MSI GTX Gaming X. 1070 or 1080. Which one? You choose!

well, I agree with getting a better cooler, especially as that will let you OC a bit. the monitor is a very good idea, as with a 1080 you will want to make use of all the FPS you will get. getting a 1070 would work pretty well too, as it would still be a good card to pair with that monitor. the difference between getting the two different cards comes down to how much you want that 144Hz gaming. with a 1070 you will still be getting well over 60 FPS, but with a 1080 you will be getting closer to the 144Hz in quite a few games. I can't tell you to get one or the other, but I can try to tell you what you will get with one or the other, in the end it is your money.

At 1440p, a GTX 1070 would be perfectly capable; however, if you want to get the most out of the 144 Hz refresh rate and resolution, getting a 1080 would allow you to crank up the details and it would run smoother. Off the top of my head I'm not sure about that monitor you posted, but getting one with G-Sync would also ensure you have a good gaming experience.

Alternatively, you could buy a single 1070 now and get a second one later for SLI, but that's also a crap shoot depending on what kind of SLI support there will be for most games going forward.

960 to a 1070 / 1080 would be a fairly significant upgrade, you should be able to get at least 30%+ performance increase.

IMO, if you can do the 1440p 144Hz monitor and the GTX 1080 in one-go then you should do it. A GTX 1070 would be a good upgrade from what you have now, but it won't be up for the task of 1440p 144Hz.

When you stagger the purchases, what you're doing is paying the extra for the GTX 1080 today when it offers you no advantage over the 1070 and then upgrade your monitor. If anything, I'd do it in reverse: get the 144Hz 1440p monitor now and upgrade your GPU later.

No, your GTX 960 won't be able to play 1440p well. But, 2560x1440 happens to be an exact multiple of 1280x720. So if you can deal with running your games at 720p with the higher-resolution monitor, which won't change in price too much, then you get a few benefits now. First, because 1440p is a multiple of 720p, every pixel rendered is displayed as a 2x2 square which gives you the same exact visuals as a true 720p monitor. I realize this is a decrease in pixel density, but my point is that the scaling is perfect so you don't generate artifacts. Second, your 2D environment is much upgraded which leads to a happier time with everything not gaming related. Third, being 144Hz it should lead to a smoother experience with movies which run at 24fps. Since 60Hz isn't a good multiple of 24Hz, when you play back a movie each frame in the movie is either displayed 2 or 3 times -- for example with frames named A, B, C, D, the monitor may display AABBBCCDDD. With 144Hz, you notice that 144/24 = 6 exactly, so those same frames get displayed as AAAAAABBBBBBCCCCCCDDDDDD. This can reduce stutter. Of course if you're viewing 30fps media then the 60Hz monitor is fine as-is, and of course 144Hz doesn't display 30fps as perfectly so you have this trade-off. But 24fps is much more common as essentially all movies use it. OTOH, pure 60fps displays best on a 60Hz monitor but doesn't display well on a 144Hz monitor. Of course with 144Hz, each frame is a mere 7ms so you would see discrepancies of 7ms whereas with 60Hz the smallest error that can be made is 16ms, more than twice as noticeable.

Often I see people buy expensive GPUs with the plan of upgrading some other component and don't end up having the money when they think they will so they just wasted paying the premium for the higher end part without being able to use it. The GTX 1080 is worth what it is because it enables you to get that performance today, rather than waiting till next year or so for the GTX 1170. If you end up not buying the monitor until next year when the GTX 1170 is approaching then the GTX 1080 will be far less valuable and whatever extra you paid for it over the GTX 1070 is a complete waste. A similar mistake is when people get SLI-ready motherboards and SLI-ready PSUs with the plan of adding a second GPU later on. Except they realize by the time they have the money for the second GPU they could sell their old GPU and buy the next generation which offers SLI performance without the hassle of running two GPUs which isn't supported in every game anyways. They could've saved their money and purchased lower wattage PSUs and cheaper motherboards, which would've possibly given them a better GPU from the start and an overall better experience.

As far as the AIO cooler goes... this is your last priority. The 4690K is quite capable as-is and you shouldn't feel the need to OC it to get more from either GPU, but especially so with the GTX 1070. If anything your choice of 1333MT/s DDR3 is going to handicap you more than the stock CPU speed. Repeated benchmarks have shown memory speed doesn't matter much once you hit 1600MT/s, but 1333MT/s vs 1600MT/s has a measurable effect. This isn't just for AMD's APUs - it applies to Intel CPUs with discrete graphics.

well the monitor does have G sysnc BadBoyGreek,
to JvJakesta Both will be a radical improvement. they will bith max every game out there at 1440p soemthing a 960 cannot always do at 1080p. 1440p looks noticeably finer, and with G sync things will be very smooth.