Windows 8 is here at last. Some love it, and some hate it. Regardless of how you feel about Microsoft's new operating system, one thing is undeniable: it's arrived at a pretty good time to upgrade.

AMD has just refreshed its processor lineup from top to bottom, countering Ivy Bridge with what might be its most compelling alternatives yet. Those alternatives include chips like the A10-5800K and the FX-8350, which are great performers despite their relatively high thermal envelopes. Intel has also expanded its Ivy Bridge lineup with dual-core offerings like the Core i3-3220 and i3-3225, which seem ripe for our budget Econobox build.

Things have been moving on the GPU front, too. AMD and Nvidia have treated us to a handful of new cards like the Radeon HD 7850 1GB and GeForce GTX 660. Some of those happen to ship with extremely tantalizing game bundles. Also, as usual, memory and solid-state storage prices have continued their steady decline, inviting us to recommend ever-larger SSDs and RAM kits.