Thank you all for your advice on 970 vs 990fx boards (going to go for a 990fx), my build continues! I have already pulled the trigger on the following items, ordered and on the way:
Corsair 750 HX PSU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139010
CM Enforcer Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119240
This computer I'll be building will be for gaming (Skyrim, The Sims 3, Minecraft, Fallout, World of Warcraft, hopefully Elder scrolls online when its released) Video encoding, and lots of virtualization (Linux distros) along with the usual basic stuff (Web browsing, email, word processing, watching movies etc)
Now here is what ive been working on: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/ETSy
I already have a 1 TB Hard Drive
I have a few questions though.
1 - I've been looking towards the ever popular CM 212 Evo for the HSF, to take a bit off the price (I was orginally looking at a Corsair H80 Watercooler). Would a cooler like this be able to cool the CPU well enough for an overclock of 4.5 Ghz?
2 - The Saphire 7950 card I was looking seems to be discontinued, so I went for this card. Any words on the quality of the Power Color brand? I have an 570 GTX that I will be using for a bit before buying a video card. I might even wait it out a bit for the 8000 Series AMD cards.
3 - 1866 vs 1600 mhz ram... I chose 1866. Any big difference across Gaming, Virtualization, and Encoding going with either 1866 or 1600?
4 - Overall, Do you think that this build will work well for the games I've listed, encoding and virtualization? I'm using a 23" Asus LED LCD 2ms that runs at 60Hz, So I'm hoping to get frame rates around 50-60... not worried about not getting crazy high 350+ FPS.
Thank you again for your help in advance everyone!