anything you have now that you can carry over to the new one? need screen/mouse/kb? os?

Nah I get Win7 for free, I'll need a monitor but I'll worry about that later. More 120hz lcd's and leds will be coming out (I'd prefer a 120hz LED than a 120hz LCD) so I'll wait and see what happens with that.

Pretty much just the rig.

1, EDGE-LIT LEDs are inferior to CCFL, period. (and LEDs are also LCDs anyway)
2, get Unlocked (K) Sandy with a custom cooler and OC really hard
3, get Nvidia.

So no point in trying to get an LED?

There are different led technologies. The RGB-LED (what's in the high-end TVs) can be very good because each pixel is a individual led, but that's very expensive.
The EDGE-LIT LED backlight ing what we are talking about here (in gamer monitors) is something like the 8000dpi laser mice for the clueless. Marketing shit for the dumb kids;)

- LEDs age faster and can lose more than 100K luminance in just a few years.
- Shitty uniformity compared to CCFL and because each led can age differently uniformity can grow even worse.
- It's true they have better dynamic contrast, but who the hell use that shit?

I could go on for pages, but the bottom line is this: don't buy something just because it's LED, LED can be good too, but it's very very rare.

You have to go into a shop and see with your own eyes. Search for a shop where there is a dark test-room (you don't have to buy the monitor there, just check a few models to be sure)

The ones at work look a lot more vibrant and brighter, but if it's going to end up being shitty I won't bother. I'll wait and see what comes out for 120hz monitors, good advice though :)

Kapca what's your take on H-IPS/S-IPS monitors? I'm expecting the same as it's still LCD basically, right? Only reason I ask is since I don't game much I was thinking of getting something with good colour representation and higher resolution for use with Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator and general computing. But one, the price sucks, and two, I doubt I can live with 60hz after 120hz 4:3 awesomness.

once you have an IPS you will never go back to TN for sure:)

budget?

Zero!

I'm just going to pray my Sony G520 still holds me for a little longer. It keeps making tung-tung-tung-tung noises in the morning when it wakes up. I'm trying to justify whether to move on to IPS or still look for a cheap 120hz CRT

Yea, the g520 should be still sharp and clear if it was treated well, and zero budget will keep you together anyway:)

x79 platform

afaik ati hd7900 series should be out by that time, and high end nvidias will be out later in 2012.

the specs on 7970 look absolutely brutal with xdram II (8 ghz memory) and a brand new architecture.

yea, ivy bridge is also coming, but new stuffs are expensive and he wants to spend around 1000$

we will see how it is priced... i guess ivy will be a beast...

I always find skipping couple generation architectures the best method. The question is can I hold from my trusty Core Q6600 all the way to Haswell? I'll need a really big pole for vaulting over that fence.

i do that too, my previous rig was pentium 4/agp based :D