I'm looking to buy (possibly build, although I'm not handy) a new PC that will primarily serve two purposes: play a few low-end games (GW2 is probably the most demanding I play) and also serve as an always-on backup/base store for our data (I'll come back to this in a second).

A bit of background - both my wife and I have two laptops that we've had for probably 2 years (close to 3 for mine). We also have two iPhones. When we got married, she got an iPad from her parents as a wedding gift and then when she got hired at a private school, she got another iPad. We both backup our iDevices to our own laptops and we do share an account, but we'd like to have all the data in one central location. We also have a Kindle (won it at a church raffle), but that's not really a big deal.

Now, in terms of what I was thinking of getting, this is what GW2 demands that I have questions on (of course I'll have a keyboard and mouse and hard-disk space...):

• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3, AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 or better
• 2 GB RAM
• NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI Radeon™ X1800, Intel HD 3000 or better (256MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)

I was thinking at least an i5 and 8 GB of RAM, but would it be worth the extra cash to go up to an i7 and/or 16 GB of RAM? And what would be a good video card? I know next to nothing and really only can tell what's better based on what the custom PC builders tell me. I'd kind of like this rig to last a while and be able to run GW2 without an issue at highest settings... provided this doesn't cost me $2k.

Now, for the backup side, I was thinking of a 2 TB main HDD and then a secondary solid-state drive to host Windows for a fast boot. (Truly vital information will, as it is now, put onto a 16 GB thumb drive we have and placed in our safety-deposit box.) Any thoughts on that?

So I guess all my questions boil down to these four. My budget is probably around $1k, $1.5 if the extra cash is worth it:

• Is it worth the extra cash to go up to an i7 or stay at an i5? Or am I missing something entirely in this question?
• Will 16 GB of RAM be better than 8 (I know the obvious answer, but if the processor cannot process fast enough, 500 GB of RAM means nothing...)
• What would be a good video card to put into this, hoping for it to have some staying power?
• Is it worth getting a second solid-state drive to put windows on?