if you don't over clock you will have to upgrade every 9 months according to moores law.
Uh...I'm not so sure about that.
Moore's Law simply states that the number of transistors that can be placed on a chip roughly doubles every two years. It says nothing about compulsory upgrades. ;-)
In fact, software often lags behind hardware capabilities [look at how long it is has taken for software that takes advantage of DirectX 11 hardware and multicore CPUs], so you may not need to buy yourself onto the bleeding edge unless you absolutely cannot bear the thought of not playing your games at the highest possible resolution and detail settings and have money to burn.
If current trends are anything to go by, you are more likely to want to replace you GPU than your CPU, though you may reach the point where the latter becomes a bottleneck for the former.
Also consider that if developers were to create games that ran only on high end hardware, they would be missing out on the revenue generated by those with middle-of-the-road or budget hardware, so chances are that upcoming games will work perfectly well on lesser machines. Thus you may want to consider forgoing superficial details rather than tossing hundreds or thousands of Rands at bragging rights.
Why spend more than you need to when you can spec a machine that is adequate for its intended purpose?
I used to be one of those with champagne tastes who chased after the latest and greatest hardware I could afford until I saw the games that my friend was able to run on his MacBook and work laptop, neither of which contain R2000+ of graphics hardware.
I am not saying that you shouldn't splash out lavish sums of money on hardware, only that you think about what you are buying
and how well it matches your needs.
You may also consider saving yourself some money by seeing what the reputable traders on Carbonite have to offer. I have been running second hand hardware for at least three years now. [I usually overhaul my system every 3-5 years.]
So yes, as TBlaar said, consider your budget and be prepared to compromise.
I am also shopping around for a CPU, motherboard and RAM at the moment, with an emphasis on extracting as much money as I can for under R3500. Easy, right?
Well, that's how I see it.
My Budget is about between 6k - 8k.
