After a long hiatus, the Ars Technica System Guide finally returns.

The main three-box System Guide leads off the return, with the traditional Budget Box, Hot Rod, and God Box addressing three different price points in the market. The main System Guide's boxes are general-purpose systems with a strong gaming focus, which means you won't find any office boxes or bargain-basement machines here.

The low end of the scale, the Budget Box, is still a formidable gaming machine despite its reasonable price tag ($600-$800). The Hot Rod represents what we think is a reasonable higher-end general-purpose computer that packs plenty of gaming performance, although we've adjusted the price tag down $200 from the traditional price, into the $1200-1400 range, to reflect upon the fact that building a nice machine with a high-end video card has gotten quite a bit more affordable. Those with more freedom to spend, of course, are free to include upgrades we discuss that we didn't include in the official recommendation—we simply didn't think they were compelling enough to make mandatory. The God Box remains closest to unchanged from previous incarnations, a very capable starting point for a high-end workstation. It may not do exactly what you want, but it should be an excellent starting point for anyone with a good idea of their truly high-end computing needs, be it gaming to excess after winning the lottery, taking advantage of GPU computing, or storing and editing tons of HD video.

The short take would be: the Budget Box is for those who are seeking the most bang for their buck. The Hot Rod is for enthusiasts with a larger budget, but who still know that there's a sweet spot between performance and price. The God Box, as excessive as it is, always has a slight dose of moderation, mentioned in previous guides as "God wouldn't be a glutton."

Each box is setup with a full set of recommendations, down to mouse, keyboard, and speakers. As these are general-purpose boxes, we skip things like game controllers and $100 gaming mice, although the God Box does get something a little nicer. We also discuss alternative configurations and upgrades; today's guide reflects AMD's dominance in the video card market, the battle between Intel and AMD in the sub-$200 CPU space, and the appearance of affordable SSDs—at least if you have a decently sized budget.

As a side note, we do address other systems in our occasional Specialty System Guides. Green computing, more gaming-focused setups at slightly different price points, an even lower-cost office/"mom" box known as the Ultimate Budget Box, HTPCs, and others. If you don't see anything that interests you here, please feel free to check them out.