Hello everyone,

After nearly 10 months of being inactive just because I bought a PS4, now I regret a bit buying it. It is just nowhere near as good to own and tweak like a PC and doesn't just have a big game library, not to mention that games on it doesn't look as good as on a gaming PC. Plus, my PC is starting to fail, and repairing it is just not worth it (10 years old, Pentium D 945, Geforce 9400GT 1GB). What parts do you recommend me to buy? And if someone knows if Graphics cards price will drop and when Skylake CPU will be availble? PS: My budget is 1000$ not including a screen, keyboard and mouse.
I actually Own Both , a PS4 & a High End PC well , the PC linked to a TV (at least a good like the LG Full HD Slim 3D Series 2014 and that has approximately 25 ms Input Lag Time ) and using a MS Wireless Controller (Xbox 360) it will be a console type of playing with a much greater image fidelity (1440p DSR on a 42 inch 1080p or 1080p / 60 fps / MSAA etc..) with cheaper games through steam or cracked games in the market, as side with the general upgrades / general usage of the PC for sure. You can build your own PC and consider as a complete workstation.

I PS4 by itself is a good machine for gaming with very nice exclusives Like BloodBorne , the Coming Uncharted 4, etc.. and sure sport games like the recent PES 2016 and the upcoming Nba 2K16 are usually more enjoyable on the PS4.

Concerning Skylake, you can stick with Haswell and Z97 chipset compared to Skylake you will find a 5-10% difference only.

Haswell 3.50 GHz - i5-4690K 6M/LGA1150 $249.00
Kingston HyperX Fury White 8GB 1600MHz DDR3 CL10 Desktop Memory Mode HX316C10FW/8 for $48.00
MSI Z97S SLI KRAIT Edition (DDR3) (LGA1150) $142.00
Cooler Master HAF 912 Combat RC-912-KWN2 Mid Tower ATX w/ Window Link $90.00
1TB WD1003FZEX 7200RPM SATAIII 64MB Black Edition -Link $81.00
SAMSUNG 850 EVO MZ-N5E120BW M.2 120GB SATA 6Gbps Solid State Drive US 75.00 (For the OS you can bring another one with higher capacity later on)
LG 24MP56HQ Wide 23.8" LED IPS Full HD / Wide Viewing Angle $169.00
LG GH24NSC0-24X DVDRW - Dual Layer SATA Black $23.00 (If you want to play Cracked Games they are usually installed on Blue-Ray - Pioneer BDR-209DBK 16X DVDRW Blu-ray SATA $82.00 - I will not add it up to the total price since it depends on your preference)
Thermaltake PS-TPD-0750MPCG ToughPower Gold 750W PSU $145.00
Cooler Master R4-SXDP-20FB-A1 SickleFlow X 12cm (Blue LED) Link $10.00 (Additional Fan for Ventilation)

= 1032*1.1 = 1135 USD

MSI GTX 960 Gaming 4G GeForce GTX 960 4GB DDR5 Link Now in stock $292.00
I would have gone with the MSI R9 380 Gaming 4G Radeon R9 380 4GB DDR5 but its not available.

1135 + 295*1.1 = 1495.5 + key board & mouse (good ones about 30 USD ) = 1525.5 for the windows part you can purchase a cheap 25 USD key for windows 7 pro 64 bit and upgrade to windows 10 pro 64 bit and not purchase directly a genuine windows 10 pro 64 bit for 170 USD being sold now. Windows 10 on a new system now is a future cushion and I highly recommend it for usage , very stable , Direct x 12 and mixes between windows 7&8.

Therefore to sum it up you need maximum 1550 USD to build a decent/reliable pc including a monitor + VAT + peripherals.
CPU: Intel Core i5 4460 ($181 @PCandParts)
Motherboard: MSI H97 Gaming 3 ($138 @PCandParts)
Memory: HyperX Savage 8GB 2400MHz ($55 @PCandParts)
SSD: SanDisk X300 256GB ($94 @PCandParts)
Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB ($57 @PCandParts)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 380 2GB ($249 @PCandParts)
Case: InWin 730 ($65 @PCandParts)
Power Supply: Cooler Master V750M ($144 @PCandParts)
Total: $1081.3 (incl. VAT)

Add to that an LG 24MP56HQ for $169, a CM Storm Devastator for $52, a HyperX Skyn for $9 and a HyperX Cloud Core for $56 (all five from PCandParts) which will bring you to a grand total of $1395.9 including VAT.
I prefer sticking with skylake if it is not far from coming to lebanon because i won't be building my PC until October or November (my birthday is in October) I know that Skylake has just 5% to 10% increase but I prefer it.
elie955ai wroteI prefer sticking with skylake if it is not far from coming to lebanon because i won't be building my PC until October or November (my birthday is in October) I know that Skylake has just 5% to 10% increase but I prefer it.
You don't need Skylake, unless you want to run two video cards in CrossFire/SLI and have a PCIe SSD like the Intel 750 series, and at your budget that's impossible. There's also the DDR4 price premium, and the H170/Z170 motherboard price premium too.
@Die_Kapitan
I was going in the long run to do an SLI/Crossfire setup sand adding a PCI.e SSD.
Dual-GPU setups isn't recommended, one high-end card may perform slightly lower than 2 mid-end ones, but a single card offers more stability and support in all games whereas some games do not support CrossFire/SLI, there's always dual-GPU cards too.
OK, you all have convinced me, as soon as I will have the budget I will build a PC. I did not build one last year because my parents had fears that I would do something wrong (in the end this is hard earned money). So I ended up buying a PS4.
Die_Kapitan wroteDual-GPU setups isn't recommended, one high-end card may perform slightly lower than 2 mid-end ones, but a single card offers more stability and support in all games whereas some games do not support CrossFire/SLI, there's always dual-GPU cards too.
True that. I was so hyped about making a crossfire setup. Then, games began showing artifacts. Drivers updated, and I noticed the framerate almost doubled; but graphics showed some artifacts.

