Gaming on a Budget

So you want to play the latest games, but your budget is limited. Still, you want a system your friends won't laugh at. (And you won't scream at.) You want to be able to play the current crop of games on reasonably high settings and hope to run this system for the next year or two without having to back off the graphics settings to "minimum." This section's for you. The entries below will be in a blog format so I can just tack new months in front of older ones.