Thanks for the advice.
A lot of people recommed SSD and we are planning to add one later to keep the up front cost within original budget.
In terms of brands the most difficult seems to be RAM. Had a look to see if Crucial is available for the MoBo however the only supported modules are 2GB so it is looking like Corsair.
Thought it was worth going for the Gen 3 CPU although quite a few people recommend the 2500k for gaming. We are planning to start with the stock cooler and change to a CoolerMaster Hyper 212 evo if temperatures are too high. Although the 3570K allows overclocking we are planing to leave the clock at default initially so hopefully the stock coooler will be adequate. The 3770K was another $100 and this pushed us well over budget. From what I've heard the i7 CPU's are overkill for gaming but probably a good investment for image processing
The MoBO selection was based on Toms Hardware reviews:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...x,3187-22.html
Also liked the debug features of the ASRock board.
Budget for video cards was $250. It came down to nvidea GTX660 or Radeon HD7870. Overall the Radeon performs better in the benchmarks however it is quite game dependent. The plan was to add a second card down the track in Crossfire to increase performance.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/gra..._10.html#sect0