I'll be building it for him. I could shop out the parts myself, but I want to compare notes. We're looking to pick 100% of the parts up from NCIX Canada, since we can pick up in person, deal with warranty issues on any parts immediately in person, etc. Obviously you can just link whatever, I can find the comparable parts at NCIX.

Budget: $2000 max
Purpose: Gaming, photoshop/art work with Wacom tablet, etc.
Other: A little bit energy conscious. As in, dual graphics cards that kick in and chug a ton of power = bigger house power bill. Maybe someone can chime in on how significant/insignificant this can be, since I've never done the math.
Overclock & cooling: N/A. He might get aftermarket cooling just for better performance over time with dust accumulation, summer heat, less noise, etc... but he's not overclocking at all.

What he currently has: i7-920 processor, terrible power supply, terrible mini motherboard from Dell, 8GB or 16GB of old RAM, old hard drive that runs at 5400RPM, etc, etc... great case but he wants a new one (his computer was originally in a form-factor case from Dell, but it overheated all the time -- it is really difficult taking a computer apart when it's locked together with proprietary screws, I cut my hands up cutting the old case apart bit by bit). Basically, everything is going, he's keeping nothing, maybe he'll keep a couple of the 120mm fans... but those will probably go too, since they're loud blue LED ones that I gave him a while back.

Processor: 4690, or 4770k?
RAM: 16GB of something reliable, proper timings
Graphics: GTX 970? He won't be overclocking.
Storage: Not sure what's best. He will probably want about 512GB of storage, give or take, on his main hard drive. An additional one isn't necessary, he has a storage drive.
OS: Not sure if he'll need to buy one, we have a couple copies lying around and they always seem to activate with the code.
Motherboard: Anything you can suggest that won't suck major balls with some sort of firmware issue? Asus seems to usually be quite good.
Everything else: I think it's pretty straight-forward... any PSU's or anything to steer clear of? There's some brands I steer clear of now just because of issues I've had in the past (ie. had a humming corsair PSU, never again...)... Probably will go with a Silverstone Strider 500W gold, or a 750W silver, or something like that, whatever is selling at a good price and rated well by Silverstone.

This post was edited by Canadian_Man on Feb 8 2015 01:49am