On amd vs intel there really is slight but next to no difference at the mid range level (think i5 in terms of preformance) though at the upper range level intel pulls ahead (think i7/E chips) and at lower range levels amd wins due to price(think i3 and lower) and amd wins with there APU's in integrated graphics. Now for Nvidia Vs AMD basicly the same thing except Nvidia is intel and Amd has a lot of good game bundles and is the maker of all the next gen console chips so will probably have better drivers for them. tl;dr Intel and Nvidia = Extremely powerful but at a price Amd = good price to preformance. onto the other things Processor: (talked about) Motherboard: based on Cpu Graphic Card: (talked about) Case: really personal preference you can go really big really tiny or in between Power supply: Based on Cpu and Gpu RAM: unless you make youtube videos and do encoding you only need 8gb for gaming(preferably at 1600mhz) the price on these will go up even more in the next few days (due to This) so something like This Disk Drive: How much do you need? and with your budget you could go with a SSD + HDD combo Cooling: I would say stay away from wannabe water cooling(all AIO) Anything I'm forgetting: do you have keyboard, mouse and monitor ? oh and do you need a cd/dvd drive? and so you need windows?