I would go definitely with 980s - with the GTX 980 you'll also get a card that is cooler, quieter, uses less power, offers full DirectX 12 support and access to exclusive graphics settings like DSR, MFAA, TXAA, FXAA, PhysX, HBAO+, and Adaptive VSync. In SLI Even Better , even 970s more worthy thatn R8s of AMD.
Tech Guru wroteI would go definitely with 980s - with the GTX 980 you'll also get a card that is cooler, quieter, uses less power, offers full DirectX 12 support and access to exclusive graphics settings like DSR, MFAA, TXAA, FXAA, PhysX, HBAO+, and Adaptive VSync. In SLI Even Better , even 970s more worthy thatn R8s of AMD.
FXAA ? Check your info man.
21 days later
Yesterday I tested My Newly Assembled Rig coupled with an MSI GTX 970 Gaming OC - More Gaming This Weekend :) - Price: USD 2630

Case:Thermal Take - Revo Gene
Fan for Ventilation: Side VGA 12 cm led - Rear 12 cm ; Top 20 Cm ; and Front 20 cm (led) - Two Intakes - Two Exhausts
CPU: Haswell I7 4790 3.6ghz ; 8MB Cache
Board: Asus Z97 K (I did not Chose the A since I will not SLI)
Ram: Kingston 16 GB 1600 Mhz (8 by 8 Dual Channel)
Power Supply: Thermal-Take TPG- 850 Watt ; Tough Power Gold Certified -Fully Modular
SSD: Crucial 512 GB -MX 100 (500 MB/S R/W)
HDD: Western Digital 7200 Rpm / 64MB Black Edition
VGA: MSI GTX 970 Gaming OC
Monitor: LG MP56HQ 24inch Full HD IPS
OS: Genuine Windows 8 Pro 64bit -
CPU Cooler: Not Stock - Thermal Take Contact 21 and Arctic Cooling Thermal Paste
KB & Mouse: A4tech Bloody Keyboard B120 - Illuminated and Mose A4tec V4M - Bloody Edition or A4t ZL5 - Lazer Engine 8600 Dpi
Optical: LG DVD R/W (2)
Speakers: Micro Lab 200m Platinum (50W) - Blue Tooth Edition
HDMI Cable 1.5 M

By the way Windows 8.1 Pro better than 7 " if you know how to use it well" and the 970 Rocks on this build super silent coupled with a silent rig with smooth air breeze from the front and upper 20cm Fans :)
My actual rig now:
CPU : Intel Core i7 4770K
Motherboard: Maximus VII HERO
GPU: Asus GTX 780 DirectuII
RAMs: Gskill Sniper Series 2x4gb 2133mhz
PSU: Corsair CS750 80+ Gold
Case: Thermaltake Chaser A71
HDD: Seagate 1TB Sata3
SSD: Samsung 840EVO 500gb
OS: Windows 8.1 Pro
Razer Deathadder with Steelseries QCK+ PAD
11 days later
Swap the GTX 980 with a 970 :) ; what are you playing these days and what monitor are you using
a month later
CPU Model/speed: Intel Core i7-3770 3.4GHz 8MB Quad
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3R
Hard Drive: Intel 180GB SSD, 2TB Seagate HDD
Ram: Crucial Ballistix 8 GB DDR3 1600
Graphics: MSI Geforce GTX 780Ti 3072MB GDDR5
Display: Dell U2412m
Power Supply: Tt 650W
Mouse/keyboard: Razer Blackwidow BF4 edition/Razer Mamba 2014
Who Built it: Me!
I aready did post my Rig before, but i wanted to show you the updated rig i have now :)

CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-4790K
Motherboard: ASUS Z97 MAXIMUS VII HERO
RAM: 4 x 8GB Kingston Hyper-X Beast Dual-Channel Overclocked to 3400 Mhz
Graphics: SAPPHIRE TOXIC R9 270X 2GB GDDR5 WITH BOOST (UEFI)
Case: Corsair Graphite Series 230t Windowed Compact midtower case rebel orange
Sound: Board built-in
SSD: 2x Kingston SSD 120 GB Hyper-X 555 mb/s Read 550 mb/s Write
HDD: WD 1 TB Black Edition
CPU Cooler: Thermaltake Bigwater 760 Pro Water Cooling ( Had a lot of trouble with this water cooler so now I'm using the ThermalTake Frio Extreme Cooler )
Headset: Razer Banshee Starcraft II Edition
PSU: Antec 620 Watt
Screen: Samsung 23" LED with 3D
Accessories: Installed Orange LED lights myself that goes with my case
Mouse: MadCatz MOUS9 / Using sometimes Razer Naga HEX (Green 2014 Edition)
Mouse Pad: Razer Vespula Normal Edition
Keyboard: Razer Deathstalker Expert Edition
Modem: CISCO X3000 ( ADSL + Broadband compatibility )
BluRay Compatible DVD drive

PS: New pics Coming soon !
@Mr.Elie How much your system costs - I think the PSU and Graphic Cards are weak pots in the over all system build, plus why you use such motherboard if you do not have an overclocking intentions (assuming that).
@Tech Guru I don't know exactly how much it cost, because I keep upgrading. Just a coincidence that I bought a second R9 270X yesterday. Exact replica of what I have for a crossfire Plan. I think 2 x R9 270X Toxic are gonna look good. With that new VGA installed i will be forced to upgrade my PSU to a higher Wattage.

Regarding the overclock, I do have a big intention for overclocking, just not now. Why overclock a I7-4790K when basically whatever game or hardware i run i use nothing more than 30 % of my CPU. I did consider overcloking but in the future.
dio wroteCPU Model/speed: Intel Core i7-3770 3.4GHz 8MB Quad
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3R
Hard Drive: Intel 180GB SSD, 2TB Seagate HDD
Ram: Crucial Ballistix 8 GB DDR3 1600
Graphics: MSI Geforce GTX 780Ti 3072MB GDDR5
Display: Dell U2412m
Power Supply: Tt 650W
Mouse/keyboard: Razer Blackwidow BF4 edition/Razer Mamba 2014
Who Built it: Me!
Why an old Z68 motherboard?
Speaking of the 4790k, I always wanted to get this cpu, but my cpu is not bad(3570) I cannot justify for myself paying the big sum for upgrading(needs an entire new machine) Anyway, I do not think it is worth overclocking, I read before that it overclocks poorly(maybe to 4.4ghz) And it already turbos that much so... And remember to turn off hyperthreading if you play games a lot, games really do not benefit from "8 cores" They just want the high clock on a couple of cores.

When you say rigs(in this thread) do you strictly mean gaming rigs or just any pc one buys that are worth mentioning?

Because I purchased a new pc last friday that I think is worth talking about. Meet my new beast:
http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk176/mr_j936/20141221_163823.jpg

The d54250wyk. It has 8 GB 1600 mhz fits a max of 16 GB
One hard disk 750 GB(That I had laying around) It actually fits 2 drives inside it.
1.3 ghz i5 4520U clocks up to 2.6 ghz. The clocks seem low on paper, but I was actually amazed by how much power this tiny dual core packs.
And my personal favorite piece: 1 gbps ethernet port, I watched blueray over remote desktop using this.
4 ports of usb 3.0. My Main rig only has 2.0 so this complements it well.

The integrated graphics 5000 from intel also surprised me. It played league of legends in HD resolution and medium-high graphics seamlessly without lag.

It's not my main rig, it's a complement to my rig. Something to keep on at night to download without it making noise. And I use it to host some of my tools online(gitlab, redmine etc...) This cost 550$. There is an i3 version of it that can come with 4 GB ram(cheaper, maybe 400$) They have stands that can hook on monitors. For those who want to watch their downloaded movies on TV, it might be a nice purchase
Could this be upgraded? RAM and gpu? I wonder if it's better than the mac mini.
user wroteSpeaking of the 4790k, I always wanted to get this cpu, but my cpu is not bad(3570) I cannot justify for myself paying the big sum for upgrading(needs an entire new machine) Anyway, I do not think it is worth overclocking, I read before that it overclocks poorly(maybe to 4.4ghz) And it already turbos that much so... And remember to turn off hyperthreading if you play games a lot, games really do not benefit from "8 cores" They just want the high clock on a couple of cores.

