For $1700, you're looking in the ballpark of Springfield Armory for a factory rifle. Springfield Armory is a good company, and make decent M1A/M14's. Maybe not as primo as a forged one put together with all USGI parts or etc., but odds are you'll never stress a Springfield to the point of noticing that anyway.
Or, if you want to build one up yourself with a forged receiver, take a look around LRB and consider the options:
http://www.lrbarms.com/m14receivers.html
Now some of those prices will be for receivers alone, nevermind the barrel, sights, stock, yadda...adds up quick.
For $1700 though, you could track down a reasonably priced Polytech M14/S; if you're lucky, you might be able to find one as low as $800. Be on the lookout. These are ChiCom M14's, made in China and imported to the US for a while up until the early 90's, if I recall right. They're a decent rifle, and use forged receivers. The barrels are pretty decent too; chrome lined.
But the point of a Polytech is, if you can find one cheap, you can dump the rest of the money into making it a pretty awesome rifle that may even rival, or surpass the quality of a Springfield Armory, who use cast (not as strong as forged, and subject to potential stretching; however, this may take tens of thousands of rounds to achieve) receivers and ran out of USGI parts mostly some years ago.
Having the Polytech receiver sent out to be heat treated is debatable. Some say it's necessary because some of their receivers were "soft", causing them to stretch a bit after many rounds, and causing tolerance issues. Some say the receivers are perfectly fine. For what it's worth, I've never had my Polytech heat treated and it's been fine, however I doubt I have stressed it enough to really see. The person I bought it from had all USGI/TRW parts on it, including USGI walnut stock. I believe the only thing original on the gun is the receiver, and barrel. Everything else I know of is USGI/TRW/NM (National Match - sights).
http://www.fulton-armory.com/M14-M1A.aspx
It's personal preference, really. If the forged thing is not an issue to you, you could simply just pick up a Springfield Armory Standard for around $1200, Loaded for $1400-$1500, or a National Match around $1700+. All depends on what you wanna do. Do you wanna have money left over for ammo, mags, accessories, parts? Or do you just want a rifle to pull out of a box and hit the range? If the latter is your choice, then perhaps going the quick and easy route of dumping it all into a brand new national match would best suit you. Especially since you're interested in primarily iron shooting.
