps & games. At this point I wouldn't consider building a PC without an SSD unless there was just no way to make it happen.

thanks for the help. i either did the right thing and will be enjoying it for the next little bit or did the wrong thing and will be upset for the next few years. either way. it was kinda rushed but imma bouta be a pc gamer dawg, and really ain' t that where it's all headed really?

@crapneck: @mb: Congrats! Soon you will be messing with AA settings with the best of 'em.

As for an SSD they are pretty awesome, but you can get by without them. I finally bit the bullet and got one inside my machine this January so I lived a while without one. Watching load times be super short is pretty nice though. STALKER's load times used to be nightmarish for me, now they are totally fine, like from two minutes to ten seconds.

@crapneck:

If you haven't purchased already

I'd consider building because then you can use one of those new Solid State Hybrid Drives. I built my current PC in August and it ended up being a bit cheaper. I went with a SSD for my boot drive and a 2TB SSHD for my Steam Library. I got my entire library installed on there (several hundred games) and they run fantastic.

Many people don't know they exist yet. I got one in mine and they are incredible. Nearly the speed of a SSD but much closer in storage capacity and price to a decent HDD.

This is one of them

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178381

But if you buying a preconstructed build the one you had was pretty decent. Far better than most I've seen and if I had seen it when I was building I may have bought it instead of building. And you can always add an SSHD as an auxiliary drive later.