Looking to get a good deal for a desktop

[parkwood]

OK, I'm brand new to this forum so be gentle.

I'm looking to basically get the most bang for my buck. I have roughly around 1000 to spend (I want that to be taxes and everything).

All I need is a tower and a keyboard. I already have a 19inch CRT that looks good. I have a printer/scanner for my work and I just bought a new mouse.

I want it mainly for basic office work, web browsing and most importantly games.

I want to play games like Supreme Commander, Sins of a Solar Empire and other RTSs. I also play a FPS once in a while.

Now here is the kicker. I work a LOT. So I don't have the time and/or energy to build my own so I want to buy one from somewhere. It doesn't have to be Dell or Gateway or anything like that (but, of course, fly by night would suck). I'm ok with hardware (I have replaced power supplies, hard drives, video cards etc) but I've never built my own machine from scratch.

So with that I'm willing to get a barebones and add a hard drive, DVD drive, video card etc but I'm not swapping motherboards.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Koggit]

If those are the only games you want, $1,000 is pretty high end relative to your needs. You could get a much cheaper system.

[Oktoberfest]

so I guess CPU power is very important for those games

[Clarke]

It doesn't take that long to build a computer. And it's not like you have to build it in one sitting even if you are working every second of the day like you say you are.