So my brother wants to build a PC fairly cheaply, which will be able to play somewhat current games at a good settings level. Here's what he's got so far:
(All prices in NZD, some stuff is cheaper or more expensive compared to US prices)
Case: Antec One - $71
RAM: Kingston ValueRAM DDR3 PC10600/1333MHz CL9 4GB x2 - $82
CPU: AMD A6 3670 Black edition - $171
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4H - $180
PSU: Silverstone Strider ST50F-P 500W - $105
HD: WD Black 500GB - $71
Monitor: AOC e2260Swdn 21.5inch - $155
GPU: Sapphire Radeon R7 260X OC - $207

Comes to $1042NZD, which is roughly $870 USD.

Anything he should look at changing? What would the bottleneck be? C&C pl0x!

I can't comment on price other than:
Antec cases are generally overpriced
that's a lot of money to spend on a motherboard
the PSU seems to be extremely expensive
Solid state drives are phenomenal.

Putting some money into the wrong places.

More video card, less mobo.

The mobo is the cheapest Socket FM1 from Asus or Gigabyte that he could find; should he switch CPU so he can get a cheaper mobo? What CPU should he be looking at instead?

I don't like the PSU. Corsairs usually offer a better value or are cheaper. Power rating is fine though.

Can't tell you where to find deals in New Zealand but that mobo is too expensive in comparison to the other parts.
Should be around 100 NZD probably. If necessary switch to another manufacturer.

Get a SSD! No computer should be built without one of those nowadays. 128GB ones are pretty affordable and the tech is solid by now.
When you get an SSD there's no need to get a black series HDD. Before SSDs people went with blacks because they have low access times, which is what you need for a system drive. For a storage drive you need raw transfer speed so I'd recommend a barracuda.
Also consider a larger HDD. Space requirements tend to go up over time.

Video cards are the (only) limiting factor for gaming. Any excess money should go into it.
200 NZD is pretty close to the sweet spot for good gaming power before the prices begin to shoot up. But you could still go up as high as 250-300 NZD before paying too much for the value. As far as I can tell there's no GPU that is considerably faster relative to its price. You usually pay for what you get.
Keep in mind that some games offer extremely enhanced graphical effects when you activate PhysX and that only nVidia GPUs support it. So when you have an AMD GPU your CPU has to render PhysX effects which is usually too much for it to handle, so you have to at least lower or even disable PhysX effects.

Various comments on components I can't say much about:
Case: Get a big one
CPU: Doesn't matter
RAM: 2x4GB and speeds are fine
Monitor: Seems like something cheap to get him started

Disclaimer: NZD = New Zealand Dollar (duh). It's a monetary eco system completely unfamiliar to me so take the values above with a grain of salt. They are only rough estimates.

I'm going to base my opinions on prices from http://nz.pcpartpicker.com/.

Popular case, and it seems to be a good price. It has a couple 2.5" bays, so you can mount an SSD in there no problem if you wanted.

As far as I can tell, this is a great deal, and it's nice that it comes in 2x4GB.

These prices seem a bit high. Try the A8-5600K (approximately same performance) for $142 and the GA-F2A88X-D3H for $155.

I don't see any PSUs at a decent price, but you can save a few bucks by stepping down to 450W and getting this Cooler Master PSU for $81.

Double the storage for $15 more: WD Caviar Blue 1TB for $87
And if you're looking for an SSD, the best I could find that isn't a questionable drive is the Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB for $135.

Good price. It sounds like the monitor doesn't come with a DVI cable, so you'll need to get one (your GPU doesn't have a D-Sub).

That seems to be a good price for that card.

As others have stated, the GPU is almost always going to be your bottleneck for gaming. Boot time and opening applications will be greatly improved by including an SSD; most people recommend installing your OS and frequently-used programs on the SSD, and storing documents, other programs, music, videos, etc. on an HDD.

Pricespy.co.nz is the best site I know of for finding prices of parts in NZ.

The only thing about getting is an SSD is that 128GB will probably not be enough space for him in the long term; if he got one then he'd need a storage drive too, which means you're buying both an SSD and a storage drive. As he's trying to go fairly cheap on this build, I recommended him to go with just an HDD. I'll ask him to see what he thinks about going with just an SSD though, and if he needs more space he can buy an HDD later.

$155 still seems fairly high, is there no better combo where the mobo is cheaper?

In CHCH we have a place called the EcoShop, which I think is run by the council, anyway they have a collection point at the dump where they take old things people don't want and then re-sell them in their big warehouse.

Anyway they have lots of flatscreen monitors for $20-30. I'm not saying they're great; a lot of them aren't widescreen, but if you have a place like that in Auckland then you could potentially save quite a bit of $ on a monitor that way. I mean lets face it, you don't need to buy brand-new everything, and the monitor there is taking up a big chunk of your budget. Could always go with a secondhand / non-widescreen monitor for now and buy a new one later when he has more money available.

Also trademe for second hand monitors. Here's a 20" widescreen (ignore answer saying it isn't wide 'cause resolution shows it is): http://www.trademe.co.nz/computers/monitors/lcd-monitors/auction-683873660.htm

In fact in the price range he's looking, probably buying second hand parts off trademe will get you better bang for buck. RAM, CPU, mobo graphics are all things you can easily get second hand, and case too. Really the only thing I wouldn't get second hand would be the PSU and HD.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 16 2014, 9:18 am by Lanthanide.

No excuses. Get him a SSD.

If on such a tight budged get him a 64GB SSD which should be around 80 NZD.
It's still enough for your OS and programs. Just no games on top of it. But 90% of the reason you get a SSD is the OS so that's fine.

I can't overstate how SSDs improve the responsiveness of your computer. There is no other part that gets you nearly as much performance increase for so little money. Better cut on RAM (8GB is luxury, 4 GB is fine for almost everything) or CPU or even case rather than on the SSD.