Your build is very solid, but I do have some suggestions.
You can cut back on the cost of the motherboard without losing any performance, just extra features you may need or use. The Asus Z97-E is at a low price right now and isn't that much worse than the Z97-A you were looking at.
You can see the differences in terms of hardware specs here. In other words, the Z97-E costs less but should be more than adequate for your needs.
Your budget allows for 16GB of RAM. It's still OK to go with 8GB, but 16GB gives you more breathing room. Some games are starting to gradually require more and more RAM, e.g., people in the GTAV PC performance thread are reporting that 8GB seems to be the minimally acceptable amount of RAM. People who have 8GB of RAM but have disabled the page file run into errors after a few hours of gameplay due to RAM usage. I found 16GB of G.Skill 1866MHz RAM for $103, a pretty good deal but only available for limited time and quantities.
The Samsung 850 Evo is a good SSD, but if you want to save some money, the excellent budget-minded
Crucial BX100 is available for $78 for the same capacity. You may want to consider going with a 240~256GB SSD, 120~128GB is a bit limited but still usable.
Seagate hasn't been very good lately when it comes to hard drive failure rates,
according to studies from Backblaze. I should say that the 2TB model in question isn't listed there, that their higher capacity drives seem to have good failure rates, and they do not have equal numbers of drives from different models and brands for more properly controlled sampling and test results, and that their usage cases and weardown are nothing like that of consumer users, but I would personally go with Toshiba for just a few dollars more.
Their 2TB 7200RPM model costs $88.
I would advise against pairing the 212 Evo cooler and the Corsair Spec-02 case. It doesn't seem to be clear whether the cooler will fit into the case. Going by the measurements the
212 Evo is 159mm tall and may not fit as
the Spec-02 only fits coolers up to 157mm according to the website, but some unconfirmed forum posts report that it just barely does fit. Either way, it's not worth gambling on the risk. The Corsair 200R is the same price as the Spec-02, so I substituted that in. The 200R will definitely fit the 212 Evo heatsink,
Corsair advertises it as fitting CPU heatsinks up to 165mm height. The
As for the Seasonic power supply, it's a good brand but that model is very expensive. I recommend the
EVGA Supernova B2 750 watt model ($70 after $30 rebate) instead, it is a relatively high quality semi-modular unit manufactured by Super Flower, a PSU manufacturer on the same level of quality as Seasonic. Alternatively there's the
EVGA Supernova GS 650 watt model ($85 after $20 rebate), that unit is very good as it is fully modular with flat cables and manufactured by Seasonic.
Do you really need a DVD drive? If not, that's another $20 you can knock off the cost of the computer. USB drives and digital distribution have basically replaced most needs for DVD drives. If you are thinking about installing Windows, I should say that
Windows can be installed from USB drive with the use of official Microsoft tools and it is actually faster than reading from a disc.
Lastly, the graphics card. The GTX 960 can handle 60FPS, but it'll do it on reduced settings. What settings are possible will vary by what game you're looking at, but if we were to take the Witcher 3 as an example, then
according to Techspot's benchmarking and
Eurogamer's Digital Foundry article, the GTX 960 is capable of around ~50FPS on medium graphics settings. If you want 60FPS at higher quality settings, look at the R9 290 or GTX 970 instead, but those will bring up the cost of the build again.
If you want to stick with the GTX 960, then I recommend the
EVGA SSC model ($240). There's nothing to hate about the Asus Strix, but the EVGA option costs $20 less without needing a rebate, and is clocked slightly faster out of the box (1.28GHz vs 1.23GHz).
Overall, your build with my suggestions looks like this:
PCPartPicker part list /
Price breakdown by merchant
CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($279.98 @ DirectCanada)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($38.95 @ DirectCanada)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-E ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($99.99 @ NCIX)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($102.88 @ Canada Computers)
Storage: Crucial BX100 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($77.95 @ Vuugo)
Storage: Toshiba 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($87.98 @ Newegg Canada)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 960 2GB SuperSC ACX 2.0+ Video Card ($239.99 @ NCIX)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($59.99 @ NCIX)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ NCIX)
Total: $1057.70
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-05-30 05:09 EDT-0400
That's about $100 savings with virtually no drop in performance.
