Truly Need help building my first gaming PC

[joserosanieves56]

Hey everyone, I am truly new on building a gaming PC. Today my wife's cousin gave me a NZXT tower and a WD 1TB 32MB cache Harddrive. Nevertheless, I was motivated/determined to build me a affordable gaming computer that will fit my gaming needs. Now mind you, I only want to build this PC with the intention on playing games such as; Medieval:Total War, Rome:Total War, Shogun etc. Now I have compiled a couple of hardware on my AMAZON account and I am looking at under $300 budget. Which is what I wanted. But I am not sure if the hardware are compatible with each other. I tried to do as much research as I could, and read descriptions, but I still feel skeptical on buying the hardware right away. Ok this is the list that I have so far.....

PROCESSOR:   Intel G3258 4 Pentium 3.20 GHz 3M Cache 2 Core Processor (BX80646G3258) by Intel


MEMORY :Kingston HyperX FURY 8GB Kit (2x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3 CL10 DIMM - Black (HX316C10FBK2/8) by Kingston


POWER SUPPLY: EVGA 500 B1 80+ BRONZE, 500W Continuous Power, 3 Year Warranty Power Supply 100-B1-0500-KR by EVGA


GRAPHICS CARD: EVGA GeForce GT 730 2GB GDDR5 64bit DVI/HDMI/VGA Low Profile Graphics Card 02G-P3-3733-KR by EVGA

MOTHERBOARD: MSI Intel H81 LGA 1150 DDR3 USB 3.1 Micro ATX Motherboard (H81M-E34) by MSI

Any help would be truly helpful

[Geek-9pm]

OK. This is a draft list - Right?
You have not yet invested anything?
Do you prefer Intel over AMD?
Have any friends of yours ever recommended MSI?
Have you looked at:
GIGABYTE GA-H81M-DS2
Just gainsaying... If you really want the MSI, that's OK

[joserosanieves56]

Yes, this is a draft list of me just looking through AMAZON reviews and trying to put together a solid gaming PC for my budget while also making sure these pieces can run with each other. No, i'm not sure which is better, Intel or AMD? I just happen to come across the MSI motherboard. I can look into the one you sent me. Do you think all of these can run together?

[Calum]

Welcome to the forums
A website you may find useful is pcpartpicker.com - they get prices from a variety of retailers, and when you select parts it'll automatically filter out parts that aren't compatible, which is really helpful for a first time builder.

I've put together a very rough build for you here - http://pcpartpicker.com/list/dm2bjc
To outline the differences:
The GTX 950 is significantly more powerful than the GT 730, which isn't really suitable for a gaming card.
The CPU and chipset are newer, meaning I've chosen DDR4 RAM as the board in "my" build doesn't take DDR3.
I generally avoid MSI boards where possible due to previous bad experiences.

Where would I improve my selection?  I'd really try and squeeze in an SSD if at all possible as it'll make a huge difference compared to a HDD.  Other than that I'm not sure where I could make any cost effective little upgrades as the next in line Intel CPU worth buying adds quite a bit to the cost, but it's an option for the future perhaps as you could easily drop in an i3, i5, or even an i7.
It may be worth exploring an AMD-based option although that leaves you with less of an upgrade path - I don't have much time to check into that right now but I'm sure camerongray will be along shortly to offer some thoughts on this and probably improvements to my very quick thrown-together build above