Because the objective is to make you actually learn something?

High profile ram is going to conflict if anything and also FX8350 doesn't perform as well as the i5 3570k.

Even if he is running 3-4 monitors, the builds I posted above fit 2-3 7970s in the same budget

Probably? If you're suggestion is for op to dump almost half his budget into a card, you should be damn sure you know it will be better.
Also, why stop at one, why not suggest op get two 690s? Would certainly match your other posts..

Its actually kind of shitty since its throttled compared to getting two separate cards.

I can't argue with you because SSDs are just one of those things that you need to experience.

I don't think SSDs ae a luxury item in any build, but they are absolutely not a luxury in a $2000 build.

How is he skimping out on PSU? Its a Superflower Golden Green Unit thats actually better than the HX series ones. Also, the 3570k once again will perform better in other uses just as well.

SSDs are quite reliable as long as you get a quality SSD like the Samsung 840.

Dual GPUs are bad for gaming. They increase FPS, but add latency. Latency is what matters, not FPS. If a GPU takes 500ms to render a single frame, then renders 59 frames in the next 500ms, that's 60 FPS, but your frame rate is not smooth. The Tech Report did a spectacular write up about it:

http://techreport.com/review/21516/inside-the-second-a-new-look-at-game-benchmarking

And yes, for general purpose usage, the single most important upgrade is the upgrade from an HDD to an SSD. For random read performance, even cheap SSDs are a hundred times faster than 10,000 rpm HDDs. I'm not being sarcastic, it's literally two decimal places for the cheap drives and three decimal places for the best drives. Hard drives usually cannot be included in latency bar graphs because their bar is a hundred times longer than the SSD bars. Check out some random read benches at Anandtech:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/SSD/83

And aside from the Sandforce problems years ago (which are now fixed), SSDs are more reliable than HDDs. When an SSD's NAND dies, it shuts down in clumps and you can accurately predict when it will die. Likewise, an HDD can just up and die at any time.

And my build had 16GB of RAM while your's only had 8GB, so I'm not sure what your RAM comments are about. That is, unless you think faster RAM will make a difference, but in a consumer machine, it won't.

You really don't need a case that costs much more than $100 if you want decent cooling even at modest overclocks. If you're going for some hardline OCs on air, then you will need a better case. But CPU OCs aren't necessary anymore and GPU OCs are pretty hot no matter what kind of cooling you use.

For the motherboard, performance almost never changes more than a percentage point or two from mobo to mobo (unless you're ASROCK and you cheat with a tiny overclock by default). For upgrading, Ivy Bridge is the last CPU to use LGA 1155. Haswell will use LGA 1150. Therefore, there's no potential for significant CPU upgrading. But if you do happen to stick with your machine through a few GPU generations, that single (remember dual GPUs are a waste) PCI-e 3.0 x16 slot will satisfy midrange GPUs for at least two years, probably three or four. Every PCI-e gen, there's always an article about a top end GPU having >95% of its performance even when you quarter its bandwidth to like x4. I'm sure you could find one if you're curious.

And the PSU is fine. Even with your hot CPU and dual graphics, you won't get much higher than 500W at peak (if at all). In a cooler Intel CPU and a single GPU, you could get by with a 500W PSU. I just picked up the 650W version because I wanted to let the OP upgrade on it for a few years if he wants a lot of hard drives or something. 850W is kinda overkill.

Also, 80PLUS is an efficiency marketing term, not one for reliability. But since efficiency matters, I picked a PSU that's also 80PLUS Gold rated. Also, PSUs are typically most efficient at half load. So it's actually bad for efficiency to get a PSU that's too big. Like I mentioned before, the 550W Capstone would've been a better choice. An 850W unit isn't a good idea if you are worried about your power bill.

In addition, it's good to point out that you have to actually pay money for a movie player that will playback Blu Rays because of encryption BS. You could always rip them with something like MakeMKV, but that won't be free once it gets out of beta. I guess you could burn Blu Rays for back up discs, but that is a weird usage. The bottom line is that the user will know if they need Blu Ray. Most of us won't use it on a desktop.

Finally, I don't want to get into a dick measuring contest, but you can't "disagree" with me. I can support all of my claims with empirical evidence. I'm not stating opinions. You can't disagree with facts.

I don't see a good reason to use an ATX chassis unless you are a serious tinkerer/OCer (and if you're asking for build help in a palce like this, you aren't). Honestly, in a few years, I think most users will be best served by mITX builds. TDPs are only going to keep dropping. Also the case is designed about mATX, so that helps make the decision.

And for the GPU, I didn't have the heart to not go for a 680 in a $2000 build. Personally, I would go for a midrange GPU and upgrade every two years or so.

There are always fans of both sides, but I've preferred the green team for years now because they have always had better driver support (AMD has improved, but still not up to NVIDIA's level), and PhysX in games that utilize it really does improve the experience. Performance is always a back-and-forth between the sides, so for me it comes down to the extra stuff.

I feel that amd is better than nvidia at every price point.

The thing is with closed loops is that they tend to cost more than the air coolers but don't cool any better. Its only worth getting an open loop if you want to go water since those do actually have a significant benefit over air.

I meant that there are better alternatives than the M4. Also, I just noticed the Asrock Extreme4 and it doesn't have very good mosfets.

Sure there are a lot of room of changing opinion but its hard to put support behind that build when this + OS is almost the same cost.

Unless you do video editing, 3570k is fine for most tasks. Its better to redistribute the cost into other areas, such as the psu and ssd since they are kind of terrible. For that matter, it actually is useless for gaming cause its a neglible improvement.

I would think if he needs something that renders well, he would say so to begin with.

Useless for basic computing as well. You'd have to do some heavy lifting to make that 3770K upcharge pay for itself. The 3570K is a better choice in most situations.

I'm running an ATI HD 6990 with two monitors (1920x1080, 1280x1024) and I have no issues whatsoever.

We haven't explicitly mentioned it because OP wants builds. No one is going to post a build and then say "don't skimp on the PSU" when they already have a good PSU in their suggestion.

No, it is correct, if you have a 1200 PSU and consume maybe 400 watts, even if the PSU is 80+Gold, it wont be 80% efficient anymore.

Since I'm running a X79 system, quite a bit actually because there isn't as much bandwidth bottleneck like with Z77.

Would say ~150% give or take on games over two. Can't be exactly sure though.

Hes trying to be funny.

Now that I think about it, your definition does seem about right. I went with multiple GPUs to accommodate my multimonitor and the high end CPU for programming uses.

Still, it does mean getting parts with overhead does allow you to not upgrade as often, which would also save you money, would it not?

If you want to talk about forum posts, I have 4,187 on another forum and I joined 2.5 years ago. As for OCN, it seems like less people do +rep these days but maybe thats just me spewing shit.