Newest rig, and I still consider it a budget build:



All working (minus side and top panels):



AMD Regor 3.4ghz Dual, overclocked currently at 4.2ghz
8 gb PNY DDR3 1600

Does this thing cool! running a game the highest it gets (CPU temp) is 40C, idles at 30 (at this level of overclocking).

Amazed how silent the 3 200mm fans are, quietest case/build I've owned.

I just got the wild hair to upgrade my rig.
New system:

Intel I-7 – 3960X Extreme cpu
Asus Rampage IV Extreme mobo
32 gb GSkill Ripjaw Z series quad-core 1866 RAM
EVGA GTX 580 3 gb Hydro-Copper video card
HT Omega Claro 24/192 7.1 Soundcard
256 gb Crucial SSD system drive
3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm storage drive
Corsair AX1200 Power supply
Corsair Obsidian 800D case

I'm going to reusse my Logitech G510 keyboard, my Naga mouse and Z5500 speaker system.

I’m going to water cool it with a custom system. I’m using ½ inch ID hose, a 120mmx3 radiator for the cpu, a 120mm radiator for the gpu, and EK HF supreme CPU block, an EK 250 resevoir, and a custom MCP-655 pump. I’m going to plumb it all with Bitspower matte black compression fittings, red hose, and Innovatek non-conductive fluid. I’m waiting on a 6.0Gb/s panel for the hot-swappable drive bays so I can get the full performance out of the hard drives.
Usually I’ll put a system together as soon as I get the parts, but I’m going to take my time with this one in order to make sure it’s exactly like I want it, and the inside of the case is as clean as I can make it. I’ve had all the cables sleeved black, and all the cables included in the case were done in black, including the case fan cables.
I’ll add a few pics of the components in the morning, and a few while I’m building.

Just built it

Antec 1100 tower
Antec 900 W power supply
Intel I5 2500K 3.3 Ghz quad, OC'd to 4.46 GHZ
16 GB Kingston Hyper, at 1600 MHZ
2 TB wd hd
1.2 GB EVGO gtx 570hd overclocked vid card.
Corsair H-60 H2O CPU cooler.
All on the Azus P8 something pro, gen 3 MB

Still need a SSD, it does have a 6GB/sec sata capability.

Now, my question is, which is a better FPS, battelfield 3 or call of duty 4?

This would be for single campaign stuff, I don't do online gaming at all. And no desire.

TXL

If your MB is like mine, it should have an autotune function on the driver disk.
This will automatically OC your system, running stability tests on it while it does it.
It will kick up the multiplier, test for stability, if it's good, it will kick up again, if it fails, it will go to the last good stability test.

Works great.

TXL

Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.6
8GB RAM
Two 2GB GTX 560s in SLI
80GB SSD, 1TB HDD
OCZ 750w PSU
Antec case

All I play are Skyrim, BF3, and Starcraft II.

Every WD Black I've ever purchased for myself or for customers clicked constantly, including my current one that I use as a secondary drive for linux and file storage. Check out the Seagate Barracuda 1TB, much better HDD.

Nothing like any of you all have but was a budget build that works ok for me. I need to probably look at updating a bit.

Case: ThermalTake v4 black (simple and cheap)
CPU: Intel Core i5 750
Cooler: Thermalright AXP 140
Motherboard: ASUS P7P55D Premium
Memory: 8gig Ripjaws X DDR3 1600
Video: GeForce GTX 460
PSU: Antec High Current Gamer 520w
... blah blah blah.

I'm building two machines on the cheap just for the fun of it.

1: Up and running but not finished.
Intel server chassis 5299E
Intel server motherboard S5000PSL ROMBR, includes hardware RAID card

Currently set up with two quad core Xeon L5320 1.86 GHz processors and 8 GB of RAM,
with Thermaltake active coolers on each CPU.

Currently has one 160 GB SATA drive installed for the OS. Storage drives coming soon,
set up in RAID. (Not sure which mode yet.)

It's a solid running machine that just needs a good video card (I haven't picked the new card yet)
to be ready to game. Running on Windows 7 Ultimate.

The best part: Except for the OS, I don't have 200 bucks in this machine at this point!

