I'll give you an idea of what I'm going after.
I go bananas when I have to sit and wait for a simple process to complete. So with all the $400 computers that I've seen do this - It aint hapnin. I'm not buying a cheopo computer.
It's also about the fun of building out my own machine too. I've built one before, I loved it. Then, I was introduced to Macs and have been on macs for a few years. Now I need a new machine but don't want to shell out the 2k minimum for what I'm after.
With over 1,500 reviews and an overall 5/5 - I am going to go with the Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor. It's probably more than enough, because the most I've ever used is Dual Core, which I thought was awesome.
From reading up on Hackintosh - the Gigabyte motherboards have had a lot of success, so I will probably go with one of those.
Putting all of my applications on a 120gb SSD, and all of my other stuff on a 1tb hd.
Two of these 4 gig sticks of ram is just over 40 bucks from Amazon
The video card is undecided. I'm not a gamer, nor do I do any sort of motion graphics, video editing, etc. I need something good, but not the best.
Everything I've listed comes from the Hackintosh site - these are parts that people have used and successfully installed everything and set up as a fully working Hackintosh station.
After the case is added, the power supply, the CD drive, and probably a few extra components - I'm looking at around 1k. Not bad, in my opinion.
Already have a monitor. If my build doesn't go over 1k, I may get another one (or two :) )