Out of Pod Experience

I'm asking for feedback here and a few other place because I have no experience building PCs nor in depth knowledge of PCs in general. Still, I like to think I know more than average. This is what I currently have. It's done well so far for what I need / want.

It was struggling to run many of the games I play even on low settings and maintaining ~20fps, so I did upgrade the HD 5570 to a GTX 750 Ti. It has been a great improvement. The games I play I can easily maintain ~30fps and up with mostly high graphics settings. As a nice lieetle perk, the low power need of the Maxwell architecture Nvidia uses for this card means I didn't have to spend more on replacing the 300W PSU.

But even with this card upgrade, I expect I won't be able to get more than another two years of good (passable?) gaming performance out of the machine as a whole.

This is a build I came up with with just a small bit of research. Could I get some opinions on the build?

What I would use it for...
-Light productivity stuff, mostly web browsing, Microsoft Office, etc. Nothing intense like CAD or 3D rendering stuff.
-This is the family PC (like the current one) and will have all our digital copies of picutres, movies, papers, etc, so storage is a must and good networking is a plus for streaming to other devices (I'm not sure about wired / wireless, integrated on the mobo or not, etc.)
-Aaaaand gaming. Mostly gaming.

A sort of general goal for gaming is to run current games on highest settings and easily maintain at least 60fps. Is it reasonable to expect that to be the case for at least 4 years after the build?

Here's my reasoning on the build...

CPU - I have a vague thought that most games don't generally utilize more than 2 cores, but that could change in the future, so this hyper threaded quad core should cover that. The clock speed seems good and it's overclockable if that's something I need to do in the future to maintain performance. CPU cooler seems fine from what I read about it, but not sure about overclocking.

Mobo - Not positive on this one. I'm slightly partial to mATX or mITX over ATX. An on board USB 3.0 header is nice for the convenience. I have no idea about chipset. What does Z97 offer over Z87 (and whatever-letter-here87 or 97?) At least 4 sata 3.0 ports is good for faster file transfers to SSD/HHD. I shouldn't be expanding past that many storage drives.

RAM - I currently have 8gb in 4x 2gb sticks. I only have 4 memory slots. If I want to upgrade at all, I need to completely replace a perfectly good stick of memory. To that end, I'ld like to go with the larger 8gb sticks. The PNY sticks seem to offer a good balance between speed and latency, and are the cheapest option per GB. This pretty much turned me off of super fast RAM.

GPU - This seemed like a good compromise between cost and performance. This seems like it should last for a while and maintain my goal of highest settings at 60fps. Is SLI/Crossfire worth it? I'm not talking about getting two or more cheaper cards in SLI instead of a nicer, more expensive card. I mean, if I got a GTX 770 (or whatever) is that sufficient, or would I see substantial gains from 2x or more 770s in SLI?

Storage, PSU, optical drive, and case are all up in the air, but these seemed like good choices. I can run the OS from the SSD and a few other choice programs. The HHD is decently fast and 3x what I have now (10k rpm HHDs are too expensive.) The PSU should cover my needs (again, not sure about power needs for overclocking) and is should be quite efficient. The BR drive is a reader /burner with decent speeds and a good choice to have. I'm a bit picky about the case, but could change it whenever.

Previous thread for reference's sake : https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=335104&p=2


CPU

The one you picked is slightly overkill (not by very much, but still), and you MIGHT want to wait for the next Intel generation to come out (most likely in 4-5 months from now) before you build a fresh machine.
They allegedly have seriously revamped the internal heat spreading solution (which was an issue for the past two generations) and they have cut overall power use by about 30% (which is also a very good thing).

Or at the very least, get one from the Haswell refresh versions, like, say, the i5-4690 (which is basically an i7-4770k with slightly smaller cache, no hyperthreading, no unlocked overclocking, but costs around 100$ less).
It should be more than enough for gaming in the next 3 years, probably decent even longer, up to 5 years or so.

