Re: Real gamers ...
I think the last time I bought a complete system was somewhere around 1994, everything since then has been bits and pieces.
I tend to replace bits at 4 year intervals so...
year 1 : new motherboard / cpu (ram if required)
year 2 : new hard drives (the old ones are 4 years old and probably fairly full)
year 3 : new video card(s)
year 4 : anything else that needs replacing
current system..
I7 4790k (water cooled)
32Gb ram
nvidia gtx970 driving 3 23" ips screens @1920x1080 (5760x1080)
1tb SSD + 2x4tb spinning rust