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If you buy a 144Hz monitor, you'd better spend a few bucks more on GPU horsepower or that Monitor will do you no good.

While a 1080 would probably be a bit extreme, given your budget, take note that my 1070 occasionally drops below 60 FPS in Crysis 3 @ 1080p and that is with MSAA already toned down to 4x.

Unless you play old games, buying a 480x and then shooting for a 144Hz display is imho nonsensical, as that card lacks the raw horsepower.

BTW: I'm not sure if DVI has the bandwidth to do 144Hz.

Does a DisplayPort cable come with the gpu or mobo? Or do I have to buy one separately?

If you get one it's most likely bundled with the display.

Not likely that a display port cable will be included with any of your components.  As Ifalna said, it'd most likely be included with a GPU, so check that.  Otherwise, I just bought this DP cable for $5.00 with coupon the other day.

I'd suggest waiting until the week of Black Friday to buy anything.  You'll get the best deals that week.  Also, make sure to take advantage of the VISA checkout or American Express $25 off $200 promotions that will be up during that week also.

If you're looking for a mechanical keyboard, I posted about 3 Rosewill keyboards on sale for $30 after MIR here.  That's a pretty awesome deal considering mechanical keyboards typically go for $75 or more.

Ifalna wrote:

If you buy a 144Hz monitor, you'd better spend a few bucks more on GPU horsepower or that Monitor will do you no good.

While a 1080 would probably be a bit extreme, given your budget, take note that my 1070 occasionally drops below 60 FPS in Crysis 3 @ 1080p and that is with MSAA already toned down to 4x.

Unless you play old games, buying a 480x and then shooting for a 144Hz display is imho nonsensical, as that card lacks the raw horsepower.

Came to post this exact statement.
I have a GTX 1070 and it gets around 125-130 fps @ 1440p in Overwatch on Ultra, and that's not a particularly demanding game. Granted, I may be somewhat CPu-limited as I'm only running an i5 4670K, but a Radeon 480 is nowhere near enough to give consistent 120 or 144 fps in modern games, whether it be at 1080p or 1440p, IMO. 
As I see it, your two options are:
a. Spring for a GTX 1070 or higher (and the added cost of a G-Sync monitor)
or
b. Wait for Vega, which will hopefully be better value than the 1070, assuming availability is not an issue, and get a FreeSync display for cheaper.

Nedrane wrote:

I suggest you choose 8G RAM, at least i5 cpu, 2G graphic card memory. Purchase on Cyber Monday online.

16 GB of RAM and at least 4GB graphics card memory are advised since newer and upcoming games are now using that much, even at 1080p.

DPete27 wrote:

Not likely that a display port cable will be included with any of your components.

All three of the reviews that I read indicated that DisplayPort, HDMI and USB cables were included in the box with the monitor.  You can see them in the last photograph of the Newegg product listing (even though you're going to buy it from Amazon to save $90).

Newegg's catalog page wrote:

Package Contents:   24" Monitor, Foot Stand, Power Cable, HDMI Cable, DP Cable, USB Cable, Media (Includes drivers, AOC Software, Manual, and warranty)

The price of the monitor dropped $10 today, back to $200.
http://pcpartpicker.com/list/WBgtQV

As a 144Hz user with Nvida and AMD cards, G-Sync and Freesync monitors, I can honestly say that 144fps and Utlra settings are mutually exclusive. Even if you have a GTX1080 you may struggle to hit 144fps at all on Ultra. Otherwise, you might manage to hit 144Hz occasionally but your minimum framerates are still likely to be 50-60fps.

The problem is not the hardware, the problem is that "ultra" settings are usually "whatever the maximum this engine can support" rather than anything sensible - in some cases the GPU is doing 4x more work to render something in more detail when the actual detail is only 1 pixel wide in the first place; It's a total waste of GPU resources that could be spent on higher framerates and usually "high" effects with ultra geometry and textures gets you 99% of the visual quality of Ultra but at much better frame rates. The average framerate may be only 10-20% better, but you can guarantee your minimum framerates will improve by a huge margin. 

If you're a 144Hz monitor user, you learn to dial back the settings no matter what your hardware is. I've tried Crossfire RX480s and SLI GTX970's and honestly it's just not possible to get >144fps at all times even with the best hardware on earth. Blame the game designers, blame the ultra preset, blame the engine overheads. For whatever reason, you should aim to get >100fps most of the time. I'm replaying Doom(2016) at the moment and I'm getting 90-144fps on "almost ultra" settings and quite a lot of Elite:Dangerous which is either pegged at 144fps most of the time but slows down to 80ish in a ring system or busy station.

