are there any better places to go?

Im in the market for buying a new system primarily for gaming. I dont necessarily need a montor, cd/dvd drive, or hard drive so a barebones system might also be a viable option. I have a couple questions for you all:
1) should i buy before, immediately after, or during christmas time?
2) are there any sites better than www.cyberpowersystems.com for buying complete systems? they seem to kick even newegg's ass in prices.
3)are there any good online stores for barebones packages?

ps: im not partial to amd or pentium, but i do favor asus motherboards and i need kickass ram and graphics card.

Feel free to give me any advice you want.
thanks,
J_reez

 

ok definitely after christmas - there will be sales throughout and prices always fall after christmas!
you could try www.tigerdirect.com, i've never bought from there being a UK resident but many people have been impressed with newegg, dispite the fact you mentioning the other site being cheaper.
definitlely go for a geforce 5900xt or higher with 256mb ram if you want decent gaming, the radeon x800 is good but many people seem to think that the geforce is better and say a gig of ram, that'll get your games going well!
athlons are probably better, athlon 64s offer good gaming experiences apparently but i'm sure an athlon xp 3000+ would be fine.

good luck hunting

 

oh my, I seem to have screwed my link up...it should be www.cyberpowersystem.com with no "s" after system. lol goes to a totally different site.

 

Try anandtech.com/forums try the for sale/trade thred.