Need a budget build from Santa's little helpers....

[broke-law-student]

Approximate Purchase Date: Holiday Sale period

Budget Range: $400-500 after rebates

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Work, school, web streaming, and gaming (Total War Series mostly RTS type games)

Are you buying a monitor: No

Do you need to buy OS: Super student discount

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Whatever works

Location: Austin, TX

Parts Preferences: Intel, but open to some quality AMD builds

Overclocking: No

Thanks

 

[g-unit1111]

It probably wouldn't make sense to go Intel on this kind of budget as you'd need a dedicated video card. Try the AMD APU - it has really good integrated graphics and a more than capable CPU.

Check this out:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD A10-5800K 3.8GHz Quad-Core Processor ($129.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock FM2A75 Pro4 ATX FM2 Motherboard ($86.97 @ Newegg)
Memory: Mushkin Silverline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($37.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($88.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Antec One ATX Mid Tower Case ($54.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 430W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($70.17 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($22.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $492.06
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-11-29 12:57 EST-0500)