[mGGDrGooSe]

Howdy all, I'm putting together some possibilities for a new mid-level rig and suggestions are welcome.

PC Case Gear - Shared Shopping Cart
1 x Intel Core i5 4590 - $249.00ea
1 x Gainward GeForce GTX 970 Phantom 4GB - $469.00ea
1 x ASRock Fatal1ty Z97-Killer Motherboard - $169.00ea
1 x G.Skill F3-10600CL9D-16GBNT 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 - $179.00ea
1 x Samsung 840 EVO Series 250GB SSD - $149.00ea
1 x Thermaltake NiC F3 CPU Cooler - $39.00ea
Total: $1,254.00 - @pccasegear.com 27/12/2014

- Keeping my current case (coolermaster 912) because I don't think cases ever change? Also keeping my current 650 W PSU and HDDs.
- I am operating under the assumption that the graphics will always be the main bottleneck for gaming and so have invested the most there, whilst RAM and CPU are almost irrelevent by comparison?
- I don't intend on overclocking as I am after longevity above all.
- Any suggestions for alternate setups of a similar performance are welcome, particularly if it saves me a few dollars - although I won't necessarily be buying from PCCG.

[VB_Inter]

Looks ok and should play most games decently.

I am operating under the assumption that the graphics will always be the main bottleneck for gaming and so have invested the most there, whilst RAM and CPU are almost irrelevent by comparison?

That assumption is wrong, Depends on the games you play, Blizzards (sc2/wow/HotS/D3) game are more CPU intensive than GPU.

[Seffy]

i5 should be sufficient if you're gaming though right?

But yeah there are CPU intensive games that you need to look out for. The 970 is great though.

[|Erasmus|]

'CPU intensive' games don't really require an i7 or anything though. It's just that you don't really need a super high end GPU to avoid bottlenecking there.

The only thing you'd need anything more than a mid-range i5 for (really) with even blizz games is if you want to stream.

[SSfp_Saulo]

Goose, I have a similar setup except that it is a Z97 in mITX format (and will never have an ATX computer ever again), and the GTX 970/980 weren't available at the time, so I got a GTX 770 2GB.
I mainly play Blizzard games and both WoW and SC2 can be run on max detail, and I play in 2560x1440 with a 4460 CPU. A GTX 970 is your best investment there and has more than enough power to keep you running for some years.

[mGGDrGooSe]

Thanks everyone. I streamed perfectly fine up to 720 with a 1st gen i7 860, and this i5 looks to be about the same as my current i7 2600k, so I dont see any problems on the cpu side (from a work persepctive, i do actually need more, but the programs aren't properly optimised for hyper threading, so i cant be bothered caring). In fact the main reason I still havent bought anything is because outside of the gpu, its pretty much the same power as my current. But my graphics driver is constantly crashing and not fixed by formatting, so Im thinking something is starting to die finally.