My budget is around $1,000. This build here: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/H852 , is about $1,200. I'll be playing LoL and Various Steam games (Tf2, Chivalry, Planetside, etc) on hopefully max settings on a single 1080p monitor. Also I'll be photo editing and doing school work. I'm looking for corners to cut, but I'm not sure where to start on this. Maybe my GPU is overkill for what I need? Suggestions?
You have some choices.
Cut the mobo/hdd/powersupply/case
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/HcyK
Cut the case/ssd/powersupply/mobo
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/HcA6
The second choice seems very interesting. Cutting those things allows me to upgrade to an 8350.
I managed to shave off $150, but there is honestly only so much that you can remove before you are downgrading on important bits. But I did manage to get you better RAM for the money, and a better case.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/HcHg