- IPS monitors are now way cheaper, so people can get nice 27" FHD IPS monitor for the price of 23" TN monitor few years back. And if you're adventurous, you can get QHD one from Korea for good money.
- SSDs are becoming standard. I know that "everyone who used it will tell you it's awesome and will want to have it for all time" sounds like fanboyism, but with SSD, this is really true. They add incredible responsiveness to any computer they are installed in. It won't actually compute any faster, but you will spend less time waiting and doing nothing, and that's worth it.
- While I can't say what users really care about, the CPUs are actually getting faster. Not only quad-cores trickled into midrange and AMD is now putting octa-cores (with slower individual cores, however) into upper midrange, but the CPUs are actually faster. Look at this benchmark [1] comparing Core2Quad 2.4 Ghz with current upper-midrange i5 4770k. The new CPU is about little less than three times faster.
So the PCs are evolving. And IMPO, SSD and IPS monitor is more important than new CPU anyway.