Machine 2:

This one will be based on the same kind of server chassis as above.
Motherboard is an Intel S5520SC workstation board (current generation) and taking Nehalem
architecture Xeon processors. I'll be putting in a pair of E5506 quad core processors in it,
and starting with 8 GB of RAM. Video and sound not yet selected.

Odds are that the better machine will be the gamer and the other will be put to work at my workplace
to replace the PC I use now, which is really adequate for business use but it's based on a BTX motherboard,
and those have a high rate of failure and I'd like to retire it before it commits thermal suicide.

I fully expect the gamer to end up with at least 16 GB of RAM and both motherboard can take a lot more than
that. The S5000 board will take 32 GB in 8 sticks, and the S5520 board has a dozen RAM slots (six per processor)
and can take a system total of 192 GB.

I'm always checking ebay for better deals on memory and processors. If someone puts up some really nice
E5600 series processors for a too-low buy it now price, there's a good chance I'll score them and upgrade.

Neither of these boards supports SLI or Crossfire but that doesn't matter to me as there are plenty of good
video cards out there that are more than strong enough to handle the worst thing I'll ever throw at them,
without having to buy two of them.

My current rig is a Digital Storm Black Ops Syndicate with:

Intel Core i7 990X six core 3.47Ghz
12 GB DDR3 RAM
EVGA GeForce GTX 590
23 inch Asus Monitor w/NVIDIA 3D glasses
80GB Intel solid state drive
1 TB storage drive

Since this is my first computer since 1999, I'm catching up on over ten years of games, and have about 60 first/third person shooters installed. Have played through about a third of them so far. Currently working on Rage, Pariah, Gears of War, Serious Sam 2 and Serious Sam 3.

Why not:

Corsair Obsidian Series 650D case
GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD7-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) (mild OC to 4.0)
16Gb CORSAIR Vengeance (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
CORSAIR CWCH60 Hydro Series H60 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
CORSAIR Professional Series HX1050 1050W ATX12V Semi Modular Power Supply
2 x Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive (RAID0)
SAMSUNG Black Blu-ray Combo SATA Model SH-B123L LightScribe Support
EVGA GTX 580
2 X LG Flatron 24" monitors
Some kind of 5 speaker + sub audio deal

It runs everything I have thrown at it. Never even a little problem and very good performance.

It's only my second build, and I have to be honest ...... I have no idea what I'm doing. I would love to have a real guru go through the thing to see
what could be tweaked.

Nice build. Good selection of components in there(except for all that nasty Intel stuff ). Needs a wire tuck, though. You could either tuck everything but the PSU wiring and put a false floor in there, or tuck the PSU wiring in to the HDD cage and cut out a rectangle from that thin foam that ships with MBs to cover the side of the cage facing the window(if that case has a windowed side panel, don't remember). I did the latter.

If you do the tuck you'll find that some wiring isn't long enough to hide anywhere. You can either buy extension cables(might not be available for everything you want to extend) or if you're comfortable cutting/splicing shit then you can easily extend wires so you can route/hide them behind the MB panel. I did this on mine, plus all my molex-powered gear runs to a 12-post/3-rail terminal block that has a female molex plug wired to it. This mod reduced the amount of wiring and molex plugs that I needed to hide and makes swapping molex components a breeze, the downside is that these components needed their plugs cut off which isn't really a con for me but might be for others. Here's a pic of my last molex terminal block mod with only the PSU-side wired up at the time of the photo...

Case: Corsair 400R
Motherboard: MSI 990FXA-GD80
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 975
Memory: 8GB Patriot G2 (2x4GB)
GPU: Radeon 6950 2GB
PSU: PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk2 750W
Primary storage: 2x 64GB Crucial M4 in Raid0
Second storage 1x Seagate 7200.11 1TB HDD

I love the SSDs, they are insanely fast!

I've been AMD since I built my first rig back in high school. Back then had a Athlon x64 3400+, ran circles around my friends Pentium 4s!

They aren't faster than Intel anymore, but they are the better deal. I'd rather save the money on the CPU and put it into the GPU on a gaming rig. Also there's something cool about having CPU, GPU and chipset all from the same company!