A few questions concerning upgrades

[DiscostewSM]

Many of you know that I have been thinking of making upgrades to my system in another thread, but it appears now that I can finally make some upgrades. My budget was originally about $400-500, but fortune has smiled upon me. So, I have been doing a lot of looking, researching, etc, and came up with a list of things I could upgrade.

Here is my current setup

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz (OC'ed to 3.0Ghz)
Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L (rev 1.0)
4GB PC6400 RAM
XIGMATEK HDT-S1283 CPU Cooler
EVGA Geforce GTX 560 Ti Superclocked
1TB WD Blue HDD, SATA III, 64MB Cache
Corsair TX750 PSU

Here is a list of items that I'm thinking of getting

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($324.98 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($29.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus Maximus VI Hero ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($189.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($86.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Thermaltake VN300M1W2N ATX Full Tower Case ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $776.92
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-02-11 17:15 EST-0500)

It includes no GPU, PSU, or HDD because I'm going to take those out of my current system and put them into this one. Nvidia is planning on revealing a new GPU in March and releasing it in May, so I could wait on that for now, whereas I'm hearing that new CPUs meant for performance increases (vs energy efficiency) are quite a ways away. Now, this is mostly spot-on with price (which excludes tax), but things like the CPU I may be able to get for a bit less. So, on to the questions.

What do you all think about these? Initially, I was thinking of the i5-4670k, but I might be able to get a i7-4770k for about $300 new/unopened (which includes tax and shipping). The question with regard to this is "do you think this is overkill?" From what I understand, the only difference between the 2 CPUs (other than price) is that the i7 has HT on it. I hear that the i5 is plentiful for gaming, but from my standpoint, I multitask, and with the rise of 8-thread gaming brought by the PS4/XB1, I would assume that games will attempt to try and use more than just 4 threads from now on. Then again, iirc, those console CPUs are more in-line with laptop CPUs, so they may not be nearly as powerful even to the i5 mentioned. If I'm unable to get the i7 for ~$300, then I'll probably end up getting the i5 due to price.

I currently have a case which technically can hold these items, but I had thought about getting a new case because of what I might do with my old parts. Other than needing a PSU and an HDD, my old setup using the on-board video could be used for other things, whether for myself or for someone else.

I initially planned on 2x8GB of RAM, but I have dropped it to 2x4GB because I am unsure if I will ever need any more than 16GB. I could use 8GB right now, and then possibly add another 2x4GB later on to fill the 4 slots on the board. I'm intrigued by the RAMDisk capability being integrated into systems, allowing a configurable amount of RAM to act as a virtual disk, which is why I would ever consider having any more than 16GB in the first place.

I threw in a BR reader/writer because of what happened not long ago with my HDD, so backups of my stuff would be great, not to mention that the external DVD writer I got 2nd-hand isn't exactly cooperating (it's old). Plus I may get this computer hooked up to an HDTV in the future, so I could also use it as a BR player (not to mention for games as well, but that's not related to the drive).

ATM, I don't plan to do any OCing, but I probably will later on, much like the route I went with my last system. That might mean I would require water-cooling (which my current case isn't designed for, but this new case can), but I won't know until then.

So, what do you all think? In all honesty, if the only thing I was concerned about was gaming, then I probably would have picked up a PS4 instead, but I want to do more than just gaming.

Side-note: I wish the nearest Microcenter wasn't >400 miles away. They've got the best deals on CPUs and CPU/MB combos I have ever seen in my life (but they don't sell CPUs online, only in-store, because they work off of loss-leader tactics).

 

[trumpet-205]

Keep in mind that even though PS4 & X1 have 8 threads, not all of them are available for gaming. I do believer couple of them are reserved for background OS, security, and video encoding. I wouldn't be surprised if AMD disabled one of them to improve yield (what IBM did with PS3 CELL).

Regards to i5 and i7, only get i7 if you can make use of HT. I'm using i7-3770K, and that's only because I do x264 encoding 24/7, so every little performance counts. For gaming just save money and stick with i5 (you can even go with i3 if you want).

 

[Thanatos Telos]

Go down to a 4670k with a cheaper mobo (ROG boards are usually overpriced. Unless you need the sound card-like quality, it doesn't matter) and get cheaper RAM. Spend the change on a stronger GPU.

This mobo.

This GPU.

This RAM.

Sell your older, lower performing GPU for 100$ or so, and you could get this instead.

Both cards outperform your old one @1080p+ resolutions (Higher bandwidth, better architecture, maybe more VRAM), so gg.

 

[trumpet-205]

If sound card is what you are after you should be either going for Creative Z or USB DAC, depending on whether you game on FPS or not. Definitely not integrated sound on motherboard, if you care.

 

[DiscostewSM]

Well, if I don't do any OCing for a couple of years, I guess the stock fan should suffice until that time, yeah?

 

[trumpet-205]

Well, if I don't do any OCing for a couple of years, I guess the stock fan should suffice until that time, yeah?

Both Intel and AMD supply crappy stock fan to begin with. Unless you are really budget limited I recommend you stick with Hyper 212 (or any budget third party cooler).