Planning a Build - Minimizing Bottlenecks?

[Drowningfly]

I've always built my computers by just buying the best performing hardware for what I can afford, but I'm wondering if there is a more efficient way to minimize bottlenecks in the system and possibly save some money by getting cheaper components if the more expensive one would not be put to good use.

I'm thinking of an i7 3820 3.6GHz, 8Gb of DDR3 at 1866mhz, and raiding 2 SSD's with a read rate of 555MB/s each.

Are the processor bus speed and RAM frequency related? Is there any point in spending more on one if the other is holding it back?

How many SSD's would you have to RAID to get full use of the RAM speeds?

Is there anything else that can be optimised when planning a system?

 

[Drowningfly]

Thank you. It will primarily be used for gaming, and I'll probably spend around £750, but I only need the components I listed + motherboard and graphics card, for which I am considering a GeForce GTX 480.

 

[Drowningfly]

Thank you that is incredibly helpful. I had looked at benchmarks but not gaming specific benchmarks. I should have remembered that as that's why I went for a Core 2 Duo over the newer quad cores for my last build. Changing the processor socket also certainly also saves money on the motherboard.

I'm undecided on the graphics card change, as I don't know if the 40% price increase is worth the 5-15% increase in performance, from the benchmarks I've seen.

Instead of getting the 128GB SSD for £120, is it not worth raiding 2 60Gb SSD's at around £60 each if limited SATA connections is not an issue?

Yes to the last 3 questions, I'm assuming I won't need to upgrade my 880W PSU but haven't checked yet.

 

[Drowningfly]

The 7850 does seem more reasonable. My PSU is a Hyper, and in looking that up I realised it's nearly 4 years old. Perhaps I'll upgrade that too after all.

Thanks for all the info and fast replies. You have been very informative.