I am a pretty hard core gamer and I make online computer games for a living. I don't like to skimp when buying a gaming PC. After 15 years of spending huge sums of money on pre-built PCs, I recently decided to build my own again. I was amazed at what you can get for under $1,000, and how easy it really is to build one yourself.
Price Source: Newegg, February 2009
Total Price: $927.92
The NZXT Apollo Black is a really snazzy looking case. It has a clear side window with fancy blue neon lighting on the fan. It also has neon blue lightning on the front in three locations. A door opens up to reveal the drive bays and reset button. This prevents any accidental bumping of important buttons.
The OCZ StealthXStream power supply is highly rated and provides 600 watts of power. That is far beyond the needs of this PC, but it means you have a little extra room to grow should you choose to add more to the PC later. It is very quiet.
The E8400 Wolfdale 3.0 GHZ is an excellent balance of price and performance. I would definitely consider it a value sweet spot. It is more than enough power for the latest games, as well as any likely to come out in the next few years. For an in depth guide to the E8400 chip, I highly recommend reading this article: Final Thoughts on the Intel E8400.
This motherboard is NOT SLI (what is SLI?) / Crossfire (what is crossfire?) compliant. If you really think you might want to use two graphics cards in the future, swap this for a more expensive motherboard that supports SLI/Crossfire. I personally do not think the significant extra cost is worth it for the modest performance gains from SLI/Crossfire.
For general tips on how to choose a motherboard, I recommend this article: Building a PC - Choosing a Motherboard
While not entirely the topic of this article, I want to take the time to make one comment about CPU installation in general: attaching the heat sink to the CPU is in my opinion the trickiest part of building your own PC. If you read the instructions (or this article) carefully and take your time, you will have no trouble. It is definitely not the step of PC assembly to be goofing off, talking on the phone, or give in to any sort of distractions. It takes less than a minute, but it is an important minute!