Going forward with plans for a new gaming computer, I've ordered the components. I didn't really have a specific budget in mind, other than the fact that I'm going for quality and performance, rather than selecting components based on their price.

Components

• Case: the case is an Antec Twelve Hundred gaming case. I always wanted to select a gaming case for the next one, but a nine hundred would have been just fine. The only reason why it's a twelve hundred is because of a wrong delivery a few months back, where the Antec PSU being delivered was an EC one (thus only fits in a select few cases of Antec).
  The PSU is an Antec EC-850W, which is enough for now.
• Motherboard: will be an Asus Rampage II Extreme, specifically designed for gaming and overclocking. A good motherboard is the foundation of a good gaming system; can't get good performance if the motherboard is not up for it.
• CPU: is the latest Intel i7. Intel has specific models for gamers. The i7-975 is such a model. It's a quad-core system with HT, running at 3.33ghz.
• Memory: as Kingston is my preferred memory manufacturer, I'm going with their HyperX product line: memory specifically designed for gaming. They currently have also have DDR3 sets, ready for Intel i7. I've selected a kit of 3x 2GB DDR1800 RAM.
• Graphics: normally I would wait for the next-gen nVidia cards, but because my 8800GTX gave out, I was forced to get a new graphics card as well. Additional supplier trouble concerning nVidia boards in Belgium (at the moment), and the fact that ATI already has DirectX 11 support on their latest boards, I've opted for the high-end line of ATI with a Radeon HD 5970.
  I used to always have a Radeon (R8500, R9800, RX850, RX1950), but because they always had a tendency to break, my last one was an nVidia. Looks like nVidia also has trouble with breaking cards, so I'm not all that unhappy about going back to ATI.
• Disks: a HD is still the greatest bottleneck of a gaming system. Luckily, Western Digital introduced a solution for this quite a few years ago. They still update it regularly to keep up with the newest technology: VelociRaptor drives. These are 10K rpm drives, which should considerably speed up things. They currently aren't bigger than 300GB, which is normal because they're basically mixing SAS with SATA...
  I've ordered two drives, which should be enough to fit all games on. If need be, I'll add an additional "slower" and bigger drive for the regular data.

Because this is not exactly run of the mill hardware, it'll take a while before everything will arrive. I'm only hoping the majority of it will arrive before Christmas. Now wouldn't that be one hell of a Christmas present...