Make sure your power supply can support the new card.

Truthfully, I've done the reviews and have built my own computers for the last few years, for myself and for friends.

I start with a solid quad-core processor, which right now is the Intel i5-2500K (2600K for the extra $100 just for hyperthreading and a speed bump didn't much impress me). Things will change soon I imagine, but right now the best bang-for-buck is hands down the 2500 or 2500K.

I also went with the Z68 chipset motherboard for a few reasons, mostly the option to use SSD caching should I choose to. I like Gigabyte boards, but ASUS and MSI are very nice as well IMO.

Power supply, I decided to stay with my Antec 750 watt in case I want to SLI later, and for RAM I decided on 8gb of DDR3 1600, as that RAM speed has been shown to work best with Intel Sandy Bridge per Anandtech.

I also like to use SoundBlaster cards and moving to Windows 7 64-bit was a good option.

As for graphics, I'm very satisfied with my GTX 560Ti...I can run Rise of Flight maxed, with hardly a ripple...;)