Your best bet is to build your own. You can get exactly what you need and it is not very hard. If you want help picking parts, let me know.

Oh, and as always, no one can help unless we know your budget. Gaming PCs can range from $300 to $3000. What are you willing to spend?

$1000 to $1500. I would love to have help picking parts.

You can build a pretty decent machine with that budget. I did much the same about a year ago, ordering parts off of Newegg. I'd be happy to lend a hand with that as well.

Agreed, 1000-1500 is a great range. Next questiions are:
- What is an example game you want to play on max settings?
- Do you want a normal sized or a small computer tower?
- Hard drive size requirements?
- Do you already have a monitor / keyboard / mouse or do you need new?

$1500 is plenty to buy an excellent machine that will play almost anything for several years.

I recommend NewEgg. Their prices are reasonable and they have excellent customer service. I believe you can also get 30 days of Premier (equivalent to Amazon Prime) for free, which you should do before purchasing you components.

Here is what you'll need. Hopefully some of these things can be salvaged from a previous rig:

CPU
Fan
Mobo
GPU
RAM
SSD
HDD(?)
Optical
Case
PSU
Keyboard
Mouse
Speakers/Headphone
Windows

I like to start with the CPU:

Some general info on naming: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/processor-numbers.html

I would suggest either the i5-4690K or the i5-6600K (i7 are a waste of money for gaming imho so I didn't look at them. You will spend an extra $100 but won't see a difference 90% of the time)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117372

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117561

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/skylake-intel-core-i7-6700k-core-i5-6600k,review-33276-7.html

The 4690K is older but still a powerhouse. Looking at the benchmarks I posted, you can see it falls just behind the newer 6600K. The 6600K requires a new socket (1151 instead of 1150) so your CPU choice will really impact every other component. If you go with the 4690K, you will save some money on each component, but these are all nearing End-Of-Life and so you won't be able to upgrade easily in a few years. With the 6600K, you'll need to pay more for everything for the newer tech, but you will be at the start of a new line of specs, so if you want to upgrade, it will be easier. Honestly, I think either way is fine, but it's up to you.

Save a little money but kill your ability to upgrade
Spend a little extra and allow for upgrading in the future (FWIW, this is what I would do)

Or buy an AMD chip and simultaneously save money and leave yourself open to upgrade.

We can look at GPU at the same time as it is largely independent from your other choices:

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU15/1248

The best graphics card you can buy is the GTX 980 TI but is it really worth $650? I would say no.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487142

I'd recommend getting something in the $300 range and then upgrading in 2 years if needed. You'll have spent the same amount of money (or less) and won't have noticed a difference.

I have the 970 and it is amazing. I haven't had any issues with games at highest settings. Now, I'm not running on a 4K monitor, so I'm not exactly sure where the max is, but based on the benchmarks, I can say the 980 isn't twice as good. Here is a slightly updated version of what I have:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487088

You'll note that many companies make cards with the NVIDIA GTX 970, such as EVGA, MSI, and Gigabyte. Personally, I've always had a good experience with EVGA, so I've never felt the need to look elsewhere. I did a quick search and the MSI and Gigabyte versions of the 970 don't appear to be any cheaper, so I would stick with EVGA, but others may disagree.

You could also skip NVIDIA all together and look at AMD (formally ATI) cards. Again, this comes down to personal taste, but I like NVIDIA. If for some reason you'd like an AMD, I can help you look, but I'd need to do more research before I could give a reasonable suggestion.

It's true you can save yourself about $100-$150 going with an AMD CPU. Those savings come at a cost, imho. AMD vs intel is a discussion in and of itself. Neither is a bad choice, but you should know the trade-offs.

The first thing is when you get a CPU your a committing a lot of your components to that brand for the life of the machine. If I had to bet in 4 years if intel or AMD was making better CPUs, I'd pick intel every time. The other issue (and we would need to find benchmarks if OP cared) is that I believe single core performance of AMD chips is quite bad. They solve this by having ~2x the cores that intel does, which is fine, unless you are running something single-threaded, which is not unreasonable with a lot of games, in which case your CPU will not be up to the task.

Again, though, either can be fine. If OP cares we can look into it more.

- What is an example game you want to play on max settings?
Fallout 4, Farcry 4, WoW, and I'm sure lots of other things. This is for both myself and my boys (20, 13, and 11 year olds.)

- Do you want a normal sized or a small computer tower?
No need to be small.

- Hard drive size requirements?
Want plenty of space.

- Do you already have a monitor / keyboard / mouse or do you need new?
Need new.

NewEgg + 30 days of Premier - check

SSD / HDD? Are we talking solid state versus non-solid state? Or is HDD something else?

What is meant by Optical and PSU?

i5-4690K vs i5-6600K, my instinct is 4690K because odds are I won't be upgrading. But my current computer is a 32 bit from right at the end of the 32 bit because I was still scared of things working on 64 bit and now the new stuff won't work on my 32 bit. So I could go either way.

