I'm stuck between ordering an ASIC miner (which nobody can get) or building a GPU mining rig. I have $4k to build one, but I won't order anything till I've done my homework. I don't want to order an ASIC miner, and have to wait a year to get it!
Not trying to troll you but GPU mining is pretty obsolete with current generation hardware. Google "bitcoin mining hardware comparison" and with the current difficulty level you'll see you really can't be cost effective. You would probably never recover your hardware investment. This weekend, I got two easily available Radeon 6770 which were listed as having the third best Mh/S/$. I ran about at the listed hash rate and generated ~.0156BTC or $3 at today's rate. That would have taken me roughly 75 days at current rates to recover my investment. In 75 days even BFL will probably have an ASIC out and mining will be even harder.