Gaming PC around US$850

Hey all,
I'm still catering $150 for case and fans which I haven't decided on yet, so the components I have should total around $850 to make the build $1000.
It's for 1080p gaming but with some headroom to go to 1440p.
Would love some feedback/ suggestions. Link is below:

Component List

That is one heck of a dated processor. Switch it to a 4690k and you should be fine. If you want to use a gigabyte mobo, switch to a z97 sli or a ud5h. For asus, z97-a. Both of these wont change your costs, but will give you far better quality than what you picked.

Remove the furyx ssd as it is a poor ssd, price range as well as quality. Use Samsung 850 evo, crucial mx100/m550, or intel 730/530. Unless you plan to do two adata's in raid 0, just find the best priced ssd of the above brands. 120 will really be only enough for the boot (so I suggest a 256, but that is up to you), because you don't want to fill an ssd if you want efficiency. Also, stay away from kingston ssdnow as that is actually the worst of them due to bad build quality and manufacturing. They changed the revision after the benchmarks to make a quick buck and pissed many consumers off.

On the note of hdd, switch to wd blue or black. Green is better suited for surveillance (24/7 use with long lifespan), red for nas, blue for lower sized regular use (aka, slightly more optimized for gaming), and black is a better build quality blue with larger storage sizes. Seagates and hitashi are also decent, but those are preference based, depending on who you ask.

For the gpu, go 290 or 290x for AMD or 960 or 970 for Nvidea. If you are doing gaming, the gpu should be your most expensive single item regardless. I suggest 970 or 290x in particular since your goal is 1440p or less, and a single card can run that decently. If you plan to sli/crossfire, change psu to a 750 or 850w. Evga, corsair (modular, gold+ or higher) are both fine.

Preferred case for the money is a fractal or a phanteks enthoo pro, at least for full to mid towers. They give you more than the price point and the phanteks comes with very decent stock fans you wont have to replace. As for other fans you want, did you want pressure optimized, case fans (airflow) or led airflows for look?

I would replace the processor with a Amd fx-6300 and put more money toward a the gpu; get a r9 290.

I would think that amd would be for budget, but since he is only looking for gaming (thus rendering is out the door), the 4690k would be a more prudent choice down the line. Less chance of bottlenecking and he can oc it for a few years before needing to replace. AMDs just aren't as decent nowadays in terms of cpu... Now amd gpu he can decide if he would want them.

+1 to most of this.

No reason to go with a locked, S-skew CPU. If you want to overclock, get the 4690k. If not, just get a 4440, a B85 board, and drop the Hyper 212.

HyperX fury isn't terrible, but it is a budget drive. Sandforce controller means that incompressible data is slow for reading and writing. This drive does use synchronous flash - only the SSDNow V300s experienced a nand switch on the Kingston side.

WD Greens are definitely not for 24/7 usage. They're power saving drives - slower RPM, lots of ramping up and down. They have a high failure rate because they ramp up and down so much, so I would also take a WD Blue or Black over a Green any day. WD purple is for surveillance.

At this price point, the 280X would be pretty good - R9 290 if you can stretch. GTX 960 isn't really worth it imo.

Thanks for the correction. Confunsed my wd colors by forgetting purple.

Either way, the better the gpu, the better for the build. If anything, sacrificing storage or ssd (he could just get a single adata) would be better if he can keep the gpu higher. OC or not, the cpu just doesn't affect gaming as much.

the WD Green is the low power drive.. go black or blue..

if your going for the S cpu. save some money on the board and don;t use a "Z" board.
the Z in Z97 is the boards designed for overclocking.
or just upgrade to a K cpu..
if you stay with the S chip. there hyper 212 isn't required.

for the SSD. research that part. there is some issues when we searching that one.
just check what is in the price range for the SSD and see what the other options.

if i remember when im not on this crappy laptop. i will see if i can't make a
alternative parts list.