New Computer for Christmas?

[Shinigami345]

I may be getting a new computer for christmas since I'm going to college next year and my current computer is 6 years old and will be turning 7 next year. Emachines T3410 you've served me well, but it's time for retirement. Aside from the base stats it has an extra 512 mb of ram in it. I now begin the task of trying to find a new computer to ask santa for, but the problem is I'm not so good when it comes to these things. I'd like a computer that can play most games easily, and isn't like $2000. I've trolled around on newegg and tigerdirect but I'm really clueless as to which one is best to get. Since, y'all so nice and smart; can someone point me in the right direction?

[theellimist]

First off, isn't it a little late to be shopping for Christmas presents? Anyway, are you thinking of getting a laptop or a desktop? Desktops you get more bang for your buck. I personally like Dell (for both laptops and desktops) and Asus (for laptops).

[gh0st]

buy a laptop hmm but take care also buy a cooler I had also the option to buy a laptop or a desktop I picked desktop more for gamming tbh laptop for studying internet surfing you know

[Shinigami345]

I'm looking at getting something with like 16 GB of DDR3 ram and an i7 core processor, but I'm utterly clueless as to what kind of graphics card to get. I never really learned much about graphics cards than I did about processors and RAM. Care to point me towards a good one? Or better yet  http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=893897&sku=C122-10650 tell me if that's a good buy or what's horrible about it/how it could be remedied.

[PiZZ4]

I'm looking at getting something with like 16 GB of DDR3 ram and an i7 core processor, but I'm utterly clueless as to what kind of graphics card to get. I never really learned much about graphics cards than I did about processors and RAM. Care to point me towards a good one? Or better yet  http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=893897&sku=C122-10650 tell me if that's a good buy or what's horrible about it/how it could be remedied.

Ugly case is ugly...

First off you don't need 16GB of RAM, in fact your probably going to use about less than half of that. So don't waste your money on that, I knew a friend that did.

Now for the blue-ray drive, my belief is that the blue-ray (or any disc media) is going to die off in a couple of years. I'll only buy blue-ray optical drive unless I'm build a system for my home theater. But you can buy it if you want too its your choice. 

Also just wait a little bit after January and February to purchase an HDD or a SDD since the prices will be cheaper then. This whole hard drive shortage is driving prices up.

Well those are my two cents....

[FuyuKitsune]

I agree with what PiZZ4 said.

Also, I'd go with a better graphics card. I'd suggest the NVidia 560 Ti or the AMD 6950 (the 6970 is too expensive, not really worth the increase in power). The 560 and the 6950 are about the same speed and price but the 6950 has some room for overclocking if you like tweaking stuff.

Check out this from iBuyPower, it's pretty close to the one you're checking out but can be configured with a much better graphics card
http://www.ibuypower.com/Store/Intel_P67_Core_i5_i7_Configurator
-set the processor to the i7-2600 (or 2600K if you want to overclock)
-they're doing free double RAM, so 8GB turns into 16GB
-set the graphics card to AMD 6950 (2GB) or NVidia 560 Ti (2GB)
-set the power supply to 700W Standard or 800W standard
-keep the 1TB hard drive they have set
-skip data drive, it's not needed with 1TB of primary space
-set the optical drive to whatever you want

Check the software page if you need a copy of Windows with it. Maybe you pirate or have an extra key or something
Support page gives you a free 3 year warranty

So I configured it to: i7-2600K, AMD 6950, 16GB RAM, 1TB hard drive, Blu-Ray drive, Windows 7, 3-year warranty, shipping = $1,345
slightly less than that one but with a much better GPU + warranty

[PiZZ4]

Don't forget about cooling, I suggest getting a liquid CPU cooler something like this.

And for the case I'll get something like the NZXT Phantom.