Sounds nice, the gfx card is supreme overkill unless you're looking to play the most latest (and beyond) games on 304983094823x quality settings though.
What, the 970? I wouldn't say that. My aim is to play new games in 1080p, 60FPS, with all or most of the settings turned up. I would say that supreme overkill would be shooting for 4K resolution, or 144FPS, on new games, which would require a dreadfully expensive 980TI or two.
So, my paycheck came in finally, and I got the GPU and CPU, as well as the case, making
this my remaining parts list. I was pretty happy to see that Newegg dodges Washington's steep 9.5% sales tax.
I was rather dissapointed to see that my specific 970 model of choice, the
EVGA 970 SSC with ACX 2.0+ Cooler went from being $330 and including a free backplate and a free copy of Arkham Knight (well, I was disappointed about the backplate at least) to being $350 without the free stuff. The
slightly faster and a better cooled FTW edition, however was discounted from $390 to $350, with the backplate, so I ordered that. I don't terribly mind the $20 premium, since it does appear to be the fastest version of the 970 on the market and it does come with the free back plate, which people seem to be of the opinion belongs with the card anyway for cooling/structure purposes. Man, sorting between graphics cards is confusing!
I also got the
i7 4790k CPU. If I was going to accuse a part in this build of being overkill, it would be this guy. I think it should last me for the lifetime of the LGA1150 socket though, so I when I finally think of replacing the CPU, I'll be moving on to the next generation entirely, with a new motherboard too. Besides, if I hear correctly, I should be able to ridiculous crap like playing one game while running multiple servers in the background. If you're looking at building a similar rig to mine, though, dropping to an i5 would be a logical way to save a hundred bucks if you don't want an overkill CPU.
So, again, the remaining
parts list looks to be around $350- if I don't make any unexpected savings, it looks like I've bloated slightly above my original goal to a final budget of around $1300, and I'll still be stealing a disc drive from some computer in the basement.
I am of course interested in any further discussion of the parts I've picked:
-The motherboard, I believe, is of decent quality and allows overclocking easily, while not being overly expensive. Still, I don't feel like I understand the comprehensive list of features that makes it better than, say, whatever the $120 Z97 mobo from the same brand is.
-The memory I've picked out is 8GB of DDR3-1866 CAS 9 with a heatsink. It's relatively cheap. I'm under the impression that memory speed doesn't really matter for gaming, and that I won't need to replace this stuff any sooner than my CPU, although I might want to upgrade to 16GB in the future.
-2TB storage drive. I don't think there's much to say here. The Seagate Barracuda I've picked out is reliable, I believe.
-PSU. 650 Watts, 80+ gold, modular, around $80. When I do buy the PSU, I might grab a different one that happens to be on sale and ticks all the same boxes. Edit: Oh yes, and I'm under the impression that my 650 watt PSU provides a little OC headroom as well, should I need it. Is that correct, with this build?