Opinions: $1100 build. Worth it?

[PerryC]

This is on Newegg for $19.99 right now as one of their daily deals... Newegg.ca - Logitech MK120 Black USB Wired Slim Desktop

[Dragonstongue]

I would go for a i5 2500 if u can swing it, so much more oomph available to it, the 2400 little less, 2300 even less. Asus make solid boards but tend to be a little $ compared to competition, whomever you decide to go for a Z68 based board is the best option, although a GTX550 is newer then GTX460 1gb 336 shader core, I would go for a 460, they are more powerfull on average, and about same price, however ASUS GeForce GTX 550 Ti DC Top 975MHZ 1GB 4.1GHZ GDDR5 DVI HDMI VGA PCI-E Video Card - DirectCanada this might be a good pick, and is a really fair $. Power supply up to you, I would get one that has around 52a available, at least you know there is headroom then, but to each ther own opinions.

[supaflyx3]

personally.. if you're getting a P67 board, go for a 2500K, if not get a H67 board. I would go for a GTX460 over a 550ti, at $140 you can get a 22" 1080P monitor, and since ram is so cheap might as well go for 8GB, you'll want it later on.

[frontier204]

I'm with supaflyx3 in that I don't know why you are pairing a Core i5 2400 (that can't overclock much) with a P67 board (that is pretty much only useful if you want to overclock).
For the same money you can get an H67 board and have an IGP for when that rig inevitably becomes CPU-bound for gaming and you convert into an HTPC, server, or other low power computer.

Hmm did they just raise hard disk prices? I know for sure the Seagate 1TB was $50 before... Terabyte hard disks go on sale often enough that you should see a non-"green" one for $50 sometime in the remainder of this month. For optical drives I just get the cheapest one that can read/write the type of disc I want. $25-30 should get you a DVD dual layer burner. Unless you'll be burning 100 discs a month or something you won't notice the difference.

Compared to the iMac you listed, both your chosen CPU and GPU are one performance tier higher than the Mac's. My assumption is the 3.6 GHz Core i5 is a dual core or you got that stat wrong, and a GTX 550 Ti lies somewhere between the Radeon 5770 and 6850 in performance.

Do you really need a wireless keyboard and mouse? The battery / reception glitching is annoying while gaming and I have yet to read of a keyboard that has good enough encryption that your neighbours can't spy on what you're typing.