When you say rigs(in this thread) do you strictly mean gaming rigs or just any pc one buys that are worth mentioning?

Because I purchased a new pc last friday that I think is worth talking about. Meet my new beast:
http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk176/mr_j936/20141221_163823.jpg

The d54250wyk. It has 8 GB 1600 mhz fits a max of 16 GB
One hard disk 750 GB(That I had laying around) It actually fits 2 drives inside it.
1.3 ghz i5 4520U clocks up to 2.6 ghz. The clocks seem low on paper, but I was actually amazed by how much power this tiny dual core packs.
And my personal favorite piece: 1 gbps ethernet port, I watched blueray over remote desktop using this.
4 ports of usb 3.0. My Main rig only has 2.0 so this complements it well.

The integrated graphics 5000 from intel also surprised me. It played league of legends in HD resolution and medium-high graphics seamlessly without lag.

It's not my main rig, it's a complement to my rig. Something to keep on at night to download without it making noise. And I use it to host some of my tools online(gitlab, redmine etc...) This cost 550$. There is an i3 version of it that can come with 4 GB ram(cheaper, maybe 400$) They have stands that can hook on monitors. For those who want to watch their downloaded movies on TV, it might be a nice purchase
A "Rig" is considered a setup. Meaning a console, or even a potato can be considered a "rig" so post away ^.^
This almost is a potato :) The ram is a low voltage ram(I didn't specifically want it that way, but it is the only ram it accepts I think, same price anyway) and its cpu is also low voltage, all in all this thing consumes 25 watts on uber heavy usage and like 5 watts on idle.

Yes the ram can be upgraded, in fact. pcandparts (and intel in general) sells you this box with only a cpu inside(around 400~440$), no ram, no drives not even the wifi. And expects you to order the parts separately. It is very easy to open it and assemble it, even though I had no prior experience messing with laptop sized parts (especially the wifi chip which I did not know had antenna cables) it took me like 15 min to assemble it. I bought one stick of 8 GB ram knowing that it fits 2(so it can still go up to 16) I used an oldish hitashi 750 GB drive I had lying around the floor of my room and I bought the wifi chip from intel that has the bluetooth.

I am not an apple fan so mac mini was not an option, I don't want to have to pay for the operating system and have any restrictions on MY BOX the way apple does with the stuff you buy.

I do not think the gpu can be upgraded, but even if you could I think it would be useless, the cpu and graphics power are balanced as it is. If you boost the GPU and your cpu is still the same, you'd still be playing the same games with more or less the same graphics.

Play this video in HD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IK6Wymm3aQ you'll get a feel of the graphics power of it. And it is not made for games anyway
Intel HD graphics was always pretty nice.

The NUC is an awesome small PC. I love it, I just wish it was cheaper.

The power consumption is quite impressive!
Here's mine:


CPU: Intel core i7 4770k @4.4Ghz
CPU cooler: Noctua NH-D15 with Arctic MX-4 thermal compound
Motherboard: MSI z97 gaming 3
GPU: MSI GTX 770 2GB
HDD: 1TB WD black
PSU: Corsair CX 600
Case: Cooler Master 690 III
Miscellaneous: NZXT Hue RBG led light controller

Peripherals:
- Kingston HyperX cloud headset
- CM quickfire rapid mechanical keyboard with cherry MX blues
- Razer Naga mouse
- A shitty guild wars 2 mouse pad that I plan to change

Possible upgrades:
SSDs
Some WD greens for music and movies storage
Maybe a couple fans to toss here and there in the case

Feel free to suggest some good upgrades and help me improve my rig ^^

With side panel on:


Lights on:


Lights off:


Sorry for the crappy image quality I took these with my phone.
I think an SSD and a huge HDD would be the best upgrade if your games are running well.

Other than that the rig seems superb.
AvoK95 wroteI think an SSD and a huge HDD would be the best upgrade if your games are running well.

Other than that the rig seems superb.

a 4k screen perhaps ?!