+1 for cp, the MSI Z97 Gaming 5 is a great motherboard, and 7 imho would only be an advantage for using more of the sata ports. The BIOS has an auto overclock called geniue something like that. The Z97 Gaming 7 has an overclock button on the motherboard itself, not worth the extra money. Other features are on the Gaming 7 but not very necessary if you are gaming. The 4790K is PERFECTLY capable of games you'd play, and even in the future. New released games show not "much" benefit from having 2 extra cores, and some benchmarks even show on some games that they can get confused and actually decrease performance if you have 8+. Not many games suffer from this, so if you were to go X99, you'd get a few FPS but you can also take advantage over the extra cores for other things! I personally would go with theninja35's build if your budget is to be just below $1200. In a few months, AMD should be releasing the 300 series which seem pleasing but only leaks so far. Around September, leaks show that Intel will be releasing the Broadwell desktop CPU's which show not much performance over Haswell, although made specifically for power consumption. but seriously, I'd go with the X99 build... and then maybe upgrade the 970 when Pascal comes out.. ;)