1st Gaming PC, need your opinions

first thing i like to add is that you will want to look at the list of parts a few days to a week before you intend to order instead of planning out every single part in advance. it is a good idea to get a listing of parts together for budget reasons sure but i would always doublecheck last minute to see if anything new came out or if any parts are on sale which has a big influence on total price.

if you have the budget for it, an i5 is certainly a good choice and the K edition is correct if you plan on overclocking. it will perform better and run cooler than amd which may be of benefit since you are in a fairly hot climate if i recall.

if possible i would look into an asus board (z97a if you need sli, z97p if you do not) or perhaps something from gigabyte over msi branded equipment.

likewise i'd go asus, evga or gigabyte on the graphics card as well. while people do use msi, they rank slightly behind a few of the others in terms of quality.

as far as the power supply is concerned, i believe aerocool is not very reliable of a brand. i would really suggest something from tier1 or tier 2 if possible and at the very lowest something from 2b. anything else is generally to be avoided. http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-1804779/power-supply-unit-tier-list.html seasonic and xfx are excellent. antec's HCG series is okay. superflower is excellent. rosewill capstone is good. evga's "g2" series is good.

the carbide cases are not bad but all that design on the front is rather fragile plastic. your choice.

is there a reason you are buying red not blue hard drives? i do believe the blues will be a bit cheaper for you. other good choices are seagate barracuda and samsung spinpoints.

also i would suggest buying two (2) sticks of 4gb ram. example a 2 x 4gb kit (not a 4 x 2gb kit).

--

an i5/960 system will provide fair gaming performance for the money. a little review on graphics performance http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-960,4038-4.html . performance is comparable to the gtx770 (i have one, and run most things on maximum at decent framerates though in a few situations you may need to dial graphical settings back in demanding games). a gtx970 can handle generally all games at good framerates on ultra settings at 1080p. depending on what you expect in performance this could be an option or not.

$1100 sounds a little expensive in usa prices for this performance however overseas prices sounds about right due to the higher cost components bring.

some of the alternatives from amd like the r9-290 and r9-290x perform well and in certain countries run at a good price http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1068?vs=1037 though amd graphics cards do run hotter which may not be so good in a hot climate. it may be worth going with nvidia for the lower heat output.