Planning on putting together a new gaming rig and need ideas on how to put it together. I'm a bit behind on all the new tech so I was hoping some of you more current gents/ladies can help a guy out.

What is your current setup atm? What is your "dream rig" build assuming you had an unlimited budget? What budget is practical for a gaming rig without wasting money on it? And how should I prioritize upgrade components these days (is it still gfx cards > cpu/mboard > memory > cooling?)? Is anything coming this year that makes it a good idea to wait?

Also recommend best manufacturers as well, if possible pls.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. :) thanks!

Before someone starts mentioning hardware components, it would be helpful if you tell us a few things:

1-Your budget: Given that you are looking for a "practical gaming rig without wasting money on it", knowing your limit will help choosing the best perf/cost parts and where to cut down.
2-What resolution does the monitor you'll be playing on have: 1080p, 1440/1600, 4K, 5K, multiple monitors, etc. You don't need the most powerful graphics card to run the games at 1080p and you'll need more than one if your resolution is too high.
3-How long do you expect it to last before upgrading?

Dream gaming Rig is quite easy, Maximum PC's Dream Machine 2013 would still easily satisfy any and all needs (Edit: Prices are lower now, clearly, that's simply the image from the 2013 article):

Source

^That's not a Dream Machine, that's an old and outdated silly machine for those with more money than intelligence.

No, that's not YOUR dream machine.  However, that's MY dream machine.  Also, the prices are outdated (Those were the prices in 2013)...not necessarily the parts.  Unless you're firmly aware of games that can max out Quad Liquid Cooled Titans?  No?  Ok, so still more than relevant?  That's what I thought.

Planning on building something like this sometime this year

-GTX Titan X
-i7-5930K
-32GB ram or 16GB DDR4, which one?
-512GB SSD (already have it)
-whats a good case for 150 bucks?
-new 120hz IPS monitor

So yeah, it'll cost me around 2600-3000 bucks.

But, when the 2015 Dream Machine comes out, I'll probably think that's the new one, depending on the box design (not hugely interested in flashy cases).  Their 2014 was a dual machine (AMD and Nvidia mobo), so it wasn't as powerful, because they were spending money on parts for both 'rigs' even though they were contained w/in one unit.

Ok, first of all, I must say that I forgot to add a little at the end of my post, because it wasn't meant to be taken as an attack to you but to the idea of those utterly expensive PCs that at the end of the day are a bad investment and their performance is usually wasted.

And then, good luck trying to find those Titan cards, because nowadays you'll only find the new Titan X, so your Dream Machine can't be bought anymore. And then, those SSDs are old and newer, faster but also cheaper ones can be found, and the same goes for that Monitor.

2 years in PC hardware is an eternity.

I wish I was knowledgeable about computer specs and such and what they do. I want a good gaming rig one day, but I have NO CLUE as to what makes an exceptional rig to play powerful games....and minor ones too. I wouldn't spend more than 3 grand on it though.

@mornelithe: Man, you're fast!

Anyway, if you were a billionaire and money was no problem... would you really buy that PC? I mean, really?  It's good to have dreams and always think big, but there's a point where bigger doesn't mean better and those Dream PCs pass that mark by a lot.

At least that's my opinion.

For me, my Dream Machine would be an i7-4790K with 32 GB of the fastest DDR3 sticks I could find, two of the new TitanX GPU cards (although that would be put on hold after the 390X comes out), with all of those components and the motherboard watercooled by 2 separate loops (1-CPU+Mobo+RAM and 2-GPUs), and then a 1TB SSD and a 4TB Caviar Black HDD, as well as a separate NAS box with 16TB of storage for Backup and also Media files.

And as a monitor, one of the 34" 21:9 screens from LG, Dell or Samsung.

That would cost me 3.5-4K (50% would be the GPUs and another ~1K for the monitor itself), and would last me until the end of this console generation if not even more.