5k is very excessive. In fact I built my machine for around 2k and it was very near top of the line when I built it. I could have probably blown another 1k on it but wouldn't have really gotten much more out of it overall.

I don't think I can take my PC on a plane. Better to stay home. 

Still using ibuypower Frogboy? After you touted them a couple years back, I gave them a try with pretty good results. Have one that keeps having a fan go bad, but that is completely Thermaltake's fault, and ibuypower replaced it twice for free. Just a poor bearing design on that fan, and no one else seems to make a 230mm fan.

Mines from Cyberpower and its a beast. Though I ordered it pretty bare bones and finished the rest of it myself. (cause handling processors makes me nervous...) So I ordered mine with no os, no video card (I had one to put in it and have upgraded since then as well) no keyboard and no mouse. So all together I spent 600 and got a I7-920, 6 gigs of ram (ive gone up to 9 since then) a 500g hd, a 64g ssd, liquid cooling, and a pretty sweet case. Now my machine is 2 years old now though. But still that should give you a reference sean3.

tldr cyberpower or ibuypower will hook you up with a monster for 2g or less easy.

Thanks for updating this post to include the date. Looking forward to more daily shots (from the screen, that is).