PC evaluation for a noob

[Quirkymeister]

Hello all,
I'm tired of sponging off my mum's laptop to play PC games, and I suspect that she is too, so seeing as the new console generation doesn't seem to be offering much new, I thought that now's as good a time as ever to make the jump to PC gaming and get my own, preferably one that can play modern games at more-than-Slideshow speed.
This is unfortunately compounded by the fact that A. I'm a uni student with an income of like $30 a week, and thus would prefer to spend as little of my precious income as possible on my machine (mind, I'm not a graphics whore by any means; if it can play modern games at a playable level without crashing, I'm golden.), and B. Being raised a console-and-handheld gamer, I have absolutely no idea what any of these PC gaming terms mean, and would have no idea whatsoever how to build one or what makes one, say, graphics card different to another aside from price, even with the advice of some of my more tech-savvy friends.
So, escapists, I pitch a question about this $800 pre-built PC I found on the internet:

CPU: Intel Pentium Anniversary Edition G3258
Motherboard: MSI B85M-E45 Motherboard
Graphics: MSI Radeon R7 260X Overclocked 2GB
Memory: Kingston Hyper X Fury HX318C10FK2/8 8GB (2x4GB) Blue
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 1TB ST1000DM003
Power Supply: Be Quiet! Pure Power L8 500W Power Supply
Case: Deepcool Tesseract SW USB 3.0 Mid Tower Chassis Black/Blue
Additional Lighting: PCCG LED Strip White 30cm
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit OEM License

Once I add stuff like a monitor and mouse and keyboard,
1. Is this appreciably better than like a $400 regular laptop for gaming?
2. Is that a good deal (money-wise, remembering that this is Australia, so everyone rips us off, and at least this way I can guarantee that all the parts work with one another)? If not, where might you direct me towards finding a cheap PC?
And 3. What else do I need that isn't included in this bundle? Do I need a disc drive/network adapter? If so, is there a specific type I ought to get, or would the cheapest I can find work for my purposes (which is mostly gaming)?
Thank you so much for helping a noob out.
Regards
-Quirky
Here's the website, if it helps: http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1411&products_id=31704

 

[Quirkymeister]

This is the link to the list of pre-built PCs on the website. Keep in mind that I'll settle for something that isn't mindblowingly powerful in exchange for being slightly cheaper.

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1411

 

[WouldYouKindly]

Holy shit, you guys do get ripped off. It's worth about 500, if that.

If you watch a bunch of YT videos and get the gist of building a PC(It's really not that hard, just don't use a hammer on anything and be quite careful with the processor), I'd recommend building your own. For 800 you could get a much, much better PC on account of not having to ship anything as fragile as a completely built PC.

If you elect to go this route, you can use this site as a resource for any potential problems and to decide on your parts, there's a site called pcpartpicker.com.

Furthermore, if you want a crash course on the numbers and what they mean, what is better than what, where the best value is, there's more than a few benchmark websites out there. I typically use cpuboss.com and gpuboss.com. You can compare any two processors or graphics cards directly to each other.

 

[blipblop]

that build sound abit to pricey for what you getting
cpu use to be a good value gaming cpu but strugles in some games and cant realy play some games using more cores like far cry 4 look try to find one whit at least an i5 4460 (or better) or fx 6300 (or better)
gpu you would probably be better of whit a 750ti or higer or a r9 270 or higer

 

[Smooth Operator]

A good PC buying guide you get here http://www.logicalincrements.com/
Compare your stuff and see what you can get better.

Particularly I would bump up the CPU and GPU, as suggested above an i5 / FX 6300 and R9 270 / 750Ti (750Ti is not that great however, really low power consumption but I don't see why you would worry about that with an all around beefy PC).
Optical drive... if you can't borrow one, there is sadly still stuff that will demand to be installed via CD/DVD.
Network and sound cards you get on the motherboard, so that isn't a concern.