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Actually the title of the thread is "What is a midrange price for a build?" Therefore high end should not be your vote.

That was the point as was specifically stated in you read the whole thread:

Definition: Midrange - The sum of the minimum and maximum values, divided by two.

So, to define the midrange, it is quite necessary to define the maximum value in order to "do the math"

BTW, definition was from the National Institute of Standards and Testing
http://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/midrange.html

If you have $600 for the low range and $1200 for the mid range, that means a high end build is only $1,800. Hi End should be close to SOTA (state of the art) and you are not going to build anything close to that, as shown by my component cost list, for $1,800

I just built a system which i would consider midrange from the Price point of view..But the components arent what i would say Cheap either.
I have 1,434 dollars invested in mine and im very happy with the results so far.
My system specs are.
Case Antec 900 Hundred. $125.00
Mobo MSI P7N Platinum $165.00
Memory 2gig of Balistic PC2-8500 1066 $99.00
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 4mb 1333MHZ $195.00
Antec Trio 650 Watt PS $119.00
Lite On 20x DVDRW SATA W/ Lightscribe $ 45.00
BFG 512MB DDR3 Geforce 8800GT OC $279.00
Western Digital Cavier SE16 HD 320gb SATA $89.00
Im really Happy with the MSI Mother Board its got all the nice features of SLI..Over Clockablity and MSI is Has alwaay provided me with stablity and longevity in the past.

After oberving this thread for a while, I know that the limit for midrange is different from person to person, but I can see that the most mentioned value is around $1000-$2000.
Don't you agree?

You can built a pretty decent mid end machine for around 1000-1200 $. Especially if you don't mind you're case too much, I think that's one area that you can save money. As long as you have enough space and at least 2 x 120mm fans, you're pretty much in business.

Around $1000 seems reasonable, $500 + for a budget. Glad to see that Tom's is taking members comments into consideration.

IMHO, it's a range between 800 and 1200. I picked 950 just to be cantankerous. A budget build I'd call between 500 and 799 and an enthusiast anything over 1250, with the caveat that definitions of enthusiast differ, as do needs.

I think that's because peeps rarely build their 1st puter and when the building their second, they already got everything on that list except perhaps the OS.

yeah, but what about real work, not just games?

I have to say, I'm starting to think my $1250 was a little off the mark. My new build (as in last 2 weeks) cost just under $1000 with shipping, and could have cost much less (I went with a better case and PSU than I needed). I'm still in the overclocking stability testing, but it looks like 3ghz cpu and 1066 ram is nice and stable.

It seems that I might be beyond mid-range (or at least what I think of mid-range) in performance, at less than my voted price. I have to say $900 or less and you can get a very solid, mid range box.

Does this price include monitor, and other items of just the box?

in january i spent 750 on a E6750 8800GT based system although i recycled my Sound card and optical drives from my previous PC and of course monitor keyboard etc.

So I would guess 1000-1200 for mid range if you add in allt he crap I didnt have to get.

A side note: Since I'm monitoring this thread anyways, here's also a good place to propose ideas for future System Build, or System Builder Marathon articles.

There's no rule that says that the System Buidler Marathon has to be a gaming rig. We could do a HTPC, a portable gamer box, a video/sound editing system, a silent system, or anything, if there's enough demand for it.

to : Ombudsman
Exactly! Agreed!
Not everyone, who wanna buy a PC, want only to play games.
So it has to be from every point of view.
for Example :
1. HTPC build marathon.
2. Office or general use build marathon.
3. Special usage build marathon (sound or video editing, CAD, etc.)
4. etc., etc.