errr, I'm a bit unsure about where to find actual component values for stunn in the australian prison lands, so I'll just use newegg prices.
My personal opinion is to wait untill January Lev. CES2011 is gonna happen, and on the 9th, Intel will unleash the sandy bridge series. As it stands, the relative value of components is released for motherboards and CPU's.
http://www.overclock3d.net/articles/cpu ... revealed/1The 2500k is said to be the best performance/buck with the best overclocking functionality. That will set you back 206 us Dollars.
An Gigabyte P67A-UD4 will set you back about another 200 US dollars, while still offering all the real stuff you'll need, and maintaing some space for you to upgrade for SLI/Crossfire etc.
4 giga Ram of the mushkin radioactive will set you back 115 US dollars, with a CAS timing of 6-8-6-24. These sticks have loads of overclocking potential, though considering your budged, you still have room for another 100$ to spend on your ram, meaining you can get the Dominator GT with similar timings, one speedstep higher though.
I'm unsure of how the AUS taxing system works, but in general you should be able to get these items within your budget.
Also keep in mind that WoW is as much CPU heavy as it is GPU. The new Sandy bridge processor will help you a lot more than you think
. If you feel you're okay with the Mushkin Radioactive (I would be tbh, they're great) and don't want to fish out for DomGT's, treat yourself to a 40-60GB SSD. You know that loading lag when you log into dalaran, where you firstly see mailboxes, then character models, then NPC's etc ? No more of that. Also, keeping your OS on your SSD helps tons!
In general, as a good practice, I like to make sure that all the systems I suggest or buy/design have as much forward compatibilty as possible. Buying yourself into SB line now, will see you sorted for the next 3 years (I doubt they'll stop production on this line in under 3 years). You'll have ample space to get yourself a 2nd card for an SLI if thats you're kind of stuff, and you get enough slots for the new Sata6GB/s and USB3 IO poorts to keep you runnning for a while.
The only minor setback is the PCI-e config of your motherboard. Running one card, you get 1x16 speed. In two cards mode, you only get 2x8 though. Although I doubt we'll see a large enough video upgrade and game graphics update in the years to come, to make your 2x8 not powerfull enough, some people whine about the lack of 2x16 a lot. (generally, tards who don't realise they don't need 32Gbits/s of video transfer speed....)
All in all, I feel that this is going to be THE best setup for you. Also keep in mind that in matters of comparing performance, your i7 2500k will have the same performance as the i7 950-960, with less heat throughoutput, higher clock speeds, and more power when comparing clock-to-clock