And seriously, you DO NOT need an aftermarket air cooler, just go with the one that comes in the CPU box. If you really want aftermarket cooling, go directly for a factory-sealed no-maintenance liquid cooling solution. The most affordable ones are not that much more expensive than the air-only one you already selected.


MoBo

Personally I prefer to go with ATX and a spacious, well-ventilated case (at least one large front case fan and one back case fan other than the PSU fan). If you're even halfway serious about gaming temperature will be an issue, and that should take care of at least some of the heat-dumping load.
You can easily downgrade to a H97 since you seriously don't need to overclock things (and probably shouldn't want to anyway, overclocking is seldom worth it even performance-wise, not to speak of power usage, heat issues and general chance of thermal-stress-induced rapid aging).


RAM

I usually get whatever highest-frequency RAM the CPU natively handles (for the last Intel generation, that's 1600Mhz, not completely sure what the next gen Broadwell will handle, possibly a bit higher).
CL, whatever is available in a decent price range. CL9 should be quite fine, if you can get CL8 for only a smidge extra, go for it, otherwise screw it.

Side-note, my current CPU (3++ years old) actually handles only 1333MHz natively but I still have 1600 RAM inside, however it's UNDERclocked to 1333, heh.


GPU

If you really want to go SLI, it depends on what you want, 2-way SLI or 3-way SLI.
2-way SLI has its serious problems with microstutter (especially on cards not near the top tiers, the weaker the cards, the greater the issue), a problem which 3-way SLI does not have. But 3-way SLI is expensive as heck (you're using 3 cards after all, and you need a MoBo that can handle those nicely, and THAT motherboard won't come cheap... plus you want to seriously step up the cooling in the case).

From a practical standpoint, if you talk of SLI, you almost certainly talk of 2-way SLI.
In that case, only go SLI if you're already buying the 3rd or at most 4th best thing available on the market right now (so two of them beat the top solo contender).
Basically, if you're planning to get anything less than a GTX 770, don't bother SLI-ing it, and probably should seriously think of SLI only if you go with GTX 780, GTX 780 Ti, or Titan Black as your base card.
The only exception would be in case you really, really want to actively use more than 3 monitors for gaming, in which case, yeah, you need two cards.

For instance, 2-way SLI with two 4GB GeForce GTX 770 will most likely offer an average ON-PAPER performance barely 25% better (if even that much) compared to a single GeForce GTX TITAN Black, while still "feeling" a bit worse off than the Titan due to frame timing inconsistencies (i.e. microstutter).
Then again, the price difference is noticeable, so, meh.
If you feel like you REALLY need that extra power and have loads of cash to spend, feel free to go SLI. But personally, I think it's really not worth the money. Even if money was not an issue, instead of 2x760 I'd much rather get a single 780, and possibly even instead of 2x770 (but that last one is probably just me).
Then again, I still have a GTX 460 and can't really complain that much about its performance (for the reference, it's about 3 times faster than your old HD 5570, and your new 750 Ti is about 40% faster than mine).

Besides, a GTX 770 is already a bit overkill for most of the games of today if you stick with 1080p but crank up the detail to the max (think above 60 fps in that resolution). But yeah, if you want 3-monitor 3x1080p gaming, then yeah, it won't be enough for 60+ fps in a few games (in others, it still will). Do you WANT that?
It's almost twice as fast compared to a GTX 750 Ti, by the way, and you're probably already content with the 750 Ti for now.
It will probably be still quite enough for the games that come out 3 years from now... and by then, if you feel it's not enough, you can just buy (for the same price as an extra one today) a new video card that's 3-4 generations newer and blows it out of the water in a "two of those old ones in SLI are about as good as this new single one" kind of way.


