Finally pulled the trigger on a new machine.

[kandrathe]

I decided to go with iBuyPower... It was a machine on Christmas special.

CoolerMaster HAF 922 Gaming Case - Black
Cold Cathode Neon Light - Blue
Internal Expansion [6-Port] NZXT Internal USB Expansion System + Bluetooth & Wireless N Modules
Intel® CoreT i7 960 Processor (4x 3.20GHz/8MB L3 Cache)
Liquid CPU Cooling System [SOCKET-1366] - [Free Upgrade] Standard 120mm Fan
12 GB [4 GB X3] DDR3-1600 - Corsair
NVIDIA GeForce GT 520 - 1GB
ASUS Sabertooth X58
450 Watt -- Standard
120 GB ADATA S510 SSD - Single Drive
2 TB HARD DRIVE -- 64M Cache, 7200rpm, 6.0Gb/s - Single Drive
[12X Blu-Ray] LG BLU-RAY Reader, DVD±R/±RW Burner Combo Drive - Black
3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard
Onboard LAN Network 1Gb
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium + Office Starter 2010

[Drasca]

Niice. I would consider a more quality power supply, and a better video card later on, but everything over there looks sweet. I hope you got a great price for it.

[kandrathe]

Niice. I would consider a more quality power supply, and a better video card later on, but everything over there looks sweet. I hope you got a great price for it.

It was under $1k, with the MS Office upgrade. It looked like a good base to build upon, and upgrading later was the plan for now. When I upgrade the GPU, I'll get a bigger power supply.

I also had to sink $300 into my old machine to get a new 1TB hard drive and Windows 7. It is too slow for modern high end GPU games, but its very good, for the older stuff.

Last year I had picked up 2 old 2005/6 era desktop machines from work for $75 each, and then sank $100 each upgrading them. We've limped by on them for the last 6 months, and my intention was that they would not be gaming machines, but they've feebly strayed into that territory.

I also bought an inexpensive 8 port switch($35) and a refurbished Cisco e2000($40), then I subnet'd my house. I now have 3 (of 4) networks in the 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.192 range; 1) for servers(1-63), & 2 routers, 2) wired desktops (129-191), 3) wireless devices (193-255). I still need to run a hard line to the master bedroom, but I've dropped the wire into the basement for now.

It's hard to keep up when your kids get to gaming age. My eldest has organized about 20 boys from his school into a gamer guild. Now I just need to configure the team speak server so they can get off the darn phone.