Build an 'ultimate value for money' PC

It's very easy to overspend on components when building a PC if you don't know which parts give you the best bang for the buck.

Here I'm going to look at the parts what should be in any 'ultimate value for money' PC you buy.

I'll show you the best sub-$200 processor, the best bank for the buck solid-state drive, a GPU for under $230 that will handle any game you can throw at it, and much more.

With high-end processors going for over a thousand dollars, care needs to be taken when choosing a CPU to make sure that you're getting the latest technology without breaking the bank.

Right now, my silicon of choice comes from Intel, and I believe that the best bang for the buck is offered by the quad-core 3.2GHz Core i5-3470 with built-in HD 2500 graphics. You get cutting-edge 22-nanometer Ivy Bridge technology at a price that won't break the bank.

At $200, this is a lot of silicon for the money.

Since I've gone for the Intel Core i5-3470 processor, I need a motherboard that supports the Socket LGA 1155. This is a popular socket, so there's a lot to choose from.

The motherboard that I've had good experiences with lately is the Asus P8Z77-V LE. For $150 you get a rock solid motherboard offering SATA 6GB/s, USB 3.0, and all the ports and connectors you expect from a top-class board. The board also comes with a host of overclocking features, and is ready for Windows 8.

Any powerful PC has two brains, in the form of a CPU and a GPU.

The stand out GPU at the moment in the Nvidia Geforce GTX 660. This card offers you the latest GPU technology for about $250, and can churn out well over 30 frames per second for any modern game title that you care to throw at it.

Of all the Nvidia GTX 660 cards out there, the Gigabyte GV-N660OC-2GD stands out head and shoulders above the rest in terms of performance and reliability. 

Picking a good solid-state drive means juggling storage capacity and performance against price. Given the staggering array of drives out there, finding the best one can be tricky.

Currently for solid-state drives the sweet spot for capacity is around 256GB, and from my experience the best drive in with this capacity is the Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD2. Here you get a 256GB drive that offers read speeds up to 500MB/s, and write speeds of around 260MB/s. There are faster and bigger drives out there, but for $170 the Crucial M4 is very hard to beat.

While solid-state drives are great if you want performance, their capacity sucks. If you want terabytes of storage then you're either going to need to take out a hefty business loan or make use of old hard drive technology.

There are a lot of high-capacity drives out there, but currently my favorite is the 3TB Western Digital WD Green WD30EZRX. I own a number of these and find them fast and reliable. WD Green drives run cool and quiet, and help to cut your power consumption.

At $140 each, what more could you ask for?

8GB is the new 4GB, so don't skimp on RAM. 8GB of RAM—in the form of two 4GB modules—should set you back no more than $50.

The RAM I go for when I want reliability is Corsair, and Vengeance branded modules with their custom low-profile heat spreaders, are an ideal choice.