AMD? I've gone that route in the past, but this time I'm thinking Intel.

EVGA 970 sounds good.

Guess I need to setup a NewEgg account with a shopping cart and start collecting things.

Thanks for all input, even from those I am opting against. It is still really good to hear.

Let's go i5-6600K.

"SSD / HDD? Are we talking solid state versus non-solid state? Or is HDD something else?"

When I built my computer I bought a 250 GB SSD and a 3 TB HDD. The SSD was for the OS and my main games, while the rest of my games and data went on the HDD.

I am no expert so I went to a forum dedicated to build desktop computers. I created a thread where I stated my budget and what I was looking for. In my case I wanted gaming computer that would play the latest games AND that was super quiet. A number of people who were very knowledgeable basically chose all the parts for me, with a focus on giving the best bang for my buck.

https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum/7

Definitely gave me a much better system than if bought a pre-made computer. The link I posted is an Australian forum, but there must be an American forum that is similar. There is a pretty good wiki on the site with some example builds for a range of budgets.

For $1500 you should be able to get a kick-ass system, assuming the monitor is separate. But even if that budget includes a monitor you can a system that will do what you want.

Alright, we'll move forward with the i5-6600K build. The rest of the stuff is pretty easy.

Finding a pc forum is good, but you should look for a US-based one, or you're going to have a hard time finding the components they're talking about.

You should definitely get a SSD (solid state drive) but you may also want a 2nd HDD (hard disk drive) if you want to store lots of movies, for instance. I'll show you some good ones as I did for the CPU/GPU.

By optical I meant CD/ROM drive. Probably the cheapest there is unless you want to use this to watch BluRay movies. PSU is power supply unit. Some cases come with one, but it's better to buy your own usually. Again, I'll show you some links to these as well.

Please don't feel compelled to stick to these items; you can change them at any time, but just to keep track:

CPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117561
Fan
Mobo
GPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487088
RAM
SSD
HDD(?)
Optical
Case
PSU
Keyboard
Mouse
Speakers/Headphone
Windows

Ah right. I hadn't heard it called a PSU before. Should have figured it out by process of elimination. And figured optical was CD/ROM but thought there might have been something more too it.

Don't need BluRay, got consoles and BluRay players for that on the TVs.

Yes on HDD for extra space as the four of us take up a lot of space. Not storing movies, but one of them likes doing video clips of his gaming, and it always sucks to be short on disk space when it is so very cheap.

Sure thing. I'm at work ATM, bit tonight I'll show you all the other parts id recommend and you can decide if you like it.

I'll say though that my luck with monitors hasn't been great, so if anyone has one theyd recommend please speak up (for both of us)!

People have different opinions on Mobos. Some people just get something really cheap because it's an easy way to save money. I prefer to get a more expensive one for two reasons:
1) You are sure you don't have to worry about any bandwidth issues (no sense buying expensive CPU/GPU to be throttled by a cheap mobo.
2) They are a real pain in the ass to replace/upgrade, so if you get a good one at the start, you can keep it for the life of the rig.

Now, that doesn't mean you need to go crazy. For instance, here are two Asus mobos, one for $200 and one for $150:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132565
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132566

What are you actually getting for the extra $50?

Turbo-boost (this actually isn't true; if you look here https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/Z170-A/specifications/ you'll see all Z170-A support Turbo-boost even though it's only advertised on the more expensive one)
More BW on your PCIe slots (This could be an issue if you were to SLI or have a lot of other PCIe slots. But with just one GPU, this can't possibly matter, imho)
Better Audio Chip (Who cares? If you care about audio, you should buy a separate card, not spend more on a mobo)
Some other small things.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend the $200 one as you start to see real diminishing returns. And, these are only the Asus models. MSI and Gigabyte also make good mobos, but I have always had good experiences with Asus. I took a brief look at MSI and Gigabyte and they didn't seem to be having any particularly good deals. For instance, though, this Gigabyte appears equivalent to the $150 Asus but is $25 cheaper:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA24G3KG3691

If you wanted to go even cheaper, you could get something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128843

It's not a bad choice by any means, but it's not what I would personally do. Of the ones listed here, I would go with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132566 but really any here are fine, it's just what you're willing to spend for what you get.

Here's another one that seems reasonable: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132567

When it comes to RAM, there are a lot of numbers, most of which, honestly, don't matter.

You'll need DDR4 RAM with this mobo and it comes in different speeds and latencies. After a certain threshold, it really doesn't pay off to buy faster/lower latency RAM. If you're really curious, I'd recommend reading this, which is quite informative: http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/memory-performance-speed-latency

The point, though, is if you don't buy garbage RAM, you can save yourself some money by not going crazy. I'd recommend G.Skill, Corsair, HyperX, or Kingston depending on who has the better deal at the time.

