Best cheap gaming PC

[Dark Rider]

A lot of people are going to see the title of this thread, read your Op ( opening post) and balk at your 1000 to 1500 dollar idea of "cheap" .

For those folks I offer the best bang for your buck for a gaming laptop IMO. An HP Pavilion G7.

The model I have is a 2251dx. It meets most of your system requirements. Cost: 425 dollars. It has a quad core 2.8 ghz A8 AMD processor. It has ATI Radeon HD 7640G graphics that uses up to 4 gigabytes of ram ( has 512 dedicated on board, the other 3 and 1/2 gigs it uses from shared system memory BUT, this is Not the same kind of slow shared video ram most people think of, this A8 processor is optimized to use shared system ram as efficiently as dedicated ram due to it's dual APU nature) The machine has 8 gigabytes of system ram a 17.3 inch monitor that uses up to 1600x900 resolution. It has a 500 gig hard drive and of course has a fast cd rom/dvd burner built in.

I play all new games on it like Black Ops 2 and Far Cry 3 on all high settings with great frame rate. A plus for me that this thing is a laptop with a battery that lasts up to 5 hours - the best gaming laptop I have found for the price.

 

[TONSCHUH]

I know this is almost double what I originally wanted to spend. But I think I just might go with this setup I might change a few things but not much. Can someone tell me if all these parts are compatible? I think they are I had the compatibility on the whole time. But at the bottom of the page it says some of it might not have worked. So I just want to know for sure if they will all work together.

My Custom build

I didn't try your chosen Intel-NIC yet, but I bought this one here and I'm very happy with it, but it's only a Single-NIC:

Intel Gigabit CT-Desktop NIC

As Optical-Drives I always recommend LG, as their Drives take every given Disc-Brand:

- GH24NS90
- BH12LS38

As you go for the Socket 2011, you should go for a Quad-Channel-Memory-Kit:

Cheap:

16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance Quad-Channel-DDR3-Kit

Better:

16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Dominator GT - Quad Channel DDR3 Kit

The above Kit's should only give you an idea, as I didn't double-check the supported Memory for your Motherboard, but you can find some Info's here:

Test-Reports
CPU Support

It seems so that you don't need to buy low-profile-memory:

Noctua NH-L12

I didn't use MSI-Products since quite a while, so I'm not able to judge about their actual quality and if there are any known issues with the chosen Motherboard so far, as I didn't do any further research about it.

About the SSD I could recommend this one here, as I actually use this model since quite a while without any issues:

Intel 520S 240GB/SATA3/R 550MBs,W 520MBs/25nm/3.5"Kit/5yr

The above model should come with the Kit, but I bought the SSD somewhere else.

I would maybe go for a slightly bigger PSU to give you a bit more overhead if you go for Crossfire later on:

Antec HCP-850

I use this one here:

Antec HCG-900

... but I would go the next time for a partially / fully modular PSU, as it help's a lot to wire your rig neat and tidy.