Out of Pod Experience

COOLERMASTER HAF 912 PLUS

Intel® Core™i7 Six Core Processor Extreme i7-3970X (3.5GHz) 15MB Cache

ASUS® SABERTOOTH X79: SOCKET 2011, R.O.G

16GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz, X.M.P (2 x 8GB KIT)

4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 770 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP

4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 770 - 2 DVI, HDMI, DP

240GB INTEL® 335 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 500MB/sR | 450MB/sW)

1TB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 32MB CACHE

CORSAIR 850W ENTHUSIAST SERIES™ TX850 V2-80 PLUS® BRONZE

So... Again I know next to nothing about PC's

Is this a decent setup that will last me 3 to 4 years?

You should be good for a while with that Alice, the question is "can it play Crysis?"

Unless you are using half a dozen of screens i think two 770s are a waste right now. One should be fine for now and if you need to upgrade later it will be cheaper to buy a second one. For me futureproofing computers has always turned out to be more expensive then needed.

Probably the same story with the expensive CPU, although i havent followed pc components a lot since my last upgrade. Buying the most expensive stuff that is way more powerful than needed is not really a good idea with technology constantly and rapidly improving.

And i would get a different case. While you might think now that a "gamer case" looks cool you will soon realize who silly they are. And more often then not they are unnecessarily loud and they often require regular cleaning because they have no dust filters. Well at least those are the main reasons i ditched my Antec 900 for something more sensible.
I am currently using a Fractal Designs Define R4 and i would fully recommend it (+an extra 140mm fan in the front)

And you should definately look for a good cpu cooler. (i.e. the thermalright true spirit 140 is great value for money)

I am not totally sure about the power requirements of all the components but that PSU might be a bit oversized (definately is if you drop to one gpu). But Corsair is a good and common choice for a PSU and i would not recommend using a cheap and crappy PSU.

And assemble your PC yourself. Its quite easy, cheaper, doesnt take that long and you will learn abit more about computers so you can diagnose and maybe fix potential problems on your own.

I would go for a solid state drive

My desktop is an Core 2 Duo e7300 w/8GB DDR2 800, Asus P5N-D, an 8800GTS, and a 500GB WD Blue.

Runs most things just fine today, and that's a 5-6 year old set up. I don't see any problems you'd have with your setup in 3-4 years time.

But to have purchased a whole new Ivy Bridge setup with Haswell having arrived, was highly inopportune timing imo. You've invested a lot of money in a dead socket.

Intel SSDs, AFAIK, have a great reputation for stability/not dying, or at least they did the last time I bought an SSD in 2010. I got an OCZ which at the time had a huge performance lead (and I think still does), and I've heard that OCZ has come a really long away, as in 40% of the drives they ship out no longer fail within a month or two.

In regards to what a previous poster said about CPU cooling, I don't know what the model is for the CoolerMaster Hyper212, but I had a great experience with it. I would recommend their current equivalent.

I mounted an 80mm fan centered on the inside of my 2nd and 3rd 5.25" bays (perfect fit), with an 80mm fan duct attached to it that directly piped room temperature air directly to my Hyper212. I then had a 120mm fan on the back of my case. Basically cold air was shotgunned in from the front, and exited the case very quickly.

The result was, with an e8400 OCed to 3.6Ghz, 38C under 100% load using Prime95, and 22C idle, while room temperature at 18-19C. Total cost $45 for the cooling components.

Can I have your old rig Alice? It's newer than my own, and a little bit better as well.

like Alpheias said, get a SSD and a graphics card. The SSD alone makes a great noticable difference in speed during many tasks like starting programms and will make it feel like you have a new rig.

If your CPU turns out to be a bottleneck (i dont think so) just get a proper cooler and overclock it. And dont put a 80mm fan anywhere unless you want your computer to sound like a vacuum cleaner.

For me the best upgrades i made were the SSD and making my PC quiet :)

Well, thank god you didn't buy that rig then. I thought you had.

Don't throw any money at getting another Ivy Bridge system. It's a dead socket, get a Haswell if you must buy a new computer.

And I really, really can't imagine what the problem is with your current machine. Unless you have money to burn, getting a new computer b/c 2 years and you feel like it isn't a good idea.

I'd advise waiting 5 months, and take advantage of the post-Christmas sales (NewEgg has great ones). Since you're not in critical need of a new machine, I'd wait just awhile longer, and Haswell processors will have gone down in cost as well. DDR4 is not far around the bend either.

You're spending WAY too much cash after just 2 years of usage from your old machine.
I'm going to echo the "just get a new graphics card and a SSD" sentiment.

However I also recommend a RAM size doubling to go with it.

Also, a 4GB GTX 770 is sort of overkill (both price and power usage, you might need a new PSU for it, which you'd best leave alone for now).
Better just get a 2GB GTX 760 instead.
It's still twice as fast compared to what you have, so that's enough of a performance jump IMO, and no need to change the PSU since they have almost the same power draw, just 10W extra.

You can keep the old video board inside, but move it on the x16 slot that throttles down to x4 when there's two x16 capable video cards in, do not enable SLI mode.
Use it either to drive a separate monitor on which you keep lighter graphics loads, or simply just for PhysyX support.
P.S. You can also sell it second-hand to recover some of the cost, but, meh, probably not going to get a lot of cash for it.

P.P.S. At the amount of cash you're willing to invest on a new machine, best wait until at least next summer (if not the one after that) to get a brand new one.