Hi jayrc – I thought we may have lost you long ago
As a cheaper alternative, why not consider an AMD setup? If you were to buy a new AM3+ mainboard (marked as AM3b on the socket, and black in colour) and a cheap Athlon-II X4 cpu, you would have the option of upgrading to one of the new ‘Bulldozer’ cores later if you wanted to, and the money saved could be spent on a better graphics card. This would not be as fast as a SB setup, but would still be more than adequate, with future upgrade options.
I build gaming machines as a hobby, and have built many over the years, mostly for youngsters who don’t have a lot of money to spend. My advice is always to go for a good gfx card and an adequate processor, rather than the other way round. Games don’t generally require very fast cpu’s to work properly (they wouldn’t sell many, if this was the case), but do benefit enormously from fast gfx cards, particularly if you like to turn the detail up.
This advice does depend on the cost of the components where you live; the cheapest LGA1155 Core i3 is $145 where I live (wholesale from supplier), while an Athlon-II X4 640 is $114. A Core i5 2500k is around $300. AMD maiboards are also cheaper than LGA1155,with native support for 6 SATA-3 ports.
One advantage in going for the 2500k though, is that you are unlikely to want (or need) to upgrade your cpu anytime in the near future.
Have I now confused you further?