I'm also in the market for a new PC.. was actually gonna make a post but found this thread. Yay!
I bought a ready-made Gateway about 2 years ago and it was the biggest fucking mistake I ever made. Ever since day 1, this thing can barely handle shit. I cant play any video games on it (SC 2, CS: Source or even BF2 -- forget BF3), and every time I try to, it just shuts itself off. Also, it randomly turns itself off at randoms times and gives me blue screens or other fun goodies for absolutely no reason. Sometimes it wont load windows. Its a lot of fun!
The other day, I barely even managed to boot it up... I had to keep it turned off for like 2 hours before it decided to boot windows again.
So heres my question.. because im pretty retarded when it comes to computer hardware. I've heard people price shit out anywhere from $600 to $3,000. I don't think I need a fucking $3,000 computer just to play a few video games and run photoshop, etc. I want to spend about $1,000. Is that realistic? All I need is the tower, I have monitors and kb's and all that shit. I want to be able to play BF3 or SC2 on it, run photoshop in the background, and have firefox open with about 20 tabs without it fucking blowing up or giving me blue screens.
Any suggestions?