Buying a new computer [Resolved!]

Disaster has struck. My dinosaur computer is dying one part at a time, and rather than replace all the dead parts, I'm planning on buying a new one. Some of the barebones kits on Tiger Direct looked good, but not having bought ANYTHING in the realm of computer hardware for years, I'm not exactly sure what is a good buy.

So, I ask you, the better informed RMRK community: What is standard nowadys? What should I be looking for? If it helps, my price range is 350-450 USD. I'm definitely trying to salvage what I can from the old compy, like the hard drive and the 1GB RAM, and the DVD burner. Other than that, I'm gonna start from scratch. Any suggestions?

IIRC somewhere in this forum Roph posted a badass $300 build on a computer.
You could order all the parts online and it'd be a great rig to have.

Try searching for that in the mean time.

Drive - Fastest mechanical 1TB hard drive available, one arrives for me tomorrow 

Motherboard - standard AM3 motherboard with decent features

Graphics Card - the most powerful GPU that runs entirely off bus power - I have one of these too; any current game on high-max settings.

PSU - Enough to handle everything in this build and if you added some more hard drives or a higher power graphics card you'd still be ok.

Memory - You didn't say about your current pc so I dunno if you're on DDR3, but probably not. This is your standard 4GB kit.

CPU - Newly released, it's now possible to have a quad core for under $100, and it's a decent quad too (same cpu as a high end phenom, just no L3 cache)

6 Item(s) ($435.95)

roph saves the day.

$435  O_O

You said you had up to $450 to use. This seems like a nice investment. It's in your price range, it's pretty dang nice, and it's most definitely going to last you a while. One TB? LOL wao. I wish I had that kind of money ;-;

You said you had up to $450 to use. This seems like a nice investment. It's in your price range, it's pretty dang nice, and it's most definitely going to last you a while. One TB? LOL wao. I wish I had that kind of money ;-;

Lazer Kirby != EvilM00s

oh lulz, what was I thinking? I really remember completely identifying Lazer Kirby as not being the OP, but I wrote that out. Oh well.

Hmm. Thanks a bunch, guys! I'll look into that setup Roph laid out. Hopefully I can get the hardware by Christmas, I fear the current compy won't last much longer!