You'd have to deliberately buy parts that are currently dated to require any major upgrades on a $900 build in under 18 months. Mostly likely by going with a cheaper CPU (budget dual core), minimal RAM (2GB) and VGA cards that are past peak production (G92 based cards for example).
It may not be long before minimum spec requirements for high end games start requiring quad cores, so dual cores are likely also on the verge of falling out of the "ideal" for gaming systems.
But for example, the gaming system I built just over a year ago for around $1k (including Vista 64 and a quality M/KB) is an E8400 @ 3.9ghz, HD4870 512MB, 4GB DDR2 1000 RAM, 600w PSU. In other words, a build that currently needs nothing in upgrades for gaming at 1920x1080 resolutions.
I have a hard time seeing that changing in the next 6 months.
If anything, that system will only be rebuilt within the next year for the purpose of running productivity software (more Maya and more Premiere/After Effects next semester) as my stock clock Q6600 is already less than ideal for those apps. Unless the updated Q1 offerings from Intel drastically change the price/performance field, I'll be going with an i7/X58 build with either 6 or 12GB DDR3 1600 RAM using a 920 clocked to about 4ghz.
I should note that the 1GB 9600GT I bought about six months prior to putting together the E8400 based system ended up getting replaced by the HD4870 with the 9600GT losing about $100 off retail during that time frame which turned me off to buying lower budget VGA cards for anything other than low budget builds.
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