Quote Originally Posted by hallwagner View Post
well hes an irl friend so i doubt he'd do that :P
The point is, he wouldn't know he was doing it, because people that think they know what they're doing... think they know what they're doing. Maybe he does, or maybe he doesn't, it's better to double check :P

Quote Originally Posted by Fluffy Frufflebottoms View Post
If you aren't up for building it yourself, and just want something that works out of the box, one decent option is this. Select "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 1GB 16X PCIe Video Card" as the video card, and "600 Watts - XtremeGear Power Supply - SLI/CrossFireX Ready" as the power supply. Should end up at $1,016. Free shipping to boot. That's a very decent price for a very decent pre-built system. i7-950, 1 TiB hard drive, 6 GiB of RAM, and a very good video card. That should cover the listed requirements.
I've heard good things about CyberPower for pre-built machines. They're certainly a better deal than most. I agree with StarsMine that you should never, ever skimp on the power supply. I'd go with the Corsair 750TX - those PSUs are rated higher than any I've seen in a long time (and the 750W is only $10 more than the 650W). Pushes over budget a bit, but in the long run it could save you a lot of money if your cheap PSU burns out and takes some components with it. Also, you need to add Windows 7 to that price if you don't have a copy already. Finally, notice it comes with water-cooling by default... you might want that, or you might not, just take notice. I don't like the idea of intentionally running water through $1000+ of water-sensitive electronics.

If you build the machine yourself, you'll always get the best deal, even better than CyberPower. Usually I figure I can save about $100 give or take over their prices, and I have more control over component brands (particularly memory and video card). It really isn't that difficult to do. Of course, you only get individual component warranties, vs. CyberPower's standard 3-year limited on the whole machine. I'm not sure what their support is like, haven't really heard much about it.