Building

I can help you. I just put together a reasonable build in the $850 range, it might have been $900, but included a nice LCD monitor (full 1080p HD) and a nice keyboard and mouse. Drop that and you shave about $225 off the total build cost. Anyway, my budget fell through, so I'll have to re-evaluate next year, but you can use my work.

--Motherboard -- You're on the right track with Gigabyte. Not trying to steer you, but ASUS and MSI are both good as well. But the trick here isn't the mobo itself, it's the chipset. Assuming you stick with AMD, the 790GX is top and not too expensive. Here's Gigabyte's, the one I was going to get.

--CPU -- If you want to stay under your budget, you're pretty much stuck with AMD. That isn't a bad thing, AMD's been good to me. My AMD64 lasted five years and would still be in service if the mobo didn't die. Five years is a long time for tech though. Anyway, you'll pay $100 or more for an equivalent Intel CPU, that's a fact. Then the mobos cost more, and do less. $160 for an AMD quad-core shipped ain't bad. If you want to save money though, most games won't do more with a quad than a dual; the quad just future-proofs your rig. In other words, a dual will play today's games, but a quad will play tomorrow's.

--Hard drive -- Go small for your system drive. Windows runs best on 80GB or less. Takes less time to format, and access speeds tend to be a little better. If you want to spend the money, get a Raptor. Look at the site you're on -- portable apps aren't just for flash drives. Get a second, larger hard drive, and run portable apps off that. Make a folder called shortcuts, make shortcuts to the apps on the desktop (so the PortableApps platform menu becomes optional, and redundant), and back the shortcuts up in the shortcuts folder. Next time you reinstall Windows, just dump the shortcuts back on the desktop. "Portable" apps become "perpetual" apps. Anyway, you want storage, you can get a 2TB drive for around $150 these days. You can also use whatever hard drive you have now in the meantime, if you want to skip the second hard drive and buy a nice big one later.

--Video card -- This will make or break your gaming experience, but if you went with that quad, it's not as important. Now, I'm an nVidia guy, I don't know much about ATI, but that mobo has an ATI Raedon 4400 with HDMI on the motherboard. Coupled with a quad, that will play most games, at least at low and medium settings. Especially with a lot of RAM (I'll get to that). I was looking at the GeForce 9800GT line. But whatever GPU line you go with, make sure it has GDDR5. That's the type of RAM. A lot still have GDDR4, or what the Xbox 360 runs, GDDR3. GDDR5 is much faster. As for quantity, 1GB is probably the sweet spot. All I'm seeing on Newegg is GT240s for nVidia, and I read that 9800GTs are so much better for about the same price, I'm just not seeing them right now. GT240 is probably *fine*, just not *great*. As in, I can't see a lot of fault in 1GB of GDDR5, but if a 9800GT clocks faster, well, that's the deal. Not sure why I'm not seeing them though. Oh, I see 'em now. They all have GDDR3... I am thoroughly confused. Research the two (GDDR3/9800GT vs. GDDR5/GT240) or if you know/love ATI, go that route.

--RAM -- I can only recommend Corsair and OCZ. Corsair is great and OCZ is pretty good. You will want DDR3 RAM, and you will want *at least* 4GB of it. Start with 4GB (which you should be able to get for about $120, I think). Get two 2GB sticks, and get two more later, down the road. 8GB plus the CPU plus a 9800GT or GT240 should let you run anything. 4GB plus those and you'll find very few closed doors in terms of gaming.

--Case and power -- You didn't ask, this is mostly an aesthetic choice though. Pick out something pretty. Power supply, you'll want to take note whether the video card you want requires a power line, and make sure the power supply supports it (most new ones do). There are a lot of cheap power supplies, just check reviews. You have to be more careful with the power supply, and look for number of 12V rails. Two is standard, one is cheap, four is good. One means most of your power is going through one conduit. Two divides the load, and four -- you get the idea. Cases you can be more flexible with. Read the reviews, what people say. That's any part, but for cases, look out for stuff not fitting, things breaking easily, quality (or not) workmanship.

