As the title says, budget is $1500, but I'd rather be a bit less if possible.
I want to pretty much destroy every game + record and do some video editing however I render videos as I sleep so the CPU speed won't really matter to me.
Is the 2133mhz RAM worth it? It's quite cheap and it's still only 9 latency.
Also, I chose the 7970, however I don't know which versions to get. There are so many that are cheaper and more expensive and I don't know why, branding? I chose the GHZ edition because it was faster, but is it just over clocked?
Later down the road when my computer gets outdated I'll just throw in another 7970, will 700w be enough to handle both, or should I just spend a little extra now to get 1000w. PSU must be 80+ Bronze or higher.
I have no evidence in this statement, but RAM speed doesn't have much effect on your overall speed. My opinion is just get DDR3 1600 and spend the extra on something else.
My understanding on the GHz edition is that it is no differnent than buying a non GHz ed that is OC'd to 1GHz.
Do you already have a decent monitor? If not, remember to factor that into your price.
I don't know that the ram is fully compatible, but there isn't much benefit. Maybe 1-2% increase. And the I5 says it supports 1600 "max". However, since you'd be oc'ing at least a bit, you better be at least, the ram will probably be supported.
If you really want Crossfire 7970's you'll need at least 800 watts. Each 7970 chews ~340 watts, and the rest should take ~150-200 watts, depending on what you use.
As far as the gpu goes, they'll be great for what you want, I'm more of a Nvidia guy myself, it's mostly just producer preference.
Looks good to me, but I would definitely ditch that OCZ power supply. OCZ's PSUs have a long history of having coil whining issues. I would go with a Seasonic, Corsair, Silverstone, Enermax, Cooler Master, or XFX instead.
I'd probably go for a Crucial M4 or Samsung 830 instead of that Vertex 4 too. Or you could always get a Vertex 3, Patriot Wildfire, or Kingston HyperX if you want to go the sandforce route.
The Vertex 4 uses OCZ's newly acquired indilinx controller, and even OCZ rates the speeds slower than the Vertex 3. The sand force controllers that are on the Vertex 3 and some of the other SSDs that I listed, will be faster. Also, from the benchmarks I've seen, the Marvel controllers on the Crucial M4 and Samsung 830 are actually faster than Sandforce once you update the firmware. The Marvel controllers are supposed to be more stable as well.
Slap a sound card in it! Until a couple of weeks ago, I would have called BS on someone telling me to get one... My brother gave me his and DAMN!!! Audio quality is immensly better. Even just a $30-50 one makes a huge difference!
That's definitely true. I sold my old rig to my parents, and my new rig has an ASUS Xonar Essence STX in it which is connected to a Polk Audio 2.1 system and a pair of Sennheiser HD 558 headphones. Every time I go back and use my parent's computer now, I can't help but cringe when I hear how bad the sound is compared to my new build.
& as to the sound card, does it really make a difference with headphones in? I may buy one, but since I know nothing at all about them I don't have a clue what one to get!