People stopped playing them seriously because they are bad maps. Nostalgic to pub? Sure. But no one wants to play them competitively.

FGC and Harvard with the upsets damn I didn't see those coming.

Everything's here but the SSD and the case. Was hoping to get it all here so I could build over the weekend but oh well. I do have a question though - I get about .5dl speed at best - so re-downloading all my games would be a pain (it would take weeks. on my laptop I always did downloads when I visited a friend out of town). I do have an external harddrive. What files do I need to move onto that and where do I put them once I have steam on the new computer? I'm thinking I just want to move the most basic part so I can do a clean, new install on the computer.

I only did my bracket on paper this year for my work pool or I would. I fucking love March. I would work all the other holidays to get game days off. It's not like I'm actually doing my job/school work during March Madness any ways.

Yeeeaaah I did. I can't handle that many watts.
So I ordered it all. And ordered all but two things off of Amazon (so I could use the 30 amazon prime 2 day shipping free trial). Then the last two things I got off Newegg and apparently this comes with Bioshock Infinite and Tombraider free so that's nice.
Thank you very much for all the help guys. I'll let people know once I get everything and hopefully manage to build it lego style.

Thanks a lot guys. I upgraded to the ivy bridge, though I'm not sure what it does. Higher numbers seem to be good in general for computers. I don't seem to have access to a free copy of Windows 8, but I'm going to go ahead and spend a bit extra for the upgrades (there's a deal on the i7 too, get a 25$ giftcard from newegg, so that saves some indirectly). I tried the other case - but it has a compatibility issue with the motherboard according to the pc part picker - some issue with the usb 3.0 ports. And I went ahead and got a cheap Microsoft keyboard. If I don't like it, I'll look into the mechanical ones. So I guess it's time to start buying. And I just found 70$ in Amazon giftcards from Christmas, so that helps.

Edit: Looking at your ideas above. Thank you.
Edit2: Ok here's my real final build hopefully:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($229.99 @ Microcenter)
Motherboard: ASRock Z75 Pro3 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($79.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Patriot Viper 3 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($65.79 @ Amazon)
Storage: Crucial M4 64GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($72.51 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($69.98 @ Outlet PC)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7850 2GB Video Card ($184.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Xigmatek ASGARD PRO (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8 Full (64-bit) ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Keyboard: Microsoft Keyboard 200 Wired Standard Keyboard ($9.98 @ Outlet PC)
Total: $913.20
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-03-19 21:44 EDT-0400)

Its ~1000. The 918 is assuming I go to Microcenter- there's one in northern Virginia about 3 hours away, but I work 6 days a week, generally, and need to do schoolwork/errands on Sundays, and I'm definently not spending the rare weekend off to buy a computer part. Plus there and back I'm barely saving anything after the gas money.

They also unpurpled my mann co cap. Seems sorta unlike Valve to take away a cosmetic feature.

Views would be nice. Seeing +/- frags both puts further focus on fairly unimportant things.

Thanks for reminding me. I think I probably could get a free copy legit.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-2600 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($299.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock Z75 Pro3 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($79.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Patriot Viper 3 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($65.79 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($69.98 @ Outlet PC)
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 60GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($79.00 @ Adorama)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7850 2GB Video Card ($184.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Xigmatek ASGARD PRO (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($49.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8 Full (64-bit) ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $979.70
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-03-18 20:18 EDT-0400)

This should be my final build. Anything wrong with this that I'm missing, or suggestions in general?

Dh is definitely entertaining. Always helps my shotty aim too, just miss 4 rockets and switch.

Ok. So I think I'll upgrade to an i7 and a slightly bigger hard drive. I'm not going to bother trying to overclock. Thank you. I'll probably bump this when I'm ready to put it all together (though I might buy it piece by piece when there's some deals).
If anyone has suggestions for keyboards, that'd be great.

Thanks for letting me know, sounds like a great service. Long run though, I think I'm going to be benefited learning to do this myself.

Thank you very much. A few questions/changes though - I have a monitor, so I figured I could take that money and upgrade a few things. First, I'd like to get a 1T hard drive (I have lots of music and the like so 500 will have me running out of space quickly). Also, is there a sigificant difference in price/quality/power jumping from i5 to i7? And do I need to get some sort of fan too?
Also, I forgot to mention in the original post that I would like to stream in the future. Is this build sufficient for streaming games or do I need more?
The SSD is the thing that lets you reboot much faster right?
And I do need a keyboard. I see a lot of people talking about mechanical keyboards; what exactly are the benefits of these over regular ones? Thank you.

<$1000 (I'm thinking that could get me what I want). And a computer that could run TF2 and the like consistently well, and run games like BF3 decently (but I'm ok with lower graphics/less performance for more intensive games like this).
From what you guys have said so far, I think I do want to build one myself.