Suggestions for Gaming/Workstation Rig

[scatterrunner]

I'm working on piecing out a new rig, I need it to be able to run any game on the market at full settings and also have it be a decent work horse for excel and statistical analysis software. This is what I am looking at building now:

CPU:
Intel Core i-5 2500k processor ($220)

Motherboard:
ASUS LGA 1155 - Z68 - PCIe 3.0 and UEFI BIOS Intel Z68 ATX DDR3 2200 ($260)

Video Card:
EVGA GeForce GTX 580 CLASSIFIED ULTRA, 3072MB GDDR5 ($525)

HDD1 (Boot Drive):
Crucial 128 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive ($147)

HDD2 (Storage Drive):
Western Digital Caviar Blue 500 GB SATA III 7200 RPM ($75)

Case:
Corsair CC600TWM-WHT Special Edition Graphite Series 600T ($167)

RAM:
Corsair Vengeance 8 GB ( 2 x 4 GB ) DDR3 1600 MHz ($55)

Optical Drive:
Sony 24X SATA Internal DVD+/-RW Drive ($28)

Power Supply:
CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX750 V2 750W ATX 12V 80 PLUS BRONZE ($105)

I would like to optimize this for what I want without breaking the bank. What are the best ways to make this build better without spending too much more. Could I save by going down to two 560ti video cards without losing too much performance? Should I upgrade the processor to an i-7. Are the benefits of using a SSD for a boot drive worth it?

 

[jmsellars1]

Looks like a decent enough build that should do everything you need it to but it's using last years parts now. Intel bring out some new CPU's in a few weeks and AMD just released some new GPU's. The HD 7870 2GB performs similarly to the GTX 580 for ~$350.

 

[scatterrunner]

Is a SSD really worth the money though?

 

[jmsellars1]

It's personal preference really. The main reason I have one is for low noise but the fast booting/loading and installing is really nice as well. Some people don't find them worth it for gaming builds though since they won't actually affect FPS.

 

[g-unit1111]

Is a SSD really worth the money though?

Depends on what you want to use it for. On business apps like Adobe Acrobat I notice huge speed increases on tasks that used to take me 15 minutes now takes a matter of seconds. On games I notice drastically different loading times.

That build looks good - but I'd actually spend a bit less on the case and put that elsewhere, maybe in storage and upgrade to a 1 - 2TB HD. The 600T is a great case but it is quite a bit expensive. What's the max budget you're looking to spend?