to be honest....amd might be a better bang for your buck option...especially if you trying to be competitive and no have a huge budget. your best might be a combination of used and new parts. the FX series with DDR3 (16 gb) should be very get able in your price range. Then the other components can all be new as you can use them again in future build once you've familiarized yourself with "beginner" stages of build, pc gaming etc. You reuse your Power supply, Case, Fan, Coolers Etc once youve got a better budget down the line and you wouldn't be losing much in resell value if you are buying the CPU and DDR3 anyways. Hope it helps