Building i7

[inPHOMOUS]

Going for an i7 based build.
Good video card is a must for gaming.
Mid-Large Size Harddrive.
Reliable power supply.
Motherboard, I will probably want to buy in a combo with the i7 itself.
8gig ram at least.
Disc drive and burner drive.
Good working fan.
Anything else I might also need, I will post up some cases later to see if it will be able to fit everything.

Budget is around 800$.
Looking to add a monitor to that budget as well, 22"-23"

Thanks for the help.

 

[BWLAF]

The i7, a good video card, a decent mobo and 8GB of RAM is going to take a massive chunk out of your budget, if not all of it... you will probably need to spend more than that to get the kind of computer you want, especially if you need mouse, keyboard, monitor etc

If you don't have any more budget than that, use an i5, I can't say much about the video card or mobo, but 8GB of RAM is a lot, if you get 4 - 6GB of 1333 or 1600 RAM, that should be plenty.

Rather than buying a fan separately, you might like to look for a case with a decent cooling system already, it could save you some money, if only a little. Do you intend to overclock the processor, RAM, or GPU?

I tried putting together a bit of a build for you, here:

Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz or if you aren't fussed with getting Intel, this AMD one: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz
$199 or $159

For this kind of budget, the AMD one is probably better, so I have used AMD as a base for motherboards:
For an ATI Card:
ASUS M4A79XTD EVO AM3 AMD 790X ATX
$119
For an Nvidia Card:
ASUS M4N98TD EVO AM3 NVIDIA nForce 980a SLI ATX
$139

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
$108
This should be plenty for an $800 gaming build

ATI video card (I personally prefer ATI, but it's up to you):
XFX HD-577A-ZNFC Radeon HD 5770
$159

Nvidia video card:
XFX GT240XZHFC GeForce GT 240 1GB 128-bit DDR5
$119

Western Digital AV-GP WD20EVDS 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
$169

This leaves you:
ATI build: $86
Nvidia build: $106
For Case, PSU, Monitor, Mouse, Keyboard, Speakers and any other peripherals you want (including extra cooling)

As you can see, it is difficult to build the kind of gaming machine you want within that budget. If you stretched it to $900 you might be able to get a decent setup, but I would say that you'd need at least 1000 for what you seem to want.

NB: PLEASE, before you buy this system, get a second opinion on my suggestions. There are people here with a lot more experience than me and I'd prefer not to be giving you bad advice unknowingly

 

[Muffin Man]

there's no way you're going to get any i7 build with all the stuff you want including a monitor for $800. you're going to need a bigger budget and/or have a more realistic build in mind.

$800 - say like around $150 for a monitor would leave around $650 for the tower, and if you also need an OS then thats - another $100.

for that you could maybe get a phenom ii x2/x3 or athlon ii x4 build with like a 5770, 500gb hdd and 4gigs of ram (which really should be enough ram anyway).