This is what i bought September of last year:
10273 Arctic Cooling MX-2 High compound koelpasta 1 € 7,95
12368 Asus EAH4850 512MB (512MB, DDR3, PCI-e, HDMI, Dual DVI) EAH4850/HTDI/512M/A 1 € 158,95
10677 Cooler Master CM 590 (ATX, NO PSU, Zwart) RC-590-KKN1-GP 1 € 57,50
9650 Cooler Master Real Power M520, 520W (ATX 12V V 2.3) 1 € 58,40
10502 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 (S775, 2x3,16 GHz, 6MB, 1333MHz FSB, Boxed) 1 € 153,20
10860 Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium EN OEM 1 pack, 64-bits 1 € 90,20
11625 MSI P45 Platinum (ATX, LGA775, DDRII, PCI-e, Lan, Sound) 1 € 141,70
10885 OCZ 4GB DDR2 (2x 2GB) PC6400 800Mhz (OCZ OCZ2RPR800C44GK) 1 € 88,95
10123 Samsung 1TB HD103UJ (SATA II 7200RPM 32MB) Volop op voorraad !!! 1 € 107,95
10127 Samsung SHS202J/BEBE 20x (Dual Layer, Zwart) OEM 1 € 19,95
11428 Samsung T220 Monitor (22", 2MS, 1680x1050, 20000:1) 1 € 255,95
9648 Scythe Mugen Infinity SCINF-1000 (Socket 478/775/754/939/940/AM2) 1 € 34,95
Exclusief € 987,94
BTW € 187,71
Totaalprijs € 1.175,65
Pretty content with it, although I would, in retrospective, make sure the mobo and GPU chipsets are of the same basic manufacturer (nvidia, or the other one, cant remember).
What i did at the time was spend 15 EUR on some hardware magazine, and checked out some of the tests it featured.
Ofc, my setup is >6 months old already...
I also recommend checking out Tweakers.net's best buy guide:
http://tweakers.net/reviews/1173/tweakers-punt-net-best-buy-guide-editie-maart-2009.html . The rest of the site has nice reviews too.
All in all, I am pretty content with my setup, photoflop runs pretty smooth with my 4GB. The Scythe Mugen is quiet and cools very well, but is HUGE. No probs with my HD and now I've tackled my nasty videocard prob I am pretty pleased with it, although it causes the occasional BSoD (hence the recommendation to go for the same chipset for mobo and GPU).