I'm shoppin' for a computer... any pointers?

[Tellis]

Oh duh, yeah those are kind of important questions. Sorry, my bad.

Gaming is definitely not my first priority, though it'd be nice to actually be able to play most mid to low-end games (for example, I've been sitting on my copy of Portal from when it was free on Steam when the Mac store opened up, on a computer that will never be able to run it). I just want to be able to run several programs at once without my computer completely slowing to a halt (as it likes to do now) and be able to process embedded Youtube videos without freezing in the middle of them.

Well, I was planning on buying a pre-built one but, is building it yourself really that much cheaper? I never really figured it would be, but then I guess most examples I've heard of it getting expensive are people buying high-end stuff. And, I'd like to probably replace the mouse and keyboard eventually (though they work) but the monitor suits my needs just fine. I guess a plus to buying a pre-built tower would be that most come with a mouse and keyboard. But yeah, not huge priorities on new peripherals.