Eventual computer upgradeFollow

A budget of $2,500 should be more than adequate to build a high end gaming PC. A couple of questions for you though before I get into reccommendations. Are you looking to purchase something pre-assembled, or do you have the skills and / or local help available to assemble your own computer? Putting a computer together isn't difficult once you have the hang of it, but if you have never built a computer before, building a high end gaming PC on your own without help might be a bit of a challenge. If you have built computers before or have access to local help who have done so, then the build your own route is going to be cheaper and net you a more powerful machine for your money. If you haven't built one, or don't want the potential hassle of dealing with multiple part warranties, a prebuilt one might be what you are looking for. In that case, ibuypower.com is a good inexpensive chassis maker that might be a good first step to visit just to see what the price ranges are.

As far as components go, for a build your own or an off the shelf purchase, there are orders of importance to the components, but there are also longevity concerns. For example, you mention that appearance of the case isn't a major issue for you, but given of all the components you put into a computer you will have that one on average 7 years longer than any others, you may want to consider spending a bit more on that than you might otherwise.

I tend to reccommend that people get the best case that they can find and that they like, a Cooler Master CM 690 II advanced is a good place to start for an inexpensive, but solid case. There are plenty of options though. Then, pick a good solid power supply, as it will be your next longest lived component. You'll want to choose something in the 750-800 watt range, though with a $2500 budget, a multiple video card system is a possibility, so it wouldn't hur tot go bigger. Antec, Thermaltake, Corsair, Cooler master, and my favorite Enermax are all good power supply vendors.

From there you start to put together your core. You have some choices at that point. Do you go with an Intel processor (more expensive on average, but generally faster) an AMD processor (Less expensive, also slightly slower), and then once you decide on that, which processor socket? The Intel ones have 3 main socket types at the moment, Socket 2011 - the just released newest top of the line, Socket 1366 - the older gaming workhorse, predecessor to socket 2011, and socket 1155 - newer than socket 1366 but geared towards more of the midrange PC market. Inside each of those ranges (except 2011 which doesn't have any of the lower end ones yet) you will find the processor classes divided into 3 more families Core 13, I5 and I7. basically the I3 processors are the low end, low core count processors, I5 are the midrange, and I7 are the upper end processors. Usually I7 has mroe hyperthreading virtual cores than the I5's.

AMD has similar processor family divisions, though less of them.

After you decide on a processor, you will need a motherboard to match. I tend to reccommend Asus motherboards, www.asus.com and they have boards in both the Intel and AMD ranges. We can help you pick a good board once you decide on a processor.

Ram is dirt cheap these days. you want as much of it as your motherboard can hold, the highest capacity you can afford, as fast as you can afford it. Your average stick of 4GB DDR3 ram costs $25 these days, so even filling the 8 slots in a socket 2011 motherboard will not break the bank. Total ram quantity remains more important than ram speed at this time.

From there, Video card is the next consideration, with similar choices. There are Nvidia video cards, which I tend to prefer, of which the 580 GTX is about the king of the hill at the moment, and there are ATI / AMD video cards. Each of those video card types also have ooptions to run multiple cards. Nvidia calls this technology SLI, or Scalable Link Interface, ATI calls it Crossfire. The reason its important is that two mid range video cards in SLI mode might be more powerful, and less expensive than a single high end video card. If you are talking about running either large single monitors, or any multiple monitors for gaming, you need to consider either a high end video card or a SLI array to be able to even drive the displays at an acceptable gaming framerate. I usually leave the video card picking to the end of the list and get whatever my budget will stretch to.

Which brings us to drives. For a hard drive, and specifically to maintain longevity with your proposed budget, I would look at a solid state drive. Solid state drives are essentially bigger, much faster versions of the USB thumb drive you might already own. They have no moving parts, and are therefore much faster in most cases than standard rotational drives. their downside is they are fairly expensive compared to rotational drives, and not nearly as big. For your needs though, you will want speed and capacity. So wha you are going to want to do is get a decent sized Solid state drive for your operating system and your games, and then put in a larger rotational drive for your movie / netflix storage. Hard drive prices have unfortunatly gone through the roof because of the thailand flooding, but you should be able to find a 1TB hard drive in the $150 range, and a Solid state drive in the 200GB range for around $250.

Other than that, there isn't much else in the computer. Your case will come with all the fans and cables. The motherboard comes with whatever cables the case doesn't have usually. You may want to grab a blue ray burner, they are down to about $70, otherwise a standard DVD burner will run about $20. In place of a floppy drive, most people are installing Card readers, they tend to run about $15 or so, and can read memory cards from cameras, etc.

If you decide you want to attempt a build, let me know and I'll write up a parts list for you.

Just something to note: There isn't much point in getting any processor other than a i5 2500k. It gives you the biggest bang for your buck, and the i7 2600k is around 100 dollars more, although, with your budget, you could probably get a 2600k and still have some change.

Also: Kao, I thought socket 2011 was for Ivy Bridge only, or are the sockets backwards compatible, just not forwards compatible?