[PriestREA]

My recommendation (may be a bit over budget depending on where you purchase these parts):

Mobo: Asus P8Z77-V
CPU: Either Sandy Bride i7-2600k or Ivy Bridge 3770k (for low power usage + after market CPU cooler the Ivy Bridge is good, however the Sandy Bridge chip is an overclocking beast).
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB 240-pin 1600MHz ram (they're only about $50)
GPU: For good upper mid range cards go with the nVidia GTX 660 Ti (EVGA GTX 660 Ti 3GB Superclocked+) ~$340. If you're willing to go farther up and dump $200 more as trumaestro said, go with the GTX 670 Superclocked by EVGA ~$440 or the GTX 680 4GB Superclocked+ ~$540. If you play intensive games, the 660 Ti is a great card and will run practically anything (Skyrim, Metro 2033, BF3, SC2) at max settings on 1080p resolution. The issue is that the 660Ti is effectively a 670 with one memory bandwidth bus cut off, yielding a measly 192-bit memory bus rather than the 256-bit located on the 670, 680 and 690. My warning with this is that TXAA and FXAA will suffer because of the memory bus, but as long as you keep it on 4x or 8x, you'll have 60fps on all your games. My recommendation is to go for a 670, however (if you can afford it; I currently have a 660 Ti.) Again, as long as your max resolution is 1080p, you will be okay. If playing at 1200p, 1400p, 1600p, it is probably in your best interest to look towards the higher 670+ cards.
PSU: My absolute favorite is the Corsair TX850W. Gives more than enough power for the CPU and GPU and will allow SOME leeway for overclocking (if you're into heavy overclocking or SLI in the near future, consider a 1kW PSU or greater). Also modular, which makes setup leaps and bounds easier.
CPU COOLER: Coolermaster Hyper 212 Plus. With my Ivy Bridge 3770k it runs at 66F on idle and no more than 86F on load. Leaves ample room for overclocking. Only about $30. Be warned however, this heatsink is quite large and will need a large case to accompany it.
HDD: Western Digital 1GB Caviar Black or Seagate 2GB Barracuda (the Seagate one was on sale here in Memory Express [Canada only] for $99 -- which is absolutely ridiculous). If you can't find that Seagate on sale I will always recommend Western Digital's HDD's.
SDD (if enough): OCZ 128GB Vertex 4 Drive. Only about $130 and gives for ridiculous boot times. Pretty sure OCZ has a nice warranty that comes with the drive. Upgrading to 256GB and 512GB will yield a price of $230 and $330 respectively.

For minimalistic case designs, the Silencio 650 by Cooler Master is a good choice. For really interesting/designs with more "eye-candy", Antec, Coolermaster and Velocity have some good cases out there. Hope I could help.

EDIT: I also cannot stand AMD cards.