P.S. Basically, my recommended philosophy would be something along the lines of "establish a decent budget to be spent EVERY 3 YEARS OR THEREABOUTS and always build a fresh machine from scratch within that budget".
If you can manage to sell the old machine (and with 3 years of age on it, you can probably still get a halfway decent price, especially if it was a solid build to begin with) feel free to roll some of the extra cash in the current build's budget (just not all of it - the total price of your new case+PSU+HDD+SDD at the most).
So, for instance, you'd set a 1100-1400 USD spending limit, and in 3 years, you sell the old machine for 500-700, having actually spent only about 200-250 per year on a good machine.


P.P.S. For extra info, see previous thread, you probably didn't see all comments

Thanks for the feedback. I actually meant to link the old thread, but it got lost in the shuffle. The old thread was a bit bogged down between upgrading what I had a build to think about.

Akita, for the CPU, using a Haswell refresh or waiting for a Broadwell chip is certainly an option. But doesn't 'overkill' translate somewhat into longevity (not the actual lifespan of the component, but how well it maintains performance with newer software.) How do you feel about mITX builds? It seems like they're growing in popularity. Also, how do you reason the bit about overclocking in your post? For me, (admittedly, not very knowledgeable on the subject) it seems like a good way to boost the longevity of an older component to get performance comparable to newer stuff.

And Webvan, I'm not too worried about it, I'm mostly just excited about it. :-D I'm really geekin' out about building a PC with parts I pick. There's a MicroSeconds down the street from me and I've wondered if I could walk in, introduce myself, and maybe help them assemble and custom orders they get.

In most cases, with only a handful of exceptions (physics-heavy games that DO NOT unload the physics to the GPU), there's very little difference in CPU load between low-ish graphics and maxed-out graphics, so the GPU will almost always make nearly all of the difference in "high quality" gaming performance.
There's very few games out there right now that are CPU-limited rather than GPU-limited, and the trend is to keep pushing for more and more GPU reliance rather than CPU.
In that respect, there is only a tiny chance for you to actually need to overclock the CPU in the next 5 years in order to see a gaming performance increase (and that for only a handful of games), and even then, that increase will not be THAT significant.

...

By the way, there's an easy way to figure it out for yourself as far as your favourite games go.
Just start task manager (or any other CPU load monitoring alternative) and GPU-z (or any other GPU load monitoring alternative), then start one of the games you usually play (preferably in windowed mode so you can see the CPU/GPU monitoring real-time, but alt-tabbing every now and then will also work) and see for yourself how much of each is needed.

Play the game in lowest graphic detail (you will have a very high FPS unless capped by monitor refresh, your GPU load will be minimal, and the CPU load will be the highest possible, probably even up to 100% if FPS is not capped to monitor refresh), and then play the game in the highest graphic detail (you will naturally get a lower FPS unless already capped to monitor refresh, CPU load will be the lowest it can get, but GPU load will be the highest, possibly up to 100% if FPS is not already capped to monitor refresh).

Basically, if you still don't hit a near-constant 100% CPU load on at least one core when in high graphic detail, the CPU is not your issue.
And if you still don't hit a near-constant 100% CPU load on at least one core when in low graphic detail, the CPU will not be your issue for quite a good while longer, not just for now.

NOTE: Make sure to select "max pre-rendered frames = 0" (or at most =1 ; the default was =3 if memory serves right and they haven't changed it since) in the graphics driver options. That's one of the first NVIDIA driver options I used to alter on a fresh install (at higher fps, it trades perceived smoothness for increased input lag and higher CPU usage for no good reason, in my personal opinion; and it doesn't really make that much of a difference at low FPS past "=1").

P.S. With the current-gen hardware you WANT to cap the FPS to monitor refresh anyway (that could change if you get a variable screen refresh rate solution, but that's still in the "Soon™" department for the general public).
Sure, you get higher FPS if you don't, but those are NOT really useful FPS anyway since your monitor can't display them properly, and "screen tearing" will occur (the higher the discrepancy between in-game FPS and your monitor refresh rate, the more tear points on screen you get, and in action-heavy games, that can quickly become very bothersome).


Very late P.P.S. What the hell? They changed the minimum possible (other than "application controlled") to "max pre-rendered frames = 1"? Feh!