Should I upgrade DAC, speaker cables, ICs, or PCs?

The one component you might try is an Oppo 83SE for your digital. Or, a Sony 5400 from the place advertising here that sells them for $1050.
Either one would be a good upgrade from your Rotel CD.
I would stay away from the cables.. a road to Audiophile madness? The ONE thing you could do is find a cable well praised by mags and folks alike. i use Kinber as they have a LONG history if praise. i use Hero, and 8TC. I have used PBJ. (Hero seems to be the new better PBJ) 8TC has been a great choice for many years. (though beware used unterminated 8TC clear.white as many, many Chinese fakes for it.)But for me, i would go for Oppo 83SE or Sony 5400 as a basic, great well reviewed choice

Great feedback!

Actually, I'm surprised everybody went for the source as the first step. It's unusual to get an unanimous answer in this hobby. Maybe the question was too obvious, not to me anyway.

Sorry about the typo: the Rotel is a CD player indeed. Don't know why I typed preamp there...

While I haven't been able to try how cables impact the sound, I tend to believe they do. Unfortunately I live overseas in South America so borrowing from the Cable Co is not an option, and there aren't many hi-end cables around here to try, let alone borrowing for in-home audition. So I'm stuck with educated guessing. The best way 've found so far is digging threads here and contacting folks with systems as similar as possible to mine (albeit different tastes) and get their input as to what worked and why/how.

From that I was thinking using the Rotel as transport for the DAC3 (mentioned), or Benchmark (mentioned), or MHDT Havana, to name 3 that come to mind now. I like the idea of computer audio down the road, but as another source as opposed to replacing the CD transport.

For cables I am surprised to get the feedback of PCs first, but this is part of the learning I am after.
For speaker and ICs I had good comments about Kimber 8TC and another model up I can't recall now, Purist Audio, Transparent, or Nordost. I know of two people with B&W speakers who swear by Nordost Frey and Valkyrja speaker cable, but those are close to $1200 used and I have a hard time justifying that for my system.

What I'm taking away then is use $1500 for: a DAC and a digital IC for transport to DAC, and do the rest as funds come up. Example: a DAC3 is listed for $1295+shipping, leaving about $200 for the digital IC.
Later, when funds permit get PCs for the DAC and Rotel transport, and even later ICs and PCs for pre and amp, and finally the speaker cables.

Am I making sense?
Thank you for the very good feedback!

Never upgrade a cable when you can make a legitimate component upgrade.

I've owned the Havana, Benchmark, and DAC3... you can do better for the money.

OK Mintzar, looks like you want to be asked: what are your suggestions for doing better than those components, for the money?