I can only speak in terms of Australian Dollars (which will probably make parts sound more expensive than they are) but if I were to buy a new pc at this very moment I'd go with
CPU - i5 2500 ~ $200
GPU - nVidia 570 ~ $300 (This might be a bit much for what you're after in which case you could step down to the 560ti which is around $250 here)
PSU - You'll need a pretty decent one if you're planning on upgrading your rig and don't want shit blowing up everywhere. You don't want this to hold you back so I'd look at something at or more than $150 like a good 650-750W Corsair (off the top of my head they're the only one's I can think of with a lifetime warranty)
Motherboard - I'd probably get something decent at around the $100-150 mark like a Gigabyte or Asus or something
Case - Make sure you don't skimp out on this, cases always seem like the things you can not really take much notice of but a good case wont need fifty fans to keep cool. Personally I'm not a fan of Thermaltake cases since so far every case I've had of theirs requires seemingly Thermaltake specific fan sizes (maybe I'm just unlucky!) so something like an Antec 900 for around $100
RAM - whatever you want man, this stuff is cheap now
I think that would be a pretty decent rig and capable of playing games on very high even. The video card's where I would do the most research right now though. I haven't really read much about nVidia's new 600 series but they don't have a 570 equivalent price point yet in that series so it might be worth waiting a bit to either save on the 570 once the newer version comes out or to get that newer one. This would also be the same for the 560ti which is what I think you should really be looking at as upgrading to SLI of these would be the next thing you could do if you needed the extra juice in a year or two. It's also worth looking at the AMD side of things, but having had bad experiences with Rage and a HD5770 I can't recommend them without cringing, so you'd have to look at reviews and things to decide on that front. I'd be looking at articles on tomshardware.com right about now and visiting their forums as well.
Also I'd consider upgrading that monitor. I was at the point where I wanted a bigger screen a few moths ago and so I saved up and took the plunge into a 27" and man was it worth it. That said I live at home while going to uni and working so I have pretty low expenses and it's understandable if you don't want to upgrade this :P I would consider going the SSD route now though rather than reorganising later if you plan on upgrading to it.
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