I am on my fourth computer purchased over the last ten years in the pursuit of playing Total War games. The last one cost me as much as the car I was driving at the time. It is all a matter of your priorities. If you love these games, you will make it happen.
Last night I was in a local Wal-Mart Superstore browsing the electronics department, and found a stack of computer boxes on an end-cap on sale for under 500 dollars. I looked at the specs just for fun, and was amazed at what you can get off the shelf these days.
Online I found what I believe is the same system for a bit more (posted below), but also found dedicated gaming systems for the same price. In comparison to just five years ago, they are practically giving these systems away.
•AMD Phenom II 840T Quad-Core processor
2.90GHz, 2MB L2 Cache + 6MB Shared L3 Cache
•6GB DDR3 SDRAM system memory (expandable to 16GB)
Gives you the power to handle most power-hungry applications and tons of multimedia work
•1TB SATA hard drive
Store 666,000 photos, 285,000 songs or 526 hours of HD video and more
•Blu-ray Disc Player & SuperMulti DVD Burner with LightScribe Technology
Watch HD movies, and read and write CDs and DVDs in multiple formats
•10/100Base-T Ethernet, Wireless LAN 802.11b/g/n
Connect to a broadband modem with wired Ethernet or wirelessly connect to a Wi-Fi signal or hotspot with built-in 802.11 (b/g or n) connection built into your PC
•ATI Radeon HD 5450 Series Graphics
With 512MB DDR5 dedicated graphics memory, DVI and HDMI capabilities and support for Blu-ray and Microsoft DirectX 11

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