My computer is a toaster.

I started experiencing intermittent crashing and BSoD errors in late October, steps were attempted, but by the end of November my computer was rendered completely unusable. After having the computer for 30 days, a repair facility has now determined that it is unrepairable.

The good news is that I get the full (less taxes) purchase price of the computer and extended warranty refunded to me.

Anyone have any suggestions as to what I should be looking for spec-wise? The last time I did any in-depth research was almost 3 years ago when I bought the now defunct one.

I am able to get 40-70 fps in SWL on a laptop that uses an i7 processor with an nVidia 1070 graphics card. I'd recommend not using anything with a graphics card lower than that. A 1060 could PROBABLY play the game acceptably, but in a year would be outdated for any new games coming out. My laptop will also play Witcher 3 and Dragon Age Inquisition with no problem, but those aren't exactly new games, so your mileage may vary.

Some questions you want to ask yourself.

Laptop or Desktop?
Pre-built or build yourself?

Also make sure you get an SSD big enough for the OS and a few games.

Get the best graphics card and processor you can afford and a decent mother board.

Sticking with desktop and pre-built, since the warranty worked out so well in my favor this time.

It's great to have a personal experience benchmark for the 1070. Witcher 3 and DA:I are actually the only other games I've played besides SWL, so its remarkably spot on.

The site I'm looking at has a "configurator" with an absurd number of options. Anyone have mobo, RAM, or cooling preferences/brand loyalties?

things to look for processor speed and type i7 vs i5. i7s have hyperthreading i5s don't, hyperthreading is not really need for games. If you can look for the K variants as their unlocked from the factory for overclocking but your cooling needs to be on point or its sizzling time and you get magic smoke. For the gpu at least an 1060 preferably a 1070 or 1080. ram at least 16gb of a decent speed. Solid state drive or m.22 stick drive basically an ssd on crack. at least 500gb and possibly a large cheap platter drive for storage. Cooling get a good heat pipe cooler stay away and I mean far freaking away from pre build water cooling systems their junk. If you are not comfortable or at an intermediate level pc knowledge just say no to water cooling. it can take about 3 or 4 days to properly build and test a water cooling loop. I personally prefer ASUS and msi then gigabyte, had a few too many dumb issues with gigabyte but not enough to not use them, for fans for cooling get noctua, their powerful and quiet.

My computer:
Core2Duo 3GHz
RAM DDR2 4Gb (mb cant keep more)
MSI NV1050GTX 2Gb
no SSD
Windows 10 Pro x64 Insider Preview (fast ring)
DX11, All setting set to maximum.
working nice. 60-70FPS mostly (around 20-30 in Agartha when alot of peoples there).
so... what you talkin' about.dunno.... :)
read Zera's post about settings.
PS. my advice: disable CUDA in drivers. it greatly help (at least to me) got twice FPS,and no more freezes in Agartha also loading time was reduce,ALOT rare was crash(2 times actually for 2 week of play). (but errors with crash still present after few hours of play.but no cure for that, at least for now.restart after 2-3 hours of play can help OR when start to freezes-dont wait till game crash just restart :) )
PPS. for 'very special' configuration :) try to set DX9 instead of DX11 and disable shadows in game(light). but, well, for me it work much worster than with enabled CUDA. unstable FPS, glitches, didnt play so much. so dunno how much time till crash it can take :)
PPPS. also play Witcher/DAI at Ultra-no problem...