I play Battlefield 1942 for fun. I only play online against other people, playing against a computer doesn't appeal to me. You can taunt a computer, but what's the point? The problem is Battlefield 1942 is several years old and the number of people playing it has gone way down. It is getting hard to find a good game.
The latest version of Battlefield is Battlefield 2142, it takes a fast PC to play it well. My current PC is 5 years old and is fine for everything except the latest games. So it is time to get a new computer - but one made for speed. I still want to use my old PC for all my normal work, and that includes using my existing 19 inch. LCD monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and Internet connection. But I want the computer itself to be completely new, using only new technology. Eventually, maybe next year, I'll migrate everything off the old PC and onto the new PC but since my old PC still runs all the stuff I use everyday, I am not in a rush.
To keep things reasonably priced, I will look for everything to be in a "sweet spot" for performance versus cost. In other words, I am not looking for the fastest, or the newest, but good speed and good value.
You can buy a "prebuilt" computer that is made for speed from one of the gaming PC companies such as Alienware, Falcon-Northwest, Voodoo PC, or Widow PC. While these companies make some great game PC's, after browsing their PC's for while and trying to get exactly what I want -- no more, no less -- I got frustrated. It seems they either want the PC to do too much - and the price skyrocketed. Or they want the PC to do too little, meaning I could get one on a budget, but not equipped exactly the way I wanted. And some of them look weird. I decided I should build my own.
Even if you know how to build your own PC, and I do, there are some good reasons to approach the idea cautiously. The biggest one is the following: suppose you got a key part (say the motherboard), that was faulty. Remember, you won't know that it is broken until you build the whole thing. And then you will have to tear it completely apart and send the motherboard back. And assuming you are right, that it is a faulty motherboard and not a faulty power supply, or CPU, or memory, or cable, etc.. And assuming you didn't break it by doing something wrong; you will still have to wait weeks just to be able to put it back together and try it again. It could get ugly - can you handle it? If you don't think you can, then I don't recommend building one. Otherwise, if you build one yourself there are lots of advantages. Besides the fun of building it, the biggest advantages are that you can build it exactly the way you want to and that you will have a better knowledge of your new PC than you could get any other way.
All you need is some initiative!