Personal recommendations.

Looking at benchmarks Intel's 2600K cremes every other processor except for a few high end 1366 socket ones. These are running mid $200s.

ASUS mother boards are solid. MSI I went through 4 until I found one that worked, so stay away.

CORSAIR PSUs. Understand the diff between, Plus, Bronze, Silver and Gold, before you make a choice. Modular is nice if you can afford the price difference.

GSkill memory is my favorite. Every stick I have works perfect and customer service is outstanding.

SSD Crucial makes SATA III drives and when I got mine they were the only one making SATA III drives. Min size should be 128. I got only 32 GB left on my SSD. It boots real fast.

Secondary Hardrives. RAID 5. I have 5 500GB Western digitals. The throughput beats my SSD. Small drive in a RAID 5 or 10 are the way to go. Now why an SSD? Seek times on an SSD are between 100 and 1000 times faster than disk.

CPU Cooling. Don't get oversold on water cooling. My Zalman CPU coolers performed the same temps as my water cooling of the same CPU.

Case. Still an Antec fan. Love my Lanboy, 1200 and want to get a DF-85 and yes I've looked at the HAF and still am not interested.

That should cover my opinions. And you know what they say? Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one.

Good luck!