CPU SPECS

[Elucidator]

I see your point, however, as I said before, the task manager does not always show true CPU core counts or rather it is not a reliable way to know how many cores your CPU has, take my laptop for example, the task manager shows four graphs for my core i3-3110m which is definitely a mobile dual core CPU... the introduction of hyperthreads made things easier to fool people especially those who arent knowledgeable in these areas... use CPU-Z when in doubt since its much more reliable and make sure its your own copy, or just google the CPU model yourself...

I've seen lots of people get fooled by the task manager and one of those instances is my friend's case, his Pentium HT CPU which shows two graphs and his device manager shows two processors although its definitely a single core CPU... the bad thing is its his own uncle who assured him its a dual core CPU so hes not getting an upgrade anytime soon... then again the i5 listed there, i dont even know what model it is, be extra careful in examining it before buying...

about the RAM, its important for the trinity APU to get the fastest RAM he can get since if hes planning on using the integrated GPU then the RAM will become the bottleneck of his system... Even for my laptop, my HD 4000 is bottlenecked by RAM in both size and speed, upgrading it to dual channel and increasing size to 8GB yielded way faster performance than before... and besides system RAM is much slower than its GDDR counterparts, and RAM is cheap these days, I bought mine on Ebay, so you definitely need as much speed as possible...

personally, I prefer buying my own parts than buying a "package" from that list since its too vague and quality isn't assured at all...

and one more thing, those GPUs you were talking about are way more expensive here in my country and were late compared to the US... very late...

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then again maybe you should just wait for Kaveri, the trinity APU is good value for money however, with Kaveri already available overseas and with the push of Mantle and HSA, the Kaveri offers more potential performance increases than the iseries Intel CPUs, although sheer CPU performance crown still belongs to Intel...

heres the rundown:

No money limit = get Intel i7 CPU, if youre not into overclocking get Haswell, if you are, get sandybridge or ivybridge.
watch out for the E in the model # its usually the fastest variant, example is ivybridge E (E for extreme)
get high end discrete GPU, its up to you what brand, radeons can now match nvidia although hotter and more power
hungry they're cheaper to buy though...
a good RAM, avoid 1600mhz... at least 8GB
get SSD(solid state drive) now boot up time really will be in seconds!

midddle class = get i5 CPU, avoid i3s since they dont have turbo boost, see above...
still better to get middle class discrete GPU...
1600mhz is good enough but push for 1866mhz RAM...
a 64gb SSD should be enough for a windows drive and frequently used apps, get HDD as well for general storage...

budget gaming = get an APU, preferably Kaveri, top end kaveri is around as much as an entry level i5...
no need for discrete GPU in this case, entry level GPU's are easily beaten by kaveri's integrated GPU
put the money saved from not buying a discrete GPU to a better RAM(very important for an APU!)...
no choice here actually, get a 7200RPM HDD, if you have some money left, get a 32GB SSD strictly for windows...

applies to all: get a good screen, IPS LCDs is the way to go, if on a budget, order from taiwan, its cheap there...
get a good cooler, water cooling for middle and no money limit, decent air cooler for budget...
get a good case, prioritize airflow than design...
get a good PSU, make sure youre PSU can power all the components and still have some room to spare, calculate it
carefully...

I still have many things to add but its getting too long, but most of the basic stuff should be there...
its still hard to assemble in this country hahaha!

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oh and the motherboard! hahaha!, I wont list it all but get the best one you can find!