honestly....i can build a system that will play most new games almost as well as what is listed above this post for under 800 dollars....


my wife's computer- that i just built- was 400 dollars- it does 30+fps in dalaran for wow (only game she plays) (video card was the most expensive part at 150 dollars for the ati 4850)

budget gaming is way more economical and you can get alot for your money nowadays.

choose your parts wisely and for the above system - it NEEDS vista 64 or xp64 or windows 7 64bit ...if you install 32bit versions, 9- yes NINE gig of ram are in accessible.(32bit max is 4gig...including video ram)

Quick question. Who needs 12 GBs of RAM for today's apps? Unless you are running a server at home and doing some mini folding@home then I don't see the need.

@ halogamer
Not for gaming to be sure but some processes in scientific imaging such as deconvolution are best done in RAM and the raw data can be several GB in size.

This is primarily for my freelance work and gaming is secondary, if at all. I used to do a lot of PC gaming but now I'm pretty well spoiled by my Wii and may never really get back to it.

Astronomy, medical imaging?

Well my hats off to you. I just tried to assemble a computer that I would even consider running WOW on and I couldn’t get it below $451. slow computer.

Linkworld case $23
Power Supply    $15
motherboard     $50
Phenom triple core 8650 $90
3 GB RAM            $33
250 GB HD           $40
4850 GPU            $149
DVD +/- RW        $21
Keyboard mouse             $20
Speakers             $10

Total $451

But in any case, it would be totally useless in my work and I don’t see it kicking much Crysis butt.  Our goals were different in that I wasn’t trying to build the cheapest computer but rather the best computer for the money and one was future proof enough to last a few years. In my business, computer parts are cheap compared to the time wasted by a slow computer.

And yes, I am all too well aware of the RAM limits of 32 bit systems. I would never own a 32 bit system. I switched to 64 bit about the day it was available.

Medical and marine biology research. A lot of confocal and two photon imaging. Been there?

Can't say that I have.  What do you specialize in with MB?  Environmental research?

What else? Almost all marine biology involves environmetal change, none of it good. I'm working with coral.

Oh ok.  On a side note, how do you view the new stim...cough.... porkulus bill

I think it rather disingenious of Republicans to grouse about someone cleaning up their mess. If they had been minding the store instead of trying to invade the entire world one country at a time we might not be in this mess.

Sorry, I'm sure you will disagree but I'm afraid the only useful lasting thing to come out of the last eight years is a new standard of incompetance in the White House that hopefully will stand unchallenged forever.

I grew up in the Washington area and have been voting since the 1964 election. I am an independant and I vote for the man not the party but it may be sometime before I will even consider voting for a Republican.

Sorry, but you asked.