It's $24 over $1000, so if going a little over is unacceptable, then say so and I'll try changing it around a bit.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/nArF
What do you think of that?
the i5-3570K is the most expensive CPU worth buying in a gaming build with a budget far under around $2000.
The ASRock Extreme 4 is a high end board with a lower mid-end price that gives it seemingly unbeatable bang for your buck as a motherboard.
This cooler is a fairly decent cooler. Ivy Bridge doesn't respond well to getting expensive and high end coolers and thanks to a combo deal with the CPU, this cooler was almost free, so why not?
A 2x4GB DDR3-1600 1.5V kit is really all that any modern gaming build needs and this is the cheapest high-quality kit.
Western Digital Caviar Blue is easily perhaps the best consumer desktop hard drive line for 1TB and lower despite being so cheap. If you want something both more reliable and higher performance than these, you'd have to go for a more expensive enterprise/professional drive such as a new Caviar Black or VelociRapter. I chose a 500GB model assuming that you won't need more. If I assumed wrong, please say so and I'll fix it.
Crucial M4 isn't the fastest SSD around, but it's up there most of the time and it's easily one of the most reliable. Since gaming doesn't really take any advantage from a faster SSD and this is currently the cheapest of its reliability and performance consistency class AFAIK, I chose it.
This Gigabyte WindForce Radeon 7950 is easily the best $300 or less gaming graphics card available overall.
This RoseWill Challenger case is one of the most well-reviewed and highest rated cheap cases that you'd ever find. With excellent air flow and good build quality for such a cheap case, it was a no-brainer, especially with the combo deal that it has on the DVD drive.
This Antec EarthWatts Green 650W power supply is an above-average quality PSU with good efficiency. It's not a record breaker or anything like that, but it'll get the job done reliably.
Also, I threw in a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 x64.