I agree with the i7 price thing... I recently built an entire system from scratch again and I considered moving to i7 but the cost went out of my budget which was around 850-950... I did also include a monitor in that price though... so you may be able to squeeze 850-1250 if you try to cheap things out... DDR3 + S1366 motherboards kill in price... the processor isn't that expensive though
I7 wont get any cheaper either. Well a little cheaper, but its not going to drop like 775 because x58 which is 1366 is the high end motherboard/chip. The mainstream chips and boards which will be your 100 dollar boards are going to be a lower pin count.
The i7 is the 'summers hot item'. It has only been out a few months now. Intel is going to keep the price up there until they unviel their newest creation.