It's all much better than 60Hz but expecting 144fps in everything is something you should stop even thinking about. 144Hz monitors are for "up to" 144Hz and you start to see the silky smooth fluidity anywhere from about 85fps and up.

Yup, pretty much what Chrispy said.

One needs to start looking at the actual effects of the settings if one desires a constant high FPS.
That's why I lowered Crysis' AA to 4x (no dramatic visual distinction to 8x) in order to maintain a 99% uptime @ 60FPS
Sadly me monitor only does 60, but hey, at least I didn't need to bother with the other options due to that. Always try to look at the positive side of things, right?

Well don't forget to get a good computer speaker set with the computer you're buying.

G sync monitor isn't going to fit my budget, so if I get a 144hz monitor without g sync, it would be a bad idea? Or still good?

Rski wrote:

G-Sync monitor isn't going to fit my budget, so if I get a 144hz monitor without G-Sync, it would be a bad idea? Or still good?

If the 144 Hz refresh rate is the most important criterion for you, then it wouldn't hurt you to get a FreeSync monitor and use it with an NVidia card that currently supports only expensive proprietary G-Sync.  You'd still get the high refresh rate.  If you end up using the monitor with a graphics card that supports VESA standard adaptive sync in the future, FreeSync would be a bonus that is currently just $0 to $25 more expensive than a similar monitor without variable refresh rate.

The cheapest 144 Hz monitor available is the Acer GN246HL for $189 from B&H. The cheapest 144 Hz monitor with FreeSync is the AOC G2460PF for $200 from Aamazon. The cheapest 144 Hz monitor with G-Sync is the AOC G2460PG for $341 from Newegg.

I (and others) have encountered problems running non-Gsync displays with high refresh rates. Just Google "Nvidia 144Hz frame skip". It seems to affect Kepler and Maxwell cards in a wide range of scenarios. Either fixed refresh 144Hz screens, or Freesync displays with >60Hz.

Essentially everything reports that it's working at high refresh, but then you do a frame-skip test and you realise that the graphics card is only sending frames to the screen every 60th of a second and it's discarding other frames. http://www.testufo.com/#test=frameskipping to test. I experienced it on two freesync monitors from LG and an Acer fixed 144Hz screen with both a GTX970 and a GTX660 (both W10 though). Both screens were fine with an AMD card of course (I had a 290X and an RX480 to play with)

Apparently it's fine at 120Hz, but 144Hz will skip 24fps and 75Hz will skip 15fps. YMMV, but based on the amount of internet complaining, it's a common problem and the bug has been around for a good couple of years unfixed. The sceptic in me makes me think that Nvidia stopped paying any attention to high-refresh displays once they were pushing their own G-Sync proprietary solution, in the hopes that it would cause more hitching in-game and help persuade people that their profitable and expensive G-Sync solution is the answer, rather than their godawful driver problems. I know it's a bit tin-foil-hat conspiracy-theory but Nvidia have been caught being pretty shady on numerous occasions. Given their other driver issues with basic display connectivity features even at 60Hz, I suspect the truth is that their drivers are doing this unintentionally and they just totally suck at bugfixing or listening to the complaints of their customers.

Chrispy_ wrote:

I (and others) have encountered problems running non-Gsync displays with high refresh rates.  I suspect the truth is that their drivers are doing this.  They just totally suck at bugfixing or listening to the complaints of their customers.

Interesting.  I hadn't realized that NVidia's cards were not properly supporting fixed frequency non G-Sync monitors.  I had assumed that NVidia's continued rejection of VESA standard adaptive-sync was just a matter of ignoring the variable refresh standard for DisplayPort, not ignoring a monitor's higher fixed refresh rates.

This issue could make the Radeon R9 Fury X that CScottG suggested even more attractive.  Do you have an idea how much longer do we need to wait for AMD's Vega GPUs to arrive or for NVidia to cave in and support the VESA standards?

Nope, but given how early the Polaris card leaks, import manifests, and engineering sample info came, we're 6 months away at an absolute minimum; 

Q2 2017 is the most optimistic estimate because we'd have seen or heard something by now if it was any closer.