They don't, because they don't care. That's why sites like Tom's Hardware et al. stay in business helping people who know nothing, or very little, about the latest and greatest.

You're doing the best thing you can do, go to a forum with people you know and ask questions.

Good luck with your build.

If you check around the hardware sites you can usually find some articles every couple of months where they put together systems for a particular price point, here is a decent one:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-a-pc-budget-overclock,3160.html

Personally I would swap out the CPU and video card they used there and go with a i5/2500k and GTX 560Ti/448 or GTX 580 video card instead of the i5/2400 and 7970 combo they have there, but if you look around you will see similar articles.

Also there are many of us on SimHQ that are into this stuff and can help provide input if you need, just be aware we all have our own experience and biases so take our input with a grain of salt

Good luck on your build.

7950 i have plows through everything on Ultra/high at 1080p without breaking a sweat or going about 70% GPU usuage, and they dropped the price to 399 (i paid 499)

if your really tight, AMD Scorpious platforms are cheaper than Intel, games will be enjoyable and playable, but your benchmark scores will be laughed at by Intel Users.

So how much cheaper can I build a system compared to this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883227322

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883229285

@ Reticuli:

That's pretty hard to beat if you need to buy all the peripherals and OS. However it doesn't specify the PSU; which leads me to believe that it's probably some generic cheap-o power supply that will probably fail (or cause other components to fail) before anything else; just a heads up.

Also I noticed they have the RAM as 4x2GB; which makes no sense to me. 2x4GB kits go for 10-20 bucks less; and having all RAM channels full can sometimes lead to instability.

Just curious, what's your current/old system specs?

edit: sorry OP for hijacking your thread

I have a VERY good PSU in storage that I could have sent to me. Cost a pretty penny.

I'm currently just using a Core2Duo Laptop at 2ghz, 4GB ram, and intel integrated graphics. Compaq cq56-219WM I picked up at Walmart when I got to Dayton for school and college tech guys swapped out the Celeron for the other CPU for me, which made a big difference multitasking. I popped in the extra 2GB ram. I needed it in a hurry so for $300 + $20 and bought here it was fine. I have another CPU and set of ram, so eventually I'm going to get another one used and clone them so I have a backup for school. Fan's gone out and it cannot really run flight sims properly. So this one needs to be sent in for warranty repair anyway.

I really want an HP touchsmart 3d, but they are so darn expensive and include the same card as that 2nd desktop up there I linked. I have the money for even a souped-up one, but it seems like a lot to spend on something so underperforming. The only real benefit going that way is portability, since I could put it in a travel case easier than a desktop. If HP had an nvidio 560 in the touchsmart and charged a little more I'd probably just get one.

When's Windows 8 coming out? I hear that's very touch-centric, right? Maybe I'm better off waiting. I want good price/performance ratio sweetspot, though. I'm willing to build a desktop and a separate monitor if I need to not to get ripped off with excessive cost for only moderate performance increase in X-

No worries, Carry on.

I have learned alot from this discussion already.

Yeah @Reticuli the main worries I would have with that Buypower system is it doesn't say what brand/model of motherboard or PSU, both of those are pretty important components IMHO to get a quality product you will stay happy with otherwise you may end up having to replace them soon... I would check on their own site and see what you can put together for what price:
http://www.ibuypower.com

Which system do they sell do you think is the best bang for the buck? If you could link or build me one, dude, that would be great. I haven't kept track of this hardware stuff in years.

http://www.ibuypower.com/ibppages/weeklyspecial.aspx

they need a pc with as many of these specials on it as possible ;-)