You want to build, so I'll list criteria below. The reason why I don't list exact parts is because price differences vary greatly, and because similar parts really come down to personal bias and preference, there really is no good/bad.
SSD's are the new thing. Futureproof and fast. You want something from Plextor, Sandisk, or Samsung. I prefer the Plextor M5S. Choose your capacity, 125 GB should be good.
MOBO/CPU, At this range, go for anything that has the ports 'n slots you want. ASRock seems to be a good brand. Intel Haswell is new, and sales are raging all over. I'd jump for microcenter deals, where they have cpu/mobo bundles with $40 discount. You can choose what mobo you want too! freedom!
Wind 7/8. Go to BestBuy and play around with Win8. If you like it, buy it. If you don't stick with 7.
HDD, for bulk stuff. WD Green leads again. no questions.
ODD, pretty much all the same. Unless you want Bluray movies, go buy some random $20 drive. Microcenter has one LG for $17. LG, Pioneer are the good brands. Plextor is the legend, but is rare.
CPU Cooler. The Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO is the undisputed champion at only $30. Noctua is a silent brand. Corsair dominates expensive water cooling.
PSU, Seasonic is on the rise as the very best. Corsair keeps on being good. 80 plus Platinum is new and gimmick. 80 plus Gold seems to be the sweetspot of quality/price. I would recommend the Corsair HX series, but anything gold should have good quality. Check out Techpowerup and Hardwaresecrets for the best reviews. Yeah they're complicated so just skip to the last page.
RAM, uhhh. DDR3 1600. Crucial Ballistix Sport is easy setup RAM.
Case. The new kid is Fractal Design. They offer impressive cases with Scandinavian design for practical prices. The Define R4 is silent but cool, the Arc Midi, Arc Mini and Arc XL are extremely good performance. Corsair Carbide cases are good too. The 300r is very popular. The once great Antec 302 is not competitive anymore.
Any Questions?
Finally, as your PC will turn out amazing. Please take the time to read the two paragraphs below, and make the world a better place.
Folding@Home is a "distributed computing" project. It lets users "donate" their unused computing power to help disease research in critical areas such as Cancer and Alzheimer's. Do the world, the future, and maybe you yourself some good by at least checking it out. Link here. http://folding.stanford.edu/
Moral things aside. Many performance enthusiasts love to compare how well their PC is by showing their points tally for folding. Tom's Hardware has its own team right here! Come in and comment!
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1580785/folding-home-thgc-team-40051/page-173.html
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