Quote (WiseBlood @ Dec 7 2015 11:48am)
a friend of mine i usually talk to about this stuff says,
"gtx 970 is typically ~5-10% faster than the r9 390,
you don't need a k- cpu if you don't plan on overclocking, might as well save ~$50 for the i5-6500 (which would actually come out to over $70 cause you won't need a cpu cooler, the one in the box is definitely good enough)
don't need a z170 chipset motherboard if you're not using an overclockable cpu
on top of the last 2 things, if you don't get a -k sku then getting an h170/b150 motherboard is cheaper, only need the extra features if you're going to be overclocking
and as a general thing, for almost every user unless you're gonna be going for high benchmark scores or crazy rendering power, ddr3 is equal to ddr4 in this generation for general usage and gaming"
He's mostly right. The GTX 970 and R9 390 perform nearly identical at 1080p since AMD updated the drivers. The 970 was about 10-15% faster when the 390 first came out because the drivers weren't updated yet. However, at the same price and same performance, its wiser to get the 8 GB VRAM over the 4 GB.
If you don't plan on overclocking, you can save money and get a locked CPU and B/H motherboard. The only thing you lose is the ability to overclock in the future to gain performance when your cpu becomes older (in 4-5 years it would be advantageous to overclock or replace).
As for the RAM, that's true as well, but DDR4 is becoming the new standard. You'll get similar performance between the two but under a similar scenario as the GPU. The DDR4 is only $15 AUD more than DDR3. You won't have to replace the DDR4 when you upgrade in the future unless they come out with HBM for systems instead of just GPU's.
http://au.pcpartpicker.com/p/Xdv8D3The GTX 970 is the same price, so if you want to get that nothing will change. You can remove the HDD or SSD if you want to save money when you buy it and just buy whichever you removed later. However, since you aren't buying for 6 months, prices could rise or drop a little by the time you do purchase. I would like to point out that by getting a locked CPU and cheaper motherboard, you saved $70. If you removed the HDD and compare it part for part to my earlier build, you save $140. The reason I suggest unlocked CPUs is because you can squeeze performance out of them in the future without major extra costs. Its only a smaller upfront cost compared to a large cost later when you end up having to replace the CPU and MoBo if you want a faster PC later.