http://www.ibuypower.com/Store/2011_Paladin_E/w/86925

How does that look? About to pull the trigger - what would you change?

Looks fine. if they have a sale on RAM, get more.

What are you intending to be able to do with it? Gaming rig? Other stuff?

Mostly a gaming rig. I'll put quickbooks and maybe photoshop on it, but that's the bulk of what I'll use it for.

If you're going to spend decent money on a computer, you really should get an i7 and (more importantly) triple channel memory.

Also, that thing looks like it belongs in a rap music video. It's just missing spinning rims. What is it about cases and the blue "neon" these days? Get off my lawn, etc.

Seems somewhat lacking for $1700 - it's got some decent specs, but not what I'd expect for that much. Unless prices have really jumped up in the last two years since I built myself a pretty powerful rig.

If you do plan on going with this site though, I'd agree with San about bumping for the i7, and Lum and San about splurging for some more and better RAM (though, it seems like this site charges a lot for RAM - $200 more for an extra 8GB? Did RAM prices jump? - you possibly you might want to skimp on RAM from this site and buy some good RAM from somewhere else).

I'm guessing you're like me though and dont really give a shit about what your case looks like on the outside.

Thats what the guy at ibuypower suggested for my budget. I am sure I could figure out how to put a computer together ... but I don't know what parts to get, what parts work best, where its best to spend and where its best to save, etc.

I'd gladly take a parts list if you think I'm over-spending there. I just wouldn't know where to start on my own.

You don't need an i7 for just games. i5 is plenty good. Not much has been coming out that is geared towards needed some 3000.00 dollar machine just to run. A 800 dollar gaming computer can run most anything with spectacular results.

As far a CPU goes, Toms Hardware recommends that anything past an i5 2500k is getting big time into law of diminishing returns. You want to spend money on the best video card you can afford up to around 400 dollars and some speedy drives along with as much RAM as you can get within reason. SSD are nice for the OS and get yourself one large data drive.

So you need that I5 chip, a solid mobo for it. Asus is one of my favorites and has good onboard stuff. 16GB of RAM if you can swing it, your 250-400 dollar video card, the SSD, data drive, a basic optical drive and a box to put it all in complete with a 750 watt psu, all fans and heatsinks etc. Then you are done. It can even take up a small footprint instead of looking like something from late 1970's sci-fi shows.

Kel, some of those parts could probably be had cheaper other places but if you don't feel comfortable putting it together yourself I wouldn't unless you have a friend or someone who can but you can definitely save a few hundred or more.

I have the 120GB ADATA s511 and I didn't pay $235 for it, I paid $169.

This http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130658 looks like the video card and they are charging $519 but from newegg with free shipping and a MIR you can get it for $479.

Those things start adding up but again if you don't know what you're doing it could cost you more. My last pc I bought premade but that was b/c I was so far behind the times and didn't want to spend the time to learn what to do. Since then however I've just been upgrading parts. I echo Sanchek and say get an i7 and triple channel memory. I say this b/c my nephew just upgraded to an i5 and I have an i7, we have the same video card and memory, his benchamrks aren't even close to me and we're both playing BF3. Sure you could spend less than $1k and get a so-so system. I will be honest though and say that SWTOR doesn't require much and on my system I pulled 110+ FPS in some settings. But BF3 and Skyrim will need better hardware.

Fil is right on all that. If you don't feel comfortable with putting a computer together yourself, then pay the mark up. Especially if this vendor has a good rep for honoring warranties and good customer service in case it breaks down.
Also, the i7 is better. No doubt. Expect to pay a premium though as it is the best show in town. If the law of diminishing returns is not an issue due to a healthy budget for hardware than by all means go for it. Just don't put a processor before a good video card if you do have to budget.The i5 with a strong card will still give good results in real world, seat of the pants experience. Your eye isn't going to see much difference after 30fps, which is fluid motion so never put much faith in artificial benchmarks, especially if you don't play twitch games. All that is for is for ePeen, really.

I'm just so in the dark on all of this. When I need a Mac I go to my MBS guy and he just tells me what to buy. PCs seem to have a lot more randomness and certainly a lot more variety.
I put a PC together back in college, it can't be that much tougher I would think.
I guess what I'm asking, is if you wouldn't get the one up there - what would you get for $1500 or so?

An i7 is not even remotely an extravagant purchase. Chipwise, you should be able to get one for about $100 more than a corresponding i5. The extra processing power isn't crucial for gaming, but triple channel memory is significant for just about anything and you can only get that with an i7.

