Over the years, I've built my own and my brother's. Last winter, he wanted a new machine. I looked into building a 5 year machine (in other words, good quality and enough performance), but found the prices of the components seemed higher this time around.

We ended up going with a Dell Vostro 430. At the time, I think there were free upgrades that got the i7 for the price of the i5 processor. This is a very quiet computer.

It's in their business lineup and was the cheapest way to get the i5/i7 series processors from Dell. I found it doesn't have nearly as much of the garbage software pre-installs on it as I've seen on other purchased computers. So far, I'd recommend it.