I know what most of you will instinctly say, and I'll prevent the needless discussion now. I'm not interested in building my own. I would have been open to it before this computer. The actual problem could still be a multitude of things. If something were to happen to a computer that I built myself, I wouldn't have the security of being able to fall back on a company. I would have to go to vendor after vendor until I figured out what was the cause of the issue, and it's just not worth the hassle to me.
Now... I'm looking at buying a system from http://www.digitalstormonline.com . Does anyone have any positive or negative feedback from this company? From what I've found so far, they seem like a solid company and really put pride into their products and make sure they're in top condition. I'm open to suggestions for other sites, but I do have somewhat limited funds (Looking at spending about $1200 maximum).
Then, there are two hardware issues which I'm a little torn on. First and foremost, an AMD processor vs an Intel processor. I know that AMD's are ideal for gaming, but they also tend to run a tad bit hotter than Intel's. Would standard fan / heatsink cooling be ok for an AMD based system?
Also, I'll be running dual video cards in the system that I'm looking at. With a single hard drive, single optical drive (No floppy either), simple case lighting and dual video cards, would 450 watt power supply be sufficient? At most, I would possibly add a second optical drive, so let's even say that I'll have two of those in the system.
Also, would I benefit much more from 2 512 MB video cards vs 2 256's?
Thank you in advance for any advice