Runes of Magic US / AU

I recently built my own rig. (and helped a few people build their own in the past few weeks)

If your budget is only 1,000$ USD then you can find some rather reasonable stuff at http://us.ncix.com/ .

(They do price matches and imho have the best prices for the US)

My current rig is the following:
i7-3770k Intel Ivy Bridge
ASUS Maximus V Formula (Without ThunderFX)
MSI 660TI (OC Edition)
Western Digital Black Caviar 1TB HDD.
Thermaltake Level 10 Case. (Liquid cooling)
G.Skill 1600 8gbx2 Ram

That cost me roughly ~1200$. (excluding monitor)

If you replace the 660TI for the 650TI (you reduce the price by ~100 - 150$)
Grab a i5-3550 for non-overclocking & reduce video rendering capabilities. (Which is pretty much the difference between i7 & i5)
Grab the ASUS Maximus V Gene.

You can hit ~$726$ USD without the computer case and power supply.

You can grab a reasonable corsair case for ~60 - 80$ and a high efficiency based power supply for ~120$ - 150$.

That is assuming of course you do not do any price matches.

Which would save you ~50 - 100$.

just out of curiosity as i just hit a big wall of WTF as i compared the prices of the same hardware here in europe - how much VAT is to add on all that stuff of yours? or is that already included in the 1200$ you listed?

Yoman - how are those prices?

VAT or tax here varies from state to state, 6% where I live.

http://www.newegg.com/

well i had ~1623$ (1272.097€ *1.2759) as end result for the same stuff here in germany (ive already bought different hardware like a week ago, so its just for the heck of price comparing) thats why i asked if it's the total price including tax or without... because both without the difference not that big , but we have 19% VAT :/

We in US don't have VAT yet. The hardware costs what you see. There is a state tax of anywhere from 0 to 10%, but unless you live in same state as the seller, you don't get charged that ordering online.

As far as building a system, I would check tech sites and deal sites. Tech sites are obvious, to understand the technology. Deal sites will often have sales and promos that will let you get a lot more hardware for your money. Heck, the last two cheap-puters I built, I just went to slickdeals.net, read several several pages of "build your own PC" thread and went with one of the recommended builds. Very decent (albeit not gaming) system for less than $300.

There is more then 1 mag that offers advice on new gaming systems, with cost and where to order items - mostly with price break for normal, advanced and extreme systems.

I have a friend in WA state that used to spend thousands of dollars on gaming rig. (first person I knew that had SLi and 8GB of memory, a bit too earlier as 64 was not wildly supported at the time he had it.

Business do have to report online purchase tax.

19% is a lot...

hm kay, but the difference is still not high enough to buy from overseas (unless you can cheat customs, that is ... but who would be doing such a bad thing? would probably easier to uhm evade vat here ...) - warranty issues aside.

(buying almost every part from a different sender because of 5-10$ savings is a whole other story again, even if youre not buying internationally... ).

guess ill have to rather check .co.uk or .nl prices instead of american and see if the difference there would be worth the hassle

Just check .cn places like all big companies... :p

Tell you the truth, it has been log since I moved here, but at the time I was surprised at price of computers here. It was in range of half the price what I would pay in Germany at the time. To get better idea how long ago, win 95 just got out at the time I moved.

There are new laptops here that sell for less then 300 dollars (not net books, but laptops) and for a while cheapest PCs are around $300. (not gaming computers, but not bad for price)

About 2-3 years ago I purchased 2 pcs with monitors and printers for 2 family members for 400 dollars each.