The i5-4690k seems like a pretty good choice, it’s what I’d get. I don’t know how much you want to overclock it, how much you want spend on an aftermarket cooler and how important noise is to you.
A smaller SSD would be sufficient to run your OS and some very commonly used big programs. Unless you have specific needs for 500GB, I think I’d get half that and reallocated the money where it can deliver more benefit.
I’d replace the HDD with a hybrid drive (SSHD). Here’s a good explanation of what an SSHD is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEIp1jgKnv8 It’s amply worth the small premium over a HDD.
GPU: I’m really not sure about the GPU with that monitor. 3440 x 1440p is a lot of pixels and if you want to run that at high quality and 60FPS over the next few years, a 390X seems insufficient.
I’ll reiterate that I think the 390X is a bad deal, just as much as the GTX 980 or the Titan X*. I’d urge you to look at the framerates of the 980Ti, 390, 390X, 970 and 980 and you’ll see that the 980Ti, 390 and 970 give you better value for money. You usually pay through the nose for the premium version of a chip; Usually, the best option is to get the rejected chips that were repackaged as the GPU that’s one notch lower e.g.: a 980Ti rather than Titan X, 970 rather than 980, 390 rather than 390X.
I’ve found that Nvidia GPUs have a strong tendency to have more overclock potential and have more regular framerates**. You might want to either get a 980Ti or wait until the next generation of GPUs.
More generally, I think your budget could be better portioned. If you’re going to spend more than 2000$ on a PC, 40% of which on the display and your goal is for the image to look better, spending more than 20% of your budget on the GPU is sensible. The GPU and display are the most important parts of a gaming PC.
Case: I’ve heard of cases that have noise-absorbing material inside. I don’t know if that can be bought and installed on its own but it seems interesting.
PSU: Believe it or not, the days of needing bigger and bigger PSUs may be over. 850W is likely more than you’ll ever need unless you get two overclocked GPUs. I’m not sure how much money you’d save by getting a less powerful PSU, though.
Monitor: You want more wow and that monitor should deliver. Make sure you get a vendor with a generous returns policy otherwise you might get stuck with a new monitor that already has burned pixels.
Although, if you could find a 2560 x 1440p with Freesync or G-sync (depending on your GPU), you might find that easier to run and you would have much smoother framerates. Remember that without Free/Gsync, if your GPU can’t supply 60FPS with Vsync on, you’ll drop down to 30FPS even if your GPU can do 40 or 50. The best would be to combine 3440 X 1440p with curved screen and Free/Gsync, right? I can only find one monitor that has all 3, the Acer XR341CK http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824106002
Ok, I’ve gone on enough. My post because I recently did a good amount of research to upgrade my GPU and would have appreciated someone giving me a crash course.
- Unless you have unusual use cases.
** By that I mean that the framerate of the same GPU in the same game will vary less. Gamers Nexus does a good job of showing that by comparing the average framerate with the 1% lowest and 0.1% lowest framerate which is more representative than looking at the very lowest FPS.
In the following graph, you can see that the 980 and 390X have roughly equal average FPS but the 980 has higher 1% and 0.1% lowest FPS. Same thing for the 970 vs 290X: http://media.gamersnexus.net/images/media/2015/game-bench/fallout-4-gpu-bench-1440-ultra.png I encourage you to look at more of their AVG/1%/0.1% FPS comparisons, you should see a similar pattern.
This tech stuff is stressful for me, because I put a lot of pressure on myself to be far more adept and knowledgeable than I reasonably can be.
