ASUS CM6870-US-3AA Desktop PC - 3rd generation Intel Core i7-3770 3.4GHz, 16GB DDR3, 2TB HDD, Blu-Ray Player/DVDRW, 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 520, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...&Sku=A50-12003

Not too bad of a deal imo. I don't look much at complete systems like this, but it is using good parts. (3rd gen I7) Except for the HDD, that's ****. It is a 5,400RPM drive. I would get a SSD for at least the OS and programs.

here is the same computer at newegg with free shipping

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883220154

Or if you are not a gamer and don't need a dedicated graphics card this one is $100 cheaper (doesn't look like it has Blu-Ray though)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16883220155

You can use the $100 to get a SSD as that hard drive is a serious bottleneck in an otherwise good system.

the better question is whether or not it's a good deal for you. do you need all of that processing power? it's not likely that you need all of that RAM (though it's still cheap so why not).

+1 to the HDD being terrible and to get an SSD for a machine like that

the graphics card is nothing special. were you intending to use it for gaming? what games?

it's pretty standard for pre-built computers, but that power supply is the bare minimum recommended in that graphics card spec, so it won't leave you any room to upgrade to more powerful graphics later.

Yeah I thought 300 watts was a little low for that spec. Kinda odd

fwiw intel hd 4000 graphics, which come integrated into that ib chip, outperform the gt 520 in gaming.

I will play SC2 and Diablo 3 on my new machine. Other than that I want to play 8 tables and PT4 seamlessly while browsing anything my heart desires and listening to Pandora. Is the HDD a deal breaker? Should I just buy the parts myself? Any tips?

Just buy the parts.

Lose the i7 and go with an i5 from this or the previous generation (i5-3750k, 2500k, 2550k)
8GB RAM (DDR3, 1600 speed, 1.5v)
A Z77 motherboard. I own a Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H
Case with USB 3.0 ports up front
128GB solid state drive. Intel 520, Samsung 830, Crucial M4 all good choices. (You can get a bigger solid state or add another mechanical drive if you need more space).
A Hyper 212 Plus CPU fan
Quality power supply - depends on video card
DVD drive
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM

Then find yourself a video card with some help with from this article. Read reviews of the different brands and price shop obviously.

You'd be at $800 before the video card, and I'm overbuilding everything and estimating high. Tons of room to scale back without that big a performance hit to worry about. If you don't care about USB 3.0 on the front of your machine or want to go with a less expensive quad core you have options that will more than meet your needs.

http://slickdeals.net/f/4643164-128G...ng-Starts-5-28

128GB Crucial M4 = $100, free ship

Tax in CA, NJ, and some other state I can't remember (still a good deal though). Not the fastest but it's up there and has been very reliable.

Is it definitely in my interest to go SSD over HDD? My GF will use this machine for school and netflix. I will use for 80% poker, gaming, and netflix.

At current prices? I just saw a 120GB SSD at $80 today, even less after rebates. Several good options have been below $100 in the last couple of weeks.

The real question is whether she wants something very fast or something with a ton of storage. If 120GB will get the job done, then an SSD at current prices is the clear option. If not, then a mechanical drive is the way to go.

The Samsung 830 128GB SSD was $90 recently, arguably the fastest + most reliable drive you can get at that capacity. Even lowly 250+ GB mechanical hard drives are starting at $70 at NewEgg right now. What I'd do is take inventory of what kind of space requirements you expect she'll need. If less than 80GB there's just no reason for a HDD anymore.

Thanks for the detailed help so far. I was wondering if I could do a dual drive of some sort. I will probably be storing lots of movies and can easily see myself using .5TB-1.5TB eventually over time with everything I do. Should I buy a 1 TB HDD and a 128 GB SSD? Would I just partition poker stuff to SSD to get max efficiency?

No reason you can't have both if it works for your budget. Most early SSD adopters did that. With 128GB I'd put everything poker-related on the main drive and obviously all of your programs. Plus whatever need to run fast.

So basically just use the HDD as storage for videos, pics, etc. ?

Also, is there any merit to waiting for Windows 8?