Here are a few to pick from. Are you going to see a difference between any of these? Personally, I'd suspect the answer is no, so you can go with the cheapest option. But you can get a more expensive one if you want.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231888
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233835
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231929
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231902

I'd highly recommend you stick to 2x8GB. 16GB is more than sufficient for quite a while, but leaving 2 slots open allows you to upgrade easier in the future.

Storage is very simple. Buy a Samsung SSD, because the others simply aren't as good. You'll note that Samsung as a Pro line of SSDs that are twice as expensive as their normal line. For gaming, I believe this is a waste of money. The specs are better, but you aren't going to see the increase in daily use.

I'd recommend this in either 250GB or 500GB depending on what you're willing to spend:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147372

250GB should be plenty, but if you don't want to deal with storage management, 500GB isn't a bad idea.

If you want more space, HDDs are very cheap. Both Seagate and Western Digital are good brands. In the past, I've always bought Seagate Barracudas because I'm a big Heart fan, but they've been rebranded, so we have more options available now:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236339

You can go up to 2TB if you want, but the drives get slower, noisier, and more prone to fail. Unless you know you're going to be be ripping HD movies or something, I'd recommend 1TB and then add storage if you need to latter.

Cheapest CD/DVD burner that didn't look like it would instantly break. It's actually the same price as just the DVD/ROM drives, so might as well get the burner. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204

CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117561
Fan
Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132566
GPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487088
RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231929
SSD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147372
HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236339
CD/DVD burner: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135204
Case
PSU
Keyboard
Mouse
Speakers/Headphone
Windows

The 500GB SSD was only 150 compared to 90 for the 250GB so was tempting, but the total in my cart is getting very close to a thousand. After adding the other pieces, I may bump it up to the 500GB. Looking very nice, thank you for all the help.

Man, back in the day of pentiums and voodoo2 cards I knew what was what and could put one of these together easy. I know I could now too if I just put in the research time, but I've never been great at research.

Modern games are so huge storage wise, if you can stretch your budget to 500 GB it will be worth it in the long run. I ran out of room on my 250 GB SSD very quickly. Then again you can always add another one later.

I'm inclined to agree with spyman on the SSD. I have almost completely filled my 500GB SSD with 26 Steam games plus LoL, EVE, WoWS, and WItcher III. You can buy a 2nd SSD but it involves storage management that I find annoying. I would probably ditch the HDD for now and get the bigger SSD. But truly, it's whatever works for you.

We are getting close to your budget, but that's OK. I like to pick out the components I (reasonably) want (as you've been doing) and then go back to cut things if needed.

Also, please note that almost every one of these items has a promotion that is *not* automatically applied! Don't forget to apply these at checkout!

PSU is another area where people like to save money, but I think that is unwise for 3 reasons:

1) PSU are not as efficient at high loads, so running a large powersupply at 50% is more efficient than a small powersupply at 80%. It will last longer and generate less heat.

2) Brown outs will damage your expensive electronics, so is the risk worth saving a little money?

3) The PSU is a pain to replace, and you don't want to be limited by power if you decide to upgrade your graphics card in the future.

http://images10.newegg.com/BizIntell/tool/psucalc/index.html?name=Power-Supply-Wattage-Calculator
http://www.coolermaster.com/power-supply-calculator/

I plugged in your components and NewEgg recommends 691W whereas CoolerMaster recommends 388W (but really 550W). NewEgg is notorious for recommending PSUs that are much too large.

The other thing to note is efficiency rating, which uses the 80 Plus standard. A more efficient PSU will waste less power. This probably doesn't impact your electricity bill if you're just playing games (versus running an always-on server, for instance) but that inefficiency does lead to excess heat. You can learn more about the standard here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_Plus

I think this Corsair 600W 80 Plus Bronze would work well. Plenty of additional power for upgrades and a reasonable price:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139028

If you want the Gold efficiency and modular cables (which is nice, but not needed) you could look at this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139143

If you really want to save money, you could go for the 500W, but like I said, is $15 worth worrying about power? Personally, I say no, but you may not care:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139027

The OEM CPU fans that shipped with intel used to be absolute garbage. Honestly, I think they're better now, but I still buy my own because of all the bad memories I've had.

I'd recommend this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099

The picture does not do justice to how large it truly is. You will go into shock when you see it.

Do you need it? No, but you can buy it if you want.

Yeah, I noticed the promotion codes. I will definitely have to make sure I get all of those entered.

Added the CPU fan.

Jumping from $65 to $100 on the bronze versus gold PSU. That's a big jump. What does the modular cables do for me? Or maybe more to the point, what does the lack of them mean with the cheaper one?

Also, on the $100 one, it says " $79.99 after $20.00 rebate card". What does that mean? That after I buy it I'll be able to get a manufacturers rebate or something?