A little advice

I'll avoid making any specific hardware suggestions, since I usually go for solid budget builds rather than gaming PC builds, but I completely agree with AtomicWoodchuck. Building a PC is very easy and saves you a lot of money. Plus, you can get exactly what you want, as opposed to what you can find.

I've always made Newegg.com the center of my PC component planning and purchasing.

Tom's Hardware is great for reviews and specs of individual parts, and I've always relied on Videocardbenchmarks for clean listing of video card ratings, for comparison purposes.

It doesn't have to be anything that fancy, but spending a few bucks to make sure your PC is properly cooled (video card, CPU and case fans) is a solid investment. Also, don't try and skimp on the power supply. A rock solid power supply is the soul of your PC and a good one can last for years, through many upgrades.

You're wrong. Also, wait for the OP.

Ummm...those are 2 different types of coolers. The 660ti is a blower style(sucks air in and pumps the hot air it out the back of the case) and the 7970 is a fan(fans push air onto the heatsink and the hot air stays inside the case). Blower is louder and cannot hit as high of clocks as a fan style one but can be better in sli/crossfire(2+ cards) configuration because the blower doesn't have its hot air exhaust going into the other card. Either way, same clocks mean same performance(with the same model of card) so all brands and cooler model types run the same at base clocks, better brands and cooler means better temps at max and higher max overclocks.

Also watercooled graphics card hit even higher clock but are much more expensive (evga's 780ti blower style is $699 and the watercooled one is $899 and that is just the card, not the radiator, pump, liquid, reservoir).

If you're careful, the CPU heatsink isn't a biggie, although I always struggle with the stock Intel fans, and their ridiculously fiddly locking system.

When you compare it to painless and eminently sensible solutions for the same socket such as those employed by Noctua, and probably any other 3rd party making heatsinks for the damn thing, you wonder what went on inside the heads of Intel's finest the day they decided this was the way forward...

Luckily most modern chips have a thermal cut-out, to prevent overheating, although I wouldn't want to rely on this for my CPU's wellbeing...

Pretty sure that a $2000 computer (let alone $1000) runs better than a $300 one..

I'll wait for the new pumped maxwell series though. Also with nvidia you'll have physx.

OP left the building almost immediately after posting this thread :)

This is useful for me as well, I just built one for around $1000 but there's a lot I need to know and I didn't know this while picking motherboards (it's decent, phew). Will def keep in mind too. Wish I had more suggestions for OP but I'm a real newb too :)