Intel Xeon E3 1231 V3 - RM 979
Asrock H97 Pro4 - RM 369
Kingston 8GB DDR3 1600MHz Value RAM - RM 229
WD Blue 1TB HDD - RM 199
Leadtek GTX970 4GB GDDR5 Hurricane - RM 1429
Seasonic M12II EVO 520W PSU - RM 299

Total: RM 3504 (Viewnet price inclusive of GST)

520W is enough for this setup, he can go for 620W if he wish to do so but I prefer modular cable, PC looks nicer and you can get rid of unused cable for better air ventilation.

You don't need Corsair AX760 if you are not going to SLI in the future, normal 500-600W will do.

You don't need a z series mobo as well if you are using a locked processor unless you are going to SLI in the future, H97 or cheaper B85 will do.

Your budget is healthy for SSD, drop the WD Green, it is a turtle and go for Seagate Barracuda.

Intel Core i7 4790 - RM 1179
Asrock H97 Pro4 - RM 369
Kingston 8GB DDR3 1600MHz Value RAM x2 - RM 468
Leadtek GTX970 4GB GDDR5 Hurricane - RM 1429
Seasonic M12II EVO 620W PSU - RM 379
Liteon S900 256GB SSD - RM 429
Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD - RM 299
CM Hyper 212X - RM 169
Corsair Carbide Spec-02/03 - RM 239
Logitech G100 - RM 119
Dell S2415H - RM 769

Total: RM 5848 (Viewnet price inclusive of GST)

Understand about the upgrade, the PSU is good to go but Asus Z97K is a waste as it only supports Crossfire but not SLI since you are choosing Nvidia GPU over AMD GPU, 9 series mobo can upgrade to 5th gen processor which is coming out in June but the performance bump isn't significant so I don't think you will upgrade the processor in short time.

May I know what is the future upgrade you are looking to do on that mobo?

If oc, your processor will overheat, need to use aftermarket air cooler or liquid cooler.

If no oc, stock cooler will run fine but expect some noise when it runs full speed.

R7 240 and R7 250 are both within that RM 300+/- range.

Yea the 3 slots really headache sometimes if your chassis doesn't have many expansion slot, but for me I will go for Phantom version due to its aftermarket cooler and design since the price difference is not very big, but if you are going to SLI soon, reference model is better due to its reference blower cooler.

If you are going to college and want to carry back your rig to your hometown during semester break, I suggest you to go for M-ITX build, much smaller and easier to carry but the downside is M-ITX is slightly more expensive than usual ATX build.

I meant mini-ITX (M-ITX), not micro-ATX (M-ATX)

Since you still have 3 more months before going to college, I suggest you to wait for GTX980Ti, it is rumored to have 6GB VRAM, get the other parts first, but then Skylake (6th gen Intel processor) is also coming out in next few months

The mobo can support till 5th gen processor only but 5th gen processor is not going to give you significant performance boost so I do not think you will upgrade from current 4th gen. 6th gen processor is rumored can support current DDR3 RAM so you might be able to keep it. As for GPU, SSD and HDD, the only way to upgrade them is to buy the upgraded new unit when they get released later.

With GST and weak RM currency, I predict the price of GTX980Ti should be close to RM 3k, maybe around RM 2800 price point.

To run triple AAA title on max settings actually not only depends on your PC setup, some so-called triple AAA titles such as AC Unity and Watch_Dogs are having problem running 60fps even on a GTX980 due to poor optimization from developers.

PC hardware is evolving very fast, the only significant performance boost in gaming that I can see is newer GPU, 2nd/3rd gen i5/i7 processor which is around 3-4 years old still can cope with latest games but GTX580/HD6970 which is around same age as the processor mentioned just now is struggling to keep up with all the fancy settings in latest games.

My personal opinion is save the money first and buy whatever the markets have when you are close to go to college (i.e. few weeks before reporting to college) since getting parts by parts now won't benefit you much as you cannot use the rig until all the parts are bought.

If you insist to buy them parts by parts now, maybe you can think of getting PSU, HDD and SSD first.

Normally new stock already have the BIOS to support Haswell refresh and the Pentium G updated out of the box since the update is almost 1 year ago.

But you can always ask the seller to help you update it if it hasn't, normally they have this service.

Not sure about the stock but you can ask seller before buying.

Asrock got BIOS version sticker pasted on the mobo to let customer check for its version but I am not sure if Asus does that or not.

He might want to SLI in the future so have to get Z series mobo first

Looks good but if you are fine with Asus "overpriced" items then you are good to go

What's your budget?

Oh well, if you already bought them then no point asking for suggestion anymore.

If money is not the concern then you might as well go for the build you mentioned just now

Edit: btw, I calculated your build, it's roughly 10k, you can get X99 platform and maybe a Titan X or dual GTX980 with such budget already.

This post has been edited by terence_nwb: May 10 2015, 01:50 AM