My girlfriend needs a new desktop for her home, as she is moving part-time home for her Masters', and is looking to build it herself. Her needs are normal school stuff (email, word processing, LaTeX, some CAD and FEA-type things) plus gaming (Diablo III, Second Life, etc). I'll probably be using it when I'm there, so I have a vested interest in it being powerful. She'd like to keep it $1000 or less; here's what I have so far. Please, as usual, pick out anything you don't like and yell at me. I did do research and look at ratings and reviews first. This comes out to $1042, picking the best price on each between Microcenter and Newegg, but I'd appreciate any substitution that lowers the price.

Case: My old case ($0)
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V LGA 1155 Intel Z77 ($185 + $5 shipping at Newegg)
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core ($170 at Microcenter)
Memory: CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory ($52 at Microcenter)
Optical drive: DVD+-RW from my old case ($0)
PSU: Corsair Enthusiast Series TX750 V2 750 Watt ($110 + $0 shipping from Newegg)
Hard drive: OCZ Agility 3 SSD AGT3-25SAT3-240G 2.5" 240GB SATA III ($220 from either store)
Graphics card: HD-695X-CNFC (dual-fan/2GB/6950) ($230 + $8 shipping from Newegg, this one is non-negotiable)

The CPU was picked as being FAR and away the customer choice on Newegg. HardOCP vetted the PSU. The memory seems fairly undifferentiated. The graphics card is the same one I have in my own desktop and have trialed by fire, but with fewer ports for fewer monitors. The mobo is also HardOCP-vetted.

I've had both good and bad experiences with Asus mobo's so I plan on going with someone else for my next build but other than that it seems rather solid.

Links to that actual parts on newegg would be nice though.

Edit: As nice as having a beefy GPU is I feel like your choice of the 6950 might be overkill in this case though I'm not sure where you would spend the money instead so you might as well stick with it I guess.

I should point out that she's thinking of going to dualmons at some point in the future, so that was part of my thought with the beefy GPU. Also, the name of the game here is futureproofing as much as possible.

Links:
Case: Antec P180B
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V LGA 1155 Intel Z77
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz
Optical Drive: Can't remember
PSU: Corsair Enthusiast Series TX750 V2 750W
Hard Drive: OCZ Agility 3 AGT3-25SAT3-240G 2.5" 240GB
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Graphics card: HD-695X-CDFC Radeon HD 6950 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16

Edit: To shave off a bit over $100, how about a possible spinning hard drive? I got frustrated looking, number one because the prices have gone up so much since the "flood", and number two because they all have such uneven customer reviews. Any recommendations?

Why not get the Ivy Bridge unlocked i5 (3570K)? Micro Center had it for $190 the last time I checked. Most of the improvements are on the side of the integrated graphics, but it does offer a bit more on the general computing side.

Oh, really? That's an excellent price; how does it stack up as far as benchmarks? The integrated graphics aren't that important for this build, but if it's lower-power for the same computational punch or more powerful for the same power usage, I'm down.

Two things - one the spinning harddrive side, you might be in trouble buying based on reviews, because the failure rate seems to be high enough across the board, that there will be a lot of mixed feedback. I certainly noticed that phenomena when purchasing my external.

Does she have any interest in running Linux on it, ever? If so, Nvidia is probably a better choice than AMD/ATI.

It depends on her Linux use case, if she plans on doing a lot of Linux gaming then sure, but if its mostly older or less demanding games the AMD FOSS driver wins due to things like KMS, full xrandr support, and overall stability.

Re: spinning drives: Any recommendations from your own experience, then? I've been very happy with Western Digital drives, but that's just me. Re: Linux: If she did any Linux work, it would be for non-gaming, with Windows for gaming.

I've always been a fan of the WD Black drives myself. And if the linux use is non-gaming I'd say an AMD 5xxx or 6xxx series card is the way to go, using the FOSS drivers. The 7xxx series support is still immature due to it being a new core design whereas everything from the 2xxx series to the 6xxx series has a similar core design from the drivers perspective.

