How to allocate my cable dollars.

I've been playing with cables for a while, and settled on spending about equal on interconnects and speaker cables, about half that on power cables. I guess if you work it out, that's about equal for each individual cable (since power cables are singles).

In order of impact - interconnects, power cable, speaker cable.

Total of about 20% of your system is good.

A decent HDMI cable is worth it, as others have said.

I'm more on line with 20% too. This probably doesn't include the QX4 and QB8. Only you can judge and try to it with some sort of blind comparison. The changes are typically not shocking but should be closer to natural if that makes sense.

I would focus on ICs, then speaker wire, and only then mess with power cords. IMO the dedicated lines I ran did as much or more as any power cords or condtioner. I do have upgraded PCs and a cheap conditioner but the differences were not as great as the ICs and speaker wire. Another thing is on the lower end ICs the xlrs are much cleaner than rcas IMO.

Interconnect from the source and power cord for the preamp are very important. Then the interconnect from the preamp and power cord for the source. Then speaker cables. Then power cord for the amp. Playing with power conditioners would be the last thing to do when the system is complete.
As for the proportions, I advocate the figure of about 20% the cost of entire system not 10%. This doesn't include power conditioners.

I recently switched between generic HDMI and a $35 Phillips HDMI and there is a world of difference, the Phillips is richer and more colorful the generic is washed out and dull. Buy a better cable and return it if you do not like it. Maybe your generic cable is better than mine.

I would at least buy lower level Morrow cable or similar (BlueJean, Signal) for your system you can get a big step up in detail etc. with better cables over generic wire.

Pangea PC have been mentioned in these pages as good Power Cables, I had good results with VenHaus DIY PC myself.

I would not spend too much time concerning yourself where to put the best cable, you will get a hundred diffent answers concerning this. Also you can search the archives as this has come up before with no definitive answer.

I'll suggest keeping the generic HDMI for now. You'll find that most of the expensive HDMI's don't really change that much.

What options does your dealer offer, and what's your budget? I generally feel a system with good interconnects and power but generic speaker cables sounds better than good speaker cable with generic cable throughout the rest. You might also want to consider putting a large chunk of your budget on power filtration if you haven't already.