thank you everyone for your response I don't have much money right now, I'm kind of including my tax money already although I don't know what I'm getting back and what I'll have to spend out of it, but I'm estimating with what I have saved now and what I'll be able to spend, roughly $1500 is what I would like to spend. I don't play many games on the computer and would like it to be able to handle maya and hd videos without being choppy. Other than that not much for preferences. I'm not against building one on my own, pretty much just slightly intimidated, I've worked on computers a little bit here and there for friends that need help changing things out but never actually put one together from scratch. Basically I'm not computer hardware illiterate, I know the do's and don'ts and I do have a grounding strap that I use whenever I work on a computer.