Just about any computer can play movies. For DVD, you can get a DVD burner for under $30 shipped. Brand doesn't matter too much. NEC and Lite-On are both great. Anything else is probably good. But for Blu-ray you will spend at least $100, and that's just a reader. If you want an all-burner (burns CD, DVD, and Blu) you'll pay a lot more. Over $150, I think.

I'm running Windows 7 on a 1.8GHz AMD Sempron (their value CPU from 2004-2005) with 2GB of RAM and it's running good. Vista was a resource hog. Win7, not so much.

Playing new games is what you need the fancy CPU and GPU for. Personally, I think PC gaming is a waste of time. There's a lot of good stuff out there, and Steam is very cool. World of Warcraft is a neat idea (not for me though). And there's modding (legal and otherwise, but I mean legal). But if you want to be able to play the latest games and watch Blu-rays, you might just get a PS3 to complement your PC. I'm more of an Xbox guy, but LIVE is $50/year and PSN is free, and Xbox doesn't have Blu-ray. The best games are on both. But, if PC gaming is what you want, I think you can build a capable gaming rig for under $800.

Follow my advice (not too closely, use it as a guide, but don't be afraid to stray a bit) and add up the parts. Post them and link to their page on Newegg (or, your e-tailer of choice) and I/we can show you where to pinch pennies, if need be. Like dropping from a quad to a dual CPU, a cheaper but "almost as good" video card, smaller hard drive, whatever.

I wasn't going to bother replying because you've already got some pretty comprehensive answers but I thought what the hell.

Mother Board (looking at Gigabyte)

Can't go wrong with Gigabyte or Asus. Keep in mind not be sold on features you don't need like onboard graphics. Onboard graphics solutions are usually NOT cool for gaming. However, consider things like the motherboard being SLI ready (assuming you go with an NVdia graphics card), and is the ethernet gigabit. (which I think is pretty much standard these days). Although I guess if you plan on using wireless that's a moot point too. Also, onboard sound is pretty much the only way to go that i know of these days, I haven't bought a sound card in ages, so make sure the onboard sound is up to par. Also consider upgradeability, can you increase the RAM, can you use a better processor in the future?

Processor (looking at AMD but will accept Intel depending on which is the better bang for the $$)

I used to be a pure Intel guy all the way, but to be quite honest, if you're on a tight budget then AMD is the way to go. I have an AMD machine at home and have no complaints. It's not the slickest machine but it gets the job done, even playing games.

Hard Drive (Western Digital or other reasonable brand the does 320GB on up)

Just stick with branded drives. I have NEVER had a young hard-drive fail on me, even branded drives bought from eBay. Don't go for the biggest size on the market, always choose something slightly smaller than the current biggest available, you'll get better value.

Video Card (Something nice)

I'm not impressed with ATI cards, they seem to have horrible software drivers and compatibility problems with some games. I've been a long term fan of Nvidia cards. If you're a hardcore gamer then you might want to consider eventually buying two graphics cards and hooking them up via SLI. Having a decent graphics card with solid amount of onboard RAM is critical for gaming.

RAM (how many GBs and what brand???)

Corsair, Kingston any branded RAM will do. I'd recommended buying at least one of the maximum size RAM sticks your motherboard can accept, at least to get you started, you can always buy more RAM later. It's one good way to spread the cost, so that if you motherboard accepts 2 times 4GB sticks, buy one 4GB up front, it'll be enough to get you started.

Power and Case

Power Supplies are a critical component of any system. Cheap power supplies will cause other hardware to fail. Look, not just at the power wattage but also the amperage. Just because it's a 650w PSU doesn't make it good, it's really worth spending the extra money on a decent PSU. As far as cases are concerned, often you'll pay more for cases that look pretty like fancy LEDs or clear plastic on them. All that really matters is that you can easily get to all the various components if you ever want to upgrade things. To be quite honest, the clear plastic and LEDs will lose their novelty factor after about 5 minutes... Oh... that's nice *look of being underwhelmed*

Monitor

Assuming you don't have one already, budget a large portion of your money going to a decent flat screen monitor. I've bought some cheaper brands over the years and never had any complaints. I think this comes down to personal choice/preference more than anything.