I recently put together a playback system for my home office that is pretty good for just about that budget. Including shipping it was $540 for the integrated amp, cd player, and speakers. For interconnencts and speaker wire, I used what I already had lying around from upgrading my main playback system. But you can do DIY canare starquad or CAT5 and get that done pretty cheaply.
Not necessarily saying this is exactly what you should get, but I'm very happy with it:
Cambridge Audio A500R integrated amp - $240 (closeout from audio-advisor.com)
Cambridge Audio CD4 cd player - $120 (ebay)
Monitor Audio Bronze 1 speakers - $180 (ebay)
I would definitely put Cambridge Audio and Monitor Audio on the list. Very nice sounding stuff for the money.
A system like this is also very upgradable. The MA bronze's have sweet highs and very nice detail and imaging. As small bookshelves they don't go too low, but you could add in a nice sub when you've got more money. The CA integrated amp sounds nice too, and has preamp outputs, so you could add in a separate amp as you got more money and use the A500 as a preamp. Likewise, the CD4 sounds good on its own, but it has digital outs, so you could use it as a nice transport and get a good outboard DAC at some point. So anyway, something else to think about--its nice to invest in a system that you can upgrade and grow around.