PCs are even easier to assemble these days. So much is integrated on the motherboards now, you're only installing the CPU, memory, one card, plugging in the hard drive, connecting power to it all, and you're done. Should take less than 30 minutes.

It seems like the opportunity cost of doing that yourself is bad, but being able to incrementally upgrade the same box over time is worth it.

My biggest reason for going pre-built is b/c of the CPU cooler... I overclock and that means I use bigger more complicated coolers than the stock fan.... I don't feel comfortable doing it myself b/c of having to install brackets or radiators. Now I have a guy that does it for me and I trust him so it's all good. Otherwise nothing else is different from what you did in college.

Alternative coolers are usually very easy to install, and fit the same mounting points as the stock fan. I have never used the stock fans when building a box. In fact, you might try to price several of the components listed with the prices on other sites, including Newegg. Something like memory is very simple to install and you'll save a fortune. But, if you've got the cash, having a supported warranty is nice too.

I think I'm in a very different economic bracket than everyone else around here, but I usually steer away from top of the line when buying a PC. Look at the performance vs. price curve and shoot for right below the big buying mark. My PC is several years old, and I'm slowly replacing part by part. My GeForce GTX460 plus associated hardware runs nearly every game a max specs, and I'm only now falling behind the curve for games. You could probably build my box for $600 or so.

Kel, if you have the cheddar, than spend it on the boutique built one. Some of us DIY because it is all we can afford and some do it because we enjoy it and would still do so even if money were no object. You sound a bit shaky on the DIY thing and what you speced will get 'r dun. That company would probably really appreciate your business.

The thing about building them yourself is that you can do what Kanyli does.

When I upgraded from a Core 2 Duo to an i7, it only cost something like $700, because I only upgraded the motherboard, CPU, and RAM. The same case, power supply, DVD drive, SSD, data HDD, and video were still fine. Later, I updated the video independently. In the next year or so, I'll probably update the CPU again for $300 or so. Etc.

When you treat the whole thing as a single unit, you either have to waste money upgrading the entire box before it's all obsolete, or waste your life on poor-performing components until all of them are obsolete. Neither scenario is very appealing to me, money at this magnitude not being an issue either way.

I think I'm in a very different economic bracket than everyone else around here, but I usually steer away from top of the line when buying a PC. Look at the performance vs. price curve and shoot for right below the big buying mark. My PC is several years old, and I'm slowly replacing part by part. My GeForce GTX460 plus associated hardware runs nearly every game a max specs, and I'm only now falling behind the curve for games. You could probably build my box for $600 or so.
Kel, I'm not sure that income/economic bracket is particularly relevant as Kanyli noted, as I always do this very same thing myself - get a "tier below bleeding edge" box that I build myself. You get a machine that is nearly as powerful as the top of the line box but is substantially less expensive. I tend to get a good motherboard and get generally top of the line RAM (as the price difference between top of the line and 2nd tier usually is minimal but the speed gains are noticable - for example triple channel as Sanchek noted), but I'll get a CPU a couple of speed grades down from the top, a video card one tier down (you can save $200+ easy just on that), and so on.

And then I upgrade components as desired/needed, as Sanchek noted. Typically I'll get motherboard, CPU and RAM all together, but everything else can be upgraded individually pretty easily. For example, I just recently added a 120GB SSD to my box, reinstalled my OS onto it and relegated my HDD to being a data drive. That has noticably improved performance on several things, boot up time and application launch time being the biggest noticable gains.

As others noted, if you dont have the stomach or desire to DIY (which is fair, opportunity cost and all that), then a pre-built with a warranty might be a better choice for you. But, component incompatability is far less of a problem than it used to be in the 90s and early 00's, and building a box yourself isnt a challenge at all for even novice builders.

Kelraz, you need to start a warm personal relationship with the fry's electronics nearest you. It is to computer hardware geeks as a junkyard is to hardcore auto enthusiasts. It's usually where I build my own computers from, even if each individual part is about 50/50 chance of being refurbished or fail on me. There's just something about paying squat for junk that might possibly work, instead of paying bank for junk that has an equal shot at not working, only you can yell at someone about it instead of repair it yourself.

Any yes, my computer is transparent with more neon lights and fans than any computer normally really needs. However, I felt the the need to put rapid spinning blades near every orifice of the thing, and the need to see into it after having discovered the reason my previous computer died was that IT was where the damned roaches I hadn't been able to get rid of had been nesting. Talk about bugs in your computer.....

That's horrifying. Now I'm really worried about that noise coming from my box...and I just thought it was a bad bearing starting to rattle.