With the help of this thread, I finally got around to building this rig about two weeks ago:
CPU:
Intel Core i7-4790K Haswell Quad-Core 4.0GHz
CPU Cooler:
STOCK
Motherboard:
ASUS Z97-A LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX
Memory:
CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
Storage:
Intel 730 Series SSDSC2BP240G4R5 2.5" 240GB SATA 6Gb/s MLC SSD
Case:
Corsair Graphite Series 600T Arctic White Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Power Supply:
CORSAIR CXM series CX750M 750W ATX12V v2.3 SLI
And I just pulled the trigger on an MSI 970 last night. But all's not good in paradise; I'm a bit worried about my temps and fan speeds. The PC runs beautifully, but there's always a constant whirring that I don't really notice with friends using similar builds. Using RealTemp, I see that it idles at 27-30C. I ran Prime95 for a day and, while there weren't any instabilities, it was running at around 85C.
I guess the reason I'm bothered is that, a day or two after building, the fans weren't this loud. Another thing that's irking me is that when they're running especially loud (but still at 27-30C, mind you), I check the task manager to see how heavy the load is, and it'll show 50% CPU load for a split second before it goes down to 0%.
For even more context, while I was building, I didn't have any thermal paste on me, so I just went with the stock that was already on the CPU fan that came with it. If that was insufficient, could the lowered heat conduction be causing strain on the fans to keep everything cool? Could this be as "simple" as a BIOS update? Any advice would be appreciated.