2500k vs. 2600k? Budget around $1500.

New tech's coming up early next next year. So if early Jan's what you're looking at, might as well hold on a bit longer and check out the reviews before pulling the trigger.

Case - Any mid/full tower case in your price range should be more than acceptable. Just go for something you like the look of and have a quick Google for some reviews if your unsure. FRACTAL are a great manufacturer for "simple design" cases, and they are very high quality with good cooling.

CPU - Stick with the i5-2500k, it will allow you to spend the money saved from i7-2600k to be spent elsewhere on other important components.

PSU - CoolerMaster are generally avoided. 500w is enough for a single 6950, or grab a 750w unit if you plan to add a second card in crossfire. Recommended PSU brands include: XFX, Corsair, Antec, SeaSonic.

HDD - You could save a little money here and grab either a 1TB SpinPoint F3 or a SeaGate Barracuda.

CPU Cooler - It's not "necessary" to buy an after-market cooling, but if your planning to over-clock its highly recommended.

RAM: G.Skill or Corsair are popular choices, stick with 1600MHz, 1.5v, CL9. Its generally considered the best value for money.

Thermal Paste - It usually comes pre-applied with stock coolers and some after-market coolers, so you wont need to buy this separately (in most cases).

Overclocking - You build doesn't need to be "good enough" to over-clock, it all comes down to the CPU and the i5-2500k has HUGE over-clock potential so id HIGHLY recommend looking into it.

SLI - This is the Nvidia equivalent of ATI's "crossfire" (which basically means running 2 Graphics cards or more, within a single system).

SSD - This means "Solid State Drive" - its like a HDD but obviously much quicker and more expensive (price per GB).

Motherboard - GEN3 motherboard would be recommended (ASRock Extreme4 GEN3 or similar). Same features and similar price to the ASUS board you've listed, but with the advantage of being PCI 3.0 ready.

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As posted above by calguyhunk - if your not looking to purchase until January - It's likely ATI will be onto the 7xxx series of GPU's amongst other tech updates. This build suggestions you get now, probably wont apply in 3 months time.

I reccomend the Fractal Design Arc Midi case for a clean design with good cooling.

You should either get 2 or 4 sticks of RAM for that cpu/motherboard.. 2 4GB sticks should be fine.

If you want to do some overclocking you should get a better cooler than the stock heatsink.. The Hyper 212+ or EVO are good budget cooling options

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Thanks guys! last few questions. Would Radeon 6950 2GB be worth getting, or is 1gb enough? Which one of those PCI 3.0 motherboards would you recommend (bang for buck)?

So it means by January 2012 prices will drop? If so, I think I will hold off until January until the new stuff comes out. Do you guys know approximately when most of these products come out? I will be in Taiwan during January, I'm thinking it will be even cheaper there.

Much appreciated,

Eric

The extra GPU memory in a high-end cards helps mainly in multi-monitor set-ups.

For a single monitor, the 1GB version will generally work plenty alright.