Mid-High End Gaming/All-Around Build

If its primarily for gaming id go for an i5 2500 if you want to overclock make sure its the 2500 (k)

not sure I'd call that a 'mid-range' PC, but it looks pretty good all around.

instead of the Hyper N, get the Hyper 212 EVO for the same price.

You're right... menat to put mid to high end. Changed the title.

gaming performance wont increase in any noticeable way if you increase from 4 to 8 gig of RAM , so 16 gig is massive overkill unless you are a high end graphics pro using a 64 bit image editor .

The cpu cooler is probably no better than the stock cooler . Get the Hyper 212+ instead or the Xigmatek 1283

2500k processor . Unless you are a high end graphics pro , or you use a handful of VM's

Thanks for your feedback.

Re: 2500K vs 2600K -- It will be primarily for gaming, but it won't be it's only purpose. Aside from that I play Civ V quite a bit and that uses multi-threading + I hope other programs will utilize it in the future as well.

Re: Hyper N vs Hyper 212 -- I was concerned about the size of the fan not fitting in the case & blocking the RAM slots. Do you think I will have a problem that if I chose the 212 with this setup?

civ V won't see much hyperthreading benefit.

the 212 should fit fine. if you're worried about it, get some RAM without heat spreaders. Not really needed on DDR3 for anything but cosmetics

The difference between the 2500k and 2600 is hyperthreading ,and most games perform BETTER with hyperthreading turned OFF
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/battlefield-3-graph...
[bottom chart]

The 2500K is a very powerful processor so you wont lose anything you will notice in everyday use

Heatsinks interfere with tall RAM . Make sure the RAM you settle on does not have ridiculously tall heat spreaders and you will be fine with the Hyper 212 .

OK, I'm convinced... I was going to go with the 2600K b/c $100 wasn't going to break me and I thought I might be able to take advantage of the HT at some point, even if it wasn't utilized fully. But I don't expect to do much encoding/decoding + lower gaming performance and a higher price just makes it kind of popintless to go with the 2600K.

I did some checking and it seems my MB + RAM combo with a Hyper 212 should work just fine. Not only is the fan adjustable but there might not be an issue at all depending on how far the RAM slots are away from the CPU on the MB.

Thanks again for your help!

good luck with it!