New PC

[TOH]

Put her on Ivy Bridge instead.

[Didzo]

Put her on Ivy Bridge instead.

Already there with the last screenshot.



I managed to cut down the price to $950 ($970 without the Newegg combo).

Halved the RAM (still 2x4GB for easy upgrading), switched to an ASRock mobo, downgraded the CPU a little, got rid of the CPU heatsink, and swapped the pretty white and blue Portal 2-esque case for something that's all function.

Thoughts?

[Versus]

save up for a cheap ssd imo

[k0ala]

Put the heatsink back. As far as I'm concerned, the only reason processor manufacturers include a stock cooler is to make the chip harder to steal. It's always underpowered and comes with some gimmicky thermal duct tape pre-applied.

[Didzo]

Put the heatsink back. As far as I'm concerned, the only reason processor manufacturers include a stock cooler is to make the chip harder to steal. It's always underpowered and comes with some gimmicky thermal duct tape pre-applied.

I suppose so. These CPUs run hot, but the cooler is arguably non-essential so it was an easy thing to cut out when I wanted to get the price under $1K.

[Eightball]

I've been looking into new parts myself, so here's my recommendations (without looking at Didzo's, so you can see where we overlapped independently):

Processor: i5-2500. Best bang for your buck. You could get the 2500k variant if you ever plan to OC, but that's for more serious enthusiasts (I still haven't OC'd my i7-920...). And if you're not OC'ing, you'll be okay with stock cooling.
Motherboard: ASRock Z77. Inexpensive motherboard, but still has nice stuff like USB 3.0 and handles ram speeds up to 2800. Not familiar with ASRock, but they're pretty popular...must be doing something right.
Memory: Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1600 4x2GB, for 8GB total. I've never, ever had problems with Corsair products, I'd recommend them up and down. You could argue that 8GB is overkill, but hey, RAM is cheap. Knock it down to 4GB if you really want to save $20, though you might just end up re-upping it to 8GB in the future.
Storage: I recommend a small SSD for your OS and essential applications and then a large data/game physical hard drive. The size of the latter should depend on the amount of storage you normally use, and how large your steam library is, assuming you want everything installed at once.
Graphics: GTX 560. I tend to steer clear of those $400 flagship cards. A 560 will give you very solid performance at 1080 for most games. I feel that video cards are the most quickly outdated hardware as well, so you should expect to upgrade this in ~2 years anyways.
PSU: Corsair 750HX. I've learned the hard way that PSUs are not the sort of thing you should cheap out on. I'm starting to also think of modular cabling as a must-have.
Case: This really should be something you decide. Check out 3dgameman's Youtube channel for some nice video reviews. I tossed in one just for the sake of estimating cost.
Optical Media & OS: This is again on you. See if you can find a cheap copy of Win7 Home Premium...somewhere. Tossed some stuff in for cost calculation.

End result: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/cbS3 Just a bit over $1k, without any peripherals or displays. If it's still too expensive, consider dropping the SSD, I guess, or the extra 4GB of RAM, since you can always add those later. If you experiment with different manufacturers, you can probably save a bit more over my selected storage and power options. Hope this helps.

[at0m]

Never heard of pcpartspicker, looks like a buyer's remorse engine. I'll save it, maybe it'll still be around in 4-5 years when I build another rig.