I've always gone for the cheapest drives for the space that don't have terrible reviews. Also, they have to be 7200 RPM or better.

I go nvidia because I do a lot of linux gaming

Also, unless you're going blu-ray you can expect any optical DVD burner around $20. Look for one that's got reviews about being quiet, since noise is due to vibrations that may wear out various parts, depending on what exactly is vibrating.

Also: My last upgrade

Combo Mobo+AMD FX quad core - $120-ish
8 GB Ram - $80-ish
Nvidia GT 520 w/ 2 GB ram - $40-ish

I already had a good PSU, case, HDD, etc on hand.

The 6xxx is a done deal and anniversary present as payback for my Thermaltake Level10 case. Willrand, already have a spare optical drive, so not concerned about that. Jonimus, I like WD's Black and Blue as well myself. I see that Microcenter has a 1TB Caviar Blue for $100 and a 1TB Caviar Black for $130, both 7200RPM. They both seem to have 32MB caches, and 3.0Gbps SATA, so I'm not entirely clear why the Black is priced $30 higher.

Hey just one thing to look into. SHould be PLENTY of power for anything you need. TigerDirect.com barebon kits. i am spending 500 dollars with a 90 mail in rebate. and getting a PC i could spend a lot more on. 8GB Of ram, a 6 Core proc. 6 sata mobo, AMD i think.

here is the link.

My New PC

Black drives come with a 5 year warranty, the Blue is only 2.

Wow, that's a great bundle! I should see what's around at Microcenter and on Newegg as far as bundles go.

Tari: Would I be incorrect in surmising from all the reviews I've read that failures tend to happen in the first few days or months rather than 3 years down the line?

I'd say infant mortality is greater, yeah. I've had several Seagate drives that died after a little over a year, but WD have been quite reliable in my experience- only one that died while I was using it was a (probably >10 year-) old 40GB IDE disk.

The plural of 'anecdote' is 'data', right?

Yup, exactly. Also, how about getting a Phenom II X6 like this one instead of the pricier Intel CPU? I'm finding it hard to track down solid head-to-head comparisons of Ivy/Sandy Bridge and the latest AMD offerings.

Phenom II isn't even the 'latest' AMD.

In any case, the comparison of Bulldozer to Sandy Bridge is.. not good for AMD. The dynamic clocking on Intel processors is much better, so there's a significant performance difference on single-threaded loads. They're about even on very parallel loads, with the AMD processors sometimes being a little faster. Bulldozer is only marginally better than the Phenom IIs in most situations (it does well on highly threaded integer loads, and that's about it), but has somewhat better dynamic clocking.

That's odd, on the table I saw there was no 95W 4.0 Ghz option, but I'm fairly certain that's what I ave. Maybe my mobo is automatically overclocking it a bit.

I would point out that the AMD FX line is significantly cheaper than the intel i* line, and only has slightly worse performance.

Whoa, the Ivy Bridge 3570K i5 is only $20 more at Microcenter than the CPU that I spec'd...

Edit: and with this mobo that I was looking at anyway, which is $170 if purchased with the 3570K, that's $360 for CPU+mobo instead of the $360 I had calculated for the 2500K+mobo.

I really hope it isn't a done deal - the 69xx is last gen, the 78xx/79xx is out and is a very nice improvement.

Ivy Bridge isn't worth worrying about - the CPU didn't improve at all, just the integrated GPU that you won't be using anyway. Might as well get it if it is the same price, though. Only get the unlocked -K model if you actually plan to overclock. The locked ones actually have a few more features around virtualization and such.

EDIT: Oh, and definitely stick with the SSD. They are beyond worth it. Although if you need to shave some cost, get a ~120gb one and pair it with a spinning drive for bulk storage (or even a 64gb one - that's actually what I'm running)