You can't do much with games that do not support multi GPUs. High end GPUs are a less headache and more stable compared to multi gpu setups. Framerates are not everything, if the game doesn't render properly, it doesn't matter if you play it at 120FPS.
Oh yeh I am sure its not related to VRAM, as I tried using each GFX as a master on 2 instances. Each works just great, but together, funny things show up.

Example: Dota units and objects flicker, some objects show invisible (including enemy heroes, where's the fun in that?)

The new strategy game Acts of Aggression shows squares on the map and framerate is shit. Unplayable.
MrClass wrote
Die_Kapitan wroteDual-GPU setups isn't recommended, one high-end card may perform slightly lower than 2 mid-end ones, but a single card offers more stability and support in all games whereas some games do not support CrossFire/SLI, there's always dual-GPU cards too.
True that. I was so hyped about making a crossfire setup. Then, games began showing artifacts. Drivers updated, and I noticed the framerate almost doubled; but graphics showed some artifacts.

You can't do much with games that do not support multi GPUs. High end GPUs are a less headache and more stable compared to multi gpu setups. Framerates are not everything, if the game doesn't render properly, it doesn't matter if you play it at 120FPS.
Exactly, framerates are not everything, as long as I'm getting 60FPS I couldn't care less about framerates, especially if I have to sacrifice stability and support.

In games that don't support dual-GPUs, you can force CF/SLI, but that may lower the framerates instead of increasing them.

Personally, I'm against the idea of CF and SLI because I like getting each generation's sweet spot card for the resolution I intend to play at, if I want to play at 1080p, I don't have to get anything better than an R9 390/GTX 970, whereas if I get R9 380 CF/GTX 960 SLI, I'll be paying more than an R9 390 or GTX 970 for Fury X/GTX 980 Ti performance, but I won't be able to add another card when next gen launches as games are horribly optimized for tri-GPU setups and I will be able to get a similarly performing card with more VRAM maybe, and lower power consumption for less.
MrClass wrote
Die_Kapitan wroteDual-GPU setups isn't recommended, one high-end card may perform slightly lower than 2 mid-end ones, but a single card offers more stability and support in all games whereas some games do not support CrossFire/SLI, there's always dual-GPU cards too.
True that. I was so hyped about making a crossfire setup. Then, games began showing artifacts. Drivers updated, and I noticed the framerate almost doubled; but graphics showed some artifacts.

You can't do much with games that do not support multi GPUs. High end GPUs are a less headache and more stable compared to multi gpu setups. Framerates are not everything, if the game doesn't render properly, it doesn't matter if you play it at 120FPS.
It's caused by 2 cards running at different GPU/Memory speeds..

I had 2 GTX285 in SLI before, one stock EVGA card and one oc'ed BFG and i had lots of artifacts and slowdowns, everything was fixed when i down-clocked the BFG card to stock speed, or overclock the EVGA card to the BFG's speeds.

That should be done automatically by the driver but sometimes it doesn't !

P.S +1 for a single high-end card over CF/SLI low~mid range cards
But both 280X's I have got the same exact configs. Luckily a single 280x is enough for me, if I need the extra fps for heavy games (patiently waiting for NFS 2015), then i can enable CF on the spot. My next upgrade will definitely be a high end Nvidia card (like I used to do before, and only upgrade every 3-5 years).

I am a proud owner of a Geforce 2 MX 400, Geforce FX 5600, Geforce 6600GT, Geforce 7950GT, Geforce GTX280, Geforce GTX680, and the 2 Radeon 280x's.

Next upgrade will be 2-3 years from now.
MrClass wroteBut both 280X's I have got the same exact configs. Luckily a single 280x is enough for me, if I need the extra fps for heavy games (patiently waiting for NFS 2015), then i can enable CF on the spot. My next upgrade will definitely be a high end Nvidia card (like I used to do before, and only upgrade every 3-5 years).

I am a proud owner of a Geforce 2 MX 400, Geforce FX 5600, Geforce 6600GT, Geforce 7950GT, Geforce GTX280, Geforce GTX680, and the 2 Radeon 280x's.

Next upgrade will be 2-3 years from now.
If your next upgrade will be 2-3 years from now, wouldn't it be wiser to see what card is the best in 2017/2018 instead of just saying "my next upgrade will definitely be a high end Nvidia card"?