At 1680 x 1080 you do not need a very strong graphics card to get excellent gameplay:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-card-geforce-radeon,2646-3.html
A GTS250 or 5750 in the $115-130 range should be plenty. Since the graphics card is the definitive factor in gaming, you could put any extra into a better card such as the 5770 at $160 or so.
To adequately drive such a card needs only a dual core cpu clocked at 3.0 or so. For intel chips, that could be as little as the i5-530duo at $115. With a cpu budget of $200 or so, you could get a i5-661@3.3, a i5-750 quad @2.6 or even a i7-930 quad @ 2.6 if you can pick up at a microcenter. AMD chips are cheaper, but I think the Intel chips perform a bit better on a clock for clock basis.
It is hard to beat the Antec 300 illusion model for value at $60 with free shipping:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129066
For a PSU, it is hard to beat the Corsair units for quality and price. Any of the cpu/vga combinations above can be handled by a 450 w unit like the 450VX at $55:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139003
The slightly stronger 550w units do not cost much more. You only use the wattage you need, so there is no real downside to getting a slightly stronger unit than is required.
I would get a tower type oem cooler with a 120mm fan. It should cost <$50. It will keep your cpu cooler and be quieter than the stock intel cooler. If you ever want to overclock, the cooler will let you go higher and easier.
For any ram you are considering, do your own homework.
Go to the ram vendor's web site, and access their configurator.
Corsair, Kingston, Patriot, OCZ and others have them.
Their compatibility list is more current than the motherboard vendor's QVL lists which rarely get updated.
Enter your mobo or PC, and get a list of compatible ram sticks.
Here are a few links:
http://www.crucial.com/index.aspx
http://www.corsair.com/configurator/default.aspx
http://kingston.com/
http://conf.ocztechnology.com/index.php?c=1
http://www.patriotmemory.com/configurator/index.jsp
Cpu performance is not very sensitive to ram speeds.
If you look at real application and game benchmarks(vs. synthetic tests),
you will see negligible difference in performance between the slowest DDR2 and the fastest DDR3 ram.
Perhaps 1-2%. Not worth it to me.
Don't pay extra for faster ram or better timings unless you are a maximum overclocker.
4gb in a 2 x 2gb configuration is good. 6gb if you go the i7-930 route.
For the most part, any Hard drive with sufficient capacity will do, and performance differences are not much.
The WD caviar black is a good unit. The newly announced Seagate momentus XT hyprid drive looks interesting. It pairs a conventional drive with 4gb of mlc flash to give you performance between a ssd and a regular drive.
If you are a student, look for academic pricing on windows-7.
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