Thanks to internet research and assistance from people on this forum i was able to order a decent computer system which arrived yesterday.

All separate components, since i was not able to find a complete system for that price - this is the first time that happened for a long time, usually complete systems are cheaper.

I was having fun assembling it last night with my 2 year old daughter 'helping' me! Hahahaha, at one point she managed to grab my screwdriver and a screw and tried screwing it into the computer in an attempt to copy what she saw her dad doing,,,, oh that was cute, and i was so proud!

When i opened the box for the graphics card i was quite shocked! Big huge thing - My first thought was "why don't they just make graphics cards with 'on board' computers?"

But as much as graphics cards have grown in size, i was equally surprised by how much the CPU has not! Looks pretty much exactly the same as it did 25 years ago, Weird eh?

I was also surprised by how small the SSD was! And i did not anticipate that i will need to buy a chassis for it to install in the computer.

I discovered i had bought only 1 8GB ram card instead of two 4GB ones which i had intended, so i won't get that dual RAM benefit - on the internet they say i probably won't notice the difference and the 8GB has better potential for upgrading (so long as i can find the same RAM).

What else... oh yea, in that Asrock motherboard, the primary SATA recommended for bootable devices is right under the end part of the graphics card, it is a son of a bitch to connect it unless you take the graphics card out first. And the board does not have a good spread of Chassis fan power, forcing cable to run right across the middle of the board - it will probably drop on the graphics card one day, melt and short everything out.


Here is the system from MWAVE;


ASRock Z87 Extreme4 LGA 1150 Motherboard $189.00
Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR3 1600MHz Memory CMZ8GX3M1A1600C10B $108.99
Antec EA-650 EarthWatts Platinum Power Supply $142.81
Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" SATA III SSD MZ-7TE250BW $195.00
Antec X1-E Mid-Tower Gaming ATX Case $69.00
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 OEM 64-Bit $115.00
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 2GB OC Edition Video Card $415.00
Intel Xeon E3-1230v3 Quad Core LGA 1150 3.3GHz CPU Processor $317.99
2 X Microsoft 2LF-00020 Wireless Desktop 800 Keyboard & Mouse $59.98 (extra set for my wife)

TOTAL = $1607.79


WD Elements 2TB USB3 Portable External Hard Drive WDBU6Y0020BBK $139.00
Shipping cost $27.78
Transaction fee $35.59
TOTAL = 1810.16