[Head416]

My buddy built a nice system recently for I think $600. Unless you're into some crazy graphics or video editing I'd aim for that ballpark.

One thing he didn't get though was a solid state hard drive. An SSD will give you a better sense of "speed" than anything else. Last one I bought was a Crucial, 256 GB for around $250 I think. If you need more storage for pics/music/whatever make it a second drive for storage with your OS loaded on the SSD. You'll get way more benefit from that than i3 vs i7 or 4GB vs 8GB RAM.