I find myself with a burned-out network card and a failing hard drive and I figure that it's finally time to replace the relic. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to keep up with hardware in quite a while. I'm working on something of a budget ($600-700, almost certainly not more than $700) and would love any help whatsoever on what components are giving decent bang for the buck right now. I'm not expecting to SLI/Crossfire anything given the price, though RAIDing a couple of drives seems like a potentially good idea if I can find a pair cheap enough. Is it still even possible to build a decent system for this price? Also, are tigerdirect and newegg still generally the best places to look for components? Edit: To clarify, the goal is gaming. I don't need to be able to run things on high settings for the next five years, but the more powerful and more long-lasting the better, naturally.
