Hey fellas and men both gentle and cruel! Women help as well if you can.

I gots to get a new comp! (rig, machine?)

It's been about five years, I've been using this Dell Laptop for all that time, and suffice it to say that I haven't gotten a new desktop PC since before I was old enough to be very involved with the decisionmaking.

So, please help me pick out a new one!

I'm looking for something decently powerful. It will be used for gaming, as well as 3d modeling, the gamut of Adobe Creative Suite programs, AutoCAD, 3d rendering programs, etc. Please let me know if more information than this is required!

Also, I've always heard it on here that building yer own is preferable, but some OLD MEN in the real life have told me that this might not be so, in some cases. What do you all recommend?

I hope that this thread isn't annoying, I gather that some people get a kick out of helping folks with this sort of thing (Triscuit :P), so... thanks!

If you have the ability, building your own will ALWAYS save you money. You'll get far more for your money.

Speaking of money, you forgot the most important information we need to know: BUDGET. Give us a number, otherwise it becomes extremely hard to recommend anything.

Build your own computer. You'll enjoy it & you may even learn something.

http://lifehacker.com/5828747/how-to-build-a-computer-from-scratch-the-complete-guide

If you don't feel comfortable choosing your own parts, ask around here or use the latest Ars Technica System Guide.

People still buy desktops?

As long as your time is worth less than the markup.

Time + better warranties + your own custom system + no bloat, sure. I think that applies to everyone but the most busy/lazy.

Building yourself almost always saves you money, usually the only exception is very lowend OEM PCs. They can bundle Win7 for much cheaper. I would look at the guide posted by Mentat and perhaps some videos, and make a judgement if thats something you could handle.It looks like you do alot of productivity work, Im guessing some of the 3d modeling programs you use would take advantage of hypertheading so I would recommend an i7-2600. Memory has been really cheap for a while, based on the uses you listed, I would consider 8gb a minimum. I don't know what monitor setup you have or want but for modern 1080p gaming I think something like a gtx560-ti or 6950 is an optimal price/performance point. The rest really only applies if you are building your own:Almost any 1155 motherboard could support this so far, if you wanted support for multiple videocards or SSD caching then maybe consider one with a Z68 chipset. Regardless of what chipset, I would stick with something from Asus,Gigabyte, or Intel. To power something like this you are going to want a quality 550+ watt psu, I would stick with Antec or Corsair. SSD's are awesome, but alot of people still dislike the price or having the OS reside on such small drive. Either way you should still have a fast HD. Western Digital Black or Samsung Spinpoint F3's are popular choices.

Also, this

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/af150/The_FalconO6/CurrentLogicalPCBuyingGuide/Guide.png

Ah god damn my mistake leaving out budget. Let's say... 1000 bucks? in that ballpark? I don't need to hit that, so if I'm getting all the power I'd likely need for 800, or whatever, that's fine. Thanks for the replies, guys!

Newegg lately has decent diy setups for $700 or so too

While my past computers were bought pre-built, they were at computer fairs, so they were basicly similar to buying from places like newegg. It is just easier than buying the parts seperately (and pretty much the only place were you can find them here in canberra is during said computer fairs (usualy once a month) anyway. Not to mention that even though they stuffed up with the one i have now when I first got it (put in too weak a PSU, which fried the GPU), they fixed it (including replacement GPU) for free.

Ah yeah with $1000 budget your probably gonna have to scale back a little. You can find a few i5-2500 / 550ti or 5770 prebuilt systems for around that price.

What if I said... 1500?! I am prepared to splurge a little on this, since it's pretty infrequent for me to buy new computers/hardware. 1000 is a middle-of-the-road estimate.

My previous PC (this one) is an XPS laptop, and it was significantly more expensive than that, so I'm comfortable shelling out less, for more power, at the cost of portability which I no longer need.

Thanks again!

Woah 1500 bucks on a desktop? That's pretty insane. Computers have gotten way better price/perfomance ratios over the last decade.
My computer cost about 1k 2 years ago and is still amazing.

I spent about 1500 on an upgrade last summer. It didn't seem to insane to me... and my computer isn't even that great as far as I'm concerned... Though I've yet to encounter a game I cannot run on max settings at a decent frame rate.

And neither can I.

I'm guessing neither of you play Witcher2. It's possible to build a no-compromises system for around $1000, but it would take closer to $1500 to configure an OEM system the same way.Saberopus, there are a few sites which specialize in customizing gaming systems like: ibuypower.com, cyberpowerpc.com, buyxg.com. I have heard mixed reviews on these although some of them sell thru Newegg or Tigerdirect. Example: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=306251&CatId=1886Although almost everyone who uses these sites complains about the build time, it's usaully 3+ weeks.On Dell's site adding a 6870 to an XPS 8300 puts you right at $1500, I think it's similar at HP.comIf its a newegg parts list you want, give me some time- Irene has trapped me on Vacation in Florida ( how awful ) with only my DroidX for internet.

Err and for the same reason please forgive my message formatting.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=XPS-8300-I734-R&cpc=DSLPNoticed Geeks.com current has the XPS 8300 (refurbished) for $680 FS, it says it includes a 1yr warrenty from Dell. Pretty decent deal for i7-2600, 8gb, 5770, 1.5tb HD, Win7. You would probably need to upgrade PSU to upgrade GPU. It comes with a 460w one. Not bad if you arent comfortable building a pc.

I've found plenty of games I can't run fully maxed on a computer I easily spent $2000 on last year.

Then again, pushing out 2560x1600 is a wee bit more demanding.