R9-290x Stock Vs ref Vs GTX 780

1. the R9-290X is in the same performance class as the GTX780.
At full speed, the R9 will run hotter and louder. I would suggest a GTX780 factory superclock if you are gaming on just one monitor. If you will be triple monitor gaming, then save for a GTX780ti.

2. The amount of vram is a performance issue, not a functional issue.
But... it is a very small issue, and not worth it as a selection criteria. Read this:
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Pe...

3. I do not much like all in one liquid coolers when a good air cooler can do the job.
A liquid cooler will be expensive, noisy, less reliable, and will not cool any better
in a well ventilated case.
Liquid cooling is really air cooling, it just puts the heat exchange in a different place.
The orientation of the radiator will cause a problem.
If you orient it to take in cool air from the outside, you will cool the cpu better, but the hot air then circulates inside the case heating up the graphics card and motherboard.
If you orient it to exhaust(which I think is better) , then your cpu cooling will be less effective because it uses pre heated case air.
And... I have read too many tales of woe when a liquid cooler leaks.
google "H100 leak"

How good do you need to be? How high you can oc a haswell is determined by your luck in getting a golden chip.
A decent air cooler will allow a oc in the 4.2-4.4 range with average luck of the bin. You hear of higher numbers, like 4.6 but that comes from the lucky winners. The bin losers rarely brag about it. A top end air cooler like a noctua NH-D14 or Phanteks will up that a small amount, about the same as a good liquid cooler will do.

Even a GTX780ti needs only a 650w psu. I think your psu selection is excessive.



Lastly, few games can use more than 2-3 cores, so the hyperthreads of the i7 are not worth much.
A i5-4670K will save you $100 that can be used elsewhere. If $100 is not important to you, then a i7-4770K is OK; I think they are better binned than the i5's.

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I'm an amd lover but if you have to choose between 290x ref and gtx 780...
go for GTX 780.
290x run at insane temperature with stock cooler, your video card will run underpowered for too much time during play for control temps.

If you want go for amd take a 290 (non x) with a 3rd part cooler (for example Sapphire Tri-x oc). it will perform near 290x standard cooler

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Just get a Corsair H100i for your CPU. It's proven to perform very well and is very popular. Less than $100.

For the video card save up for a 780 Ti. The stock R9 290/290X cannot perform at their full potential with the miserable reference cooler.

Also you don't need anything remotely close to 1050W for two 780 Ti's let alone one. One card pulls at most 250W so even a 500W PSU will do it. At least 750W for two. I recommend slightly more so you got room to push overclocks or run a crapload of fans.

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