$1200 gaming/general purpose build

Hey, here's my potential build for a gaming/general purpose PC. I'll probably be doing mild OCing, but honestly not much. I'd prefer not to go SLI. I guess the budget is $1200 or so, including the monitor. I would be using this with minimal upgrading for the next 5 years (built my last one 5 years ago).


CPU: i5-2500k

Heatsink: CM Hyper 212+, Corsair A70 or something similar.

Mobo: Probably ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3, ASRock P67 EXTREME4 GEN3, or Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD4. Trying to find a good balance of features/price/problems.

GPU (no SLI): Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 or EVGA SuperClocked GeForce GTX 560 Ti (or DS version). I've always liked EVGA's warranties, but noise and heat on the 560 Ti seem to be worse, going by reviews.

RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws X 8GB, or possibly low profile Sniper or Corsair Vengeance, to give the heatsink room. Apparently this might be particularly true with the Gigabyte mobo I listed.

PSU: Corsair HX650 ($116 on Amazon). Could go non-modular for $40 less, but I really want to avoid a cluttered case.

Case: Going through various options. Would an ATX mid tower work for this setup, or is a full tower needed?

Monitor: ASUS VS248H-P Black 24" 2ms HDMI or something like it.

Other: Might add a SSD sometime. I already have regular hard drives.


What do you think? I'm particularly wondering about the case size, GPU noise/heat, whether the RAM clearance really matters, and the GPU and mobo selections.