what makes a great PC?
 

I need to update my PC and don't know what to get build. I need something pretty damn good as I usually have 10 programs running, do a bit of video work and love to play Counter Strike online.

What are the good specs I can give my IT guy?

4g ram
quad core
good graphics card
asus mother

Agreed...

a mac will do all of the above

What he said.

Q9450 CPU
Asus P5Q motherboard (or variant like the deluxe)
4GB Ram, or 2GB if you'll run 32bit (make sure it's a good match for the board)
Good affordable graphics card like an 8800GT
Antec P182 is a nice case (thermaltake and coolermaster are nice too)
Seasonic makes the best power supplies (get an 80-Plus type supply no matter what)
WD Velociraptor for C:\ drive (or two of them in RAID0 for real speed)
Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB for D:\ (this is a damn fast drive)

Why not Intel?

get a brand computer - Dell for example

a floppy disk drive

Fast hard drives and plenty of memory seem to have the biggest impact for me.

A real sick ass graphic card with a lot of ram

I've always preferred to build my own, and have always had way less problems that way

If you have an IT guy, chances are he knows a lot more about the hardware than you do. Tell him you want something with a nice NVidia graphics card.

this would be bang on

fuck the Velociraptor, at the price my 2 640Gb WD drives in RAID will beat it in everything, hell you could buy 4 and have striped AND mirrored for the best of speed AND reliability and still only be slightly more expensive than a single velociraptor.

get a mac

Why do people still build computers these days? For $800 I bought a brand new quad processor with 8gigs of ram and TB of drive space..... And I didn't have to build anything...

#1 OEM's don't have overclocking options
#2 OEM's have extremely limited "tweaking"
#3 your 8Gb RAM most likely is SHIT, I love the high quality, high speed, low latency stuff no OEM would use
#4 have fun upgrading... those OEM's use shitty power supplies so stack on a couple more hard drives, an extra DVD drive and wait for the blue screens to creap up from being under powered.

Obviously if I didn't really care about performance I'd wait for that Q6600 + 24"LCD dell deal to come around, that was what like $500... totally worth it.

I'm very picky about exactly which model hard drive I get, I want a solid RIPPING DVD drive and a fast DVD burner that is friendly with cheap media. Hand picking every model of every part ends up getting you far better performance and is worth that 45 minute windows install and 15 minutes to piece it all together.

Obviously if its for a family member they're getting a Dell, its just easier to not have to deal with anything ;)

I spent four hours fixing a Dell this weekend. I wanted to go to the store and simply pick up a box for $300 to $400. Luckly my daughter had a great time at my buddies home, as he has two kids and huge playroom for them.

I would rather buy a box from a brand name, then to spend the time building a box. i don't find it fun any more, I see it as work.