Since I live in a small town, I do not have access to one of these stores. But for holidays, I'm at a place where there is indeed a Microcenter store, and those bundles do look promising (I am even tempted to consider A10's now). I wonder if I can put together a CPU/MB with the same price...
Now, something I cannot parse from your response is that the SSD might "hurt gaming performance". Why is that?
You will have access to a MC? That literally changes everything (in combination with the fact that you already have a Windows license to work with!). A prebuilt is no longer the only way to do it.
As for why an SSD might hurt gaming performance, of course it wouldn't. HOWEVER, if a significant portion of a limited budget is allocated to an SSD vs. the fundamentals necessary (8GB+i5+Decent GPU), one could argue that it would harm the gaming performance collaterally because you would be running lower horsepower on the major components to squeeze that in.
Happily, any of this stuff can be added in later, but I find it easier to add the SSD than anything else as a '6 months later' part, because it doesn't entail replacing any part, just adding a part (and imaging over or reinstalling windows of course). Say you start out with a dual core and lesser GPU and SSD. Then later you want more multitasking grunt, so you upgrade to a quad or quad+HT. Well, at that point you have to yank the i3, and deal with selling it, keeping it, who knows what. Ditto the GPU. Now I love having spares, but I work on this stuff 360 days a year
Anyhow, now that we know that
A- You have a Windows license
B- You have $600
C- You have MC access
I can build you out a pretty stout box for that. And because 600 is 600 and not 650, I will calculate with sales tax and without consideration of rebates, because I know that sometimes the budget is a hard limit, you don't have time to wait 6-12 weeks to get $ back that you didn't have to spend in the first place (IOW I hate rebates).
Onward :
From MC :
4670K + Gigabyte Z87 $260 ($281.45 after typical 8.25%, depending on your area)
Newegg :
Samsung 24X SATA DVDRW $15 Free Shipping
4GB DDR3 1600 $43 Free Shipping
80GB RevoDrive PCI-e SSD ($50 Refurb/free shipping, add $6 for 1YR replacement plan) = $56
Logisys Case w/480W PSU $43 shipped
Refurb 660 SC 2GB $160 Free Shipping
$598.45
Obviously you'd want to take care of some things as you got more cash together down the line :
(1)- That PSU is a temporary item at best. With Haswell at stock you'd be okay as long as it wasn't DOA, but with such a weak 12V+ rail and cheapness, best to get a legit 500W+ Antec/etc before too long.
(2)- 4GB of ram is pretty small, but adding a good 2x4GB 2133/2400 pack down the line would be doable if you scour deals as they come by.
(3)- The RevoDrive 80GB isn't the largest SSD, but they are pretty snappy (update to latest firmware before you use it, they were massively improved over time). That said, grabbing a 1TB 7200RPM drive down the line for cheap would give you room for non-Critical stuff, and you could keep just Windows + your most used stuff on the Revo.
And there ya go!