Another alternative in the processor department would be to go the AMD route with the A8 bulldozer chips 8 cores far cheaper than the I7 thenfollow the AMD route all the way through with Radeon gfx cards and fx790 motherboards ultimately they end up for a similar spec machinemaybe another $300 savings.
I would follow Garniers advice and go solid state for HD and defo by the biggest one you can afford .I bought a 128 now wish for more space.