for $1800 at newegg you can piece together a top of the line desk top PC. Less if you're not a gamer or don't need powerful 3D. They also have good all in one setups if you don't know much.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ll-in-One%20PC

Apple is for girls.

Here's a good setup for you.........

( $1,049 )
Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition Bloomfield 3.33GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115212

( $379 )
ASUS Rampage III Extreme LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131642

( $199 )
Patriot Viper II Sector 7 Edition 12GB (3 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820220499

( $179 )
Western Digital Caviar Black WD2001FASS 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136456

( $449 )
GeForce GTX 480 (Fermi) SuperClocked+ 1536 MB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130558

My personal and professional opinion is to a buy a high tech ASUS desktop reliable and long lasting with good support.

Acre sucks in support.

hey desipapa! :pimp

personally I love my acer. $350 on sale at frys electronics had it for about 6 months so far its very fast and never has had a problem.

20"monitor is way to small these days, get a 24 or even better a 30" like my dell

don't buy a brand name pc .. you just pay extra for the name

go to a computer shop and and let them build a custom pc for you or just pick one of the no-name pc-s they offer.

go to computer shop and order desktop assembled as per your specifications.

I pulled the trigger on one of the Asus I posted a link to earlier on page 1... got two Asus monitors as well. Thanks for all the feedback. :)

A few little known facts about computers...

1. ALL Manufacturers like HP, Dell, Gateway and the like use bottom of the bin parts. They're just like any other business where lowest bidder wins the contract.

2. If you take some time to read the fuckin manual, building your own desktop is not that hard. For starters, any half decent or better motherboard manufacturer includes nice pictures and full installation details in their manuals. Secondly, it's not like you can actually fuck up and install something where it doesn't belong... unless you're a grade A fucking retard.

CPU's can only be installed on/in the cpu socket. Installing a cpu is the only halfway tricky part as you need to make sure to install it the right way... but it's in the manual and if you read it, you should have 0 problem because it really is very easy.

Memory can only be installed into a Memory slot. The memory stick can only be installed in one way, and there's a little notch on the memory stick as well as the memory slot on the motherboard. Line notches up, apply medium force until memory stick(s) click lock into place.

Likewise, PCI expansion cards can only be installed into PCI slots, same with PCIe, AGP (lol if you buy something with agp these days) etc etc. There is no component that you can buy for a PC that can accidentally be install in the wrong place.

The benefit of building your own?
Knowing exactly what hardware you have in your system.
You actually end up learning more about your system and how it operates.
When something goes wrong, you'll probably have a better idea of what it is and how to fix it. PC repair people make a living off of people simply because the average person has no clue as to what's wrong with their system.

And last but not least... the internet is FULL of FREE information about everything you could possibly ever want to know about computers. How to build your own, how to fix it, what those pesky BSOD error codes mean (most of the time), etc etc etc. Search engines are your friend. Inform yourself instead of always relying on other people to fix things for you... you'll be surprised at how much money you'll end up saving.

I have a quadcore from dell and it works more than fine for me...

I havent purchased a prebuilt except my Gateway Netbook that has been awesome for more than a year. I have built all of my desktops for the last 10 years and just finished a new one for my everyday use. It has a Intel i5-760 with 4GB of 1600mHz DDR3 ram running a Biostar board and it flies compared to the 3.0gHz HT I had before and the whole setup was under $400. A comparable prebuilt would have been around $800-1200 and I know it will work until I need a new one.