TR's Christmas 2012 system guide

You know how it is. You spend the first half of December occupied with other things, and then all of a sudden, Christmas is a week away. You grab your coat, run outside, and scramble to find gifts for your loved ones. Sometimes, others have beaten you to the punch and left store shelves maddeningly empty.

Today, we're giving stragglers a hand with their last-minute shopping. We've put together a freshly revamped set of PC build recommendations—because, sometimes, a shiny new gaming PC is the best gift you can give. (Besides, you know, love and togetherness and all that nonsense.) There's still enough time to shop and get parts before the big day.

We've adjusted our customary configs to account for our latest performance findings and recent changes in availability. Our GPU selections have been tweaked in light of the performance problems we recently encountered with AMD's Radeon HD 7950. We've also altered our SSD recommendations to replace previously favored drives that have become harder to find.