Any more, computers are stupid easy to assemble yourself. The cheaper option will always be to take your own parts and make something yourself. I recently did just that with an Intel Core i5-2500k
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004EBUXHQ, ASUS P8Z68-V LX LGA 1155 Z68 Mother board
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005EV1R34, and some Corsair 1600mhz ram.
http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Vengeance ... =pd_cp_e_2
I recycled my old case, SATA drives, and power supply. I'm using the integrated video at the moment, but will be waiting until January or so to see what video cards end up on the market. Other than that, it's just the monitor and mouse/keyboard (which I'm guessing you already own).
I'm over-clocking this CPU to 4.5GHz, and honestly it's crazy-fast. For stuff other than games at least.
Here's a good CPU comparison. You can put whatever CPU you want in there.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=88 Keep in mind these are pre-overclock numbers.
The CPU isn't really relevant in most high-intensity games now. If you want to play something like Skyrim or Battlefield 3, you're going to need to spend the most amount of cash on your video card. Here's Nvidia's lineup:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/graphics_c ... y_now.html Roughly the same link for AMD Radeon :
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/ ... -6000.aspx
Video card comparison:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU11/188
Honestly you could put together a nice system for about $700 US. No need to pay someone to do what you could probably do yourself, and you get the added bonus of saying you did it yourself.
I did some google searching, and this is a good machine comparison for parts:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/247 ... nth?page=6
Keep in mind that on the AMD side, people have been disappointed with Bulldozer. Most are saying that the Phenom II's are still pretty decent. Intel's i7's are still top though, and if you can wait until March, their Ivy-Brige CPU's will be out. They're supposed to have pretty decent video, to the point where in a few years people probably wont even be buying discrete graphics.
It's probably way more info than you need, but hey, some people find this sort of thing fun.
