The baby Core 2 Quad Q9300 gives some serious performance per dollar spent. With the option to effortlessly overclock to 3 Ghz by cranking your front side bus to 400 mhz, while the 45nm process this CPU is built on keeps temperatures down, this is serious value.

2 GB of Corsair's XMS DDR 3 memory will keep your OS and programs happy. With DDR3 prices finally falling to reasonable levels, we jumped at the chance to break free of DDR 2. You should also be able to comfortably reach some moderate overclocks with this memory too.

1 TB of storage provides a comfortable amount of room for all your games and media. Keep everything, and spend less time worrying about deleting files and emptying the trash. With a 3 Gb/s SATA interface, 7200 rpm spindle speed, and a 32 MB cache, the WD black edition drives sacrifice nothing for capacity.

The GeForce GTX 260 probably needs no introduction. This card paired with a quad-core processor will provide you with a great gaming experience without making you resort to eating ramen for a month to pay for it. If you're an AMD fan, the hew HD4000 cards are wonderful too, and crossfire is possible on this system, but for a single card system, this GeForce more than delivers the goods.