Building a new PC and looking for some feedback.

[Welsper59]

Yes, you will see HUGE differences. Probably enough to make you cry if you're a very emotional person LOL.

Be sure you update your GPU drivers (pretty much a given for most people given that it's been out for a decent amount of time already). The 970 (probably all 900 series) had issues with distortion on FFXIV when the card first came out, but they fixed it a few updates into it. I use the 970 and it runs more or less flawlessly. SLIGHT graphical lag at times, but you really won't notice it as long as your processor manages it well enough.

I used to use the old i5 3570K a few years ago, and even for today, that thing would still perform very well. That said, I'm going to assume the newer gen models like the 4690K will outperform it. No hyper threading, but that shouldn't affect you much at all, at least not compared to what you currently use.

MOBOs IMO are really a trial and error thing for most people. With the exception of literal restrictions (socket type, RAM capacity/speed, ports, etc), you won't notice too much of a difference between boards as a normal user.

Your RAM selection might actually be too good for the needs of this game, but if you can afford it, I say go for it. Worst case, you can recycle it for any future upgrading you need to do.

Your SSD selection is fine, but you may want to look into getting a larger storage drive if you plan on using the computer for more than just FFXIV. If you want to save on cost, a generic regular 5400 or 7200 RPM 1TB HDD should be fine for storage. Again, depending on what you plan to do with it, it'll depend on how much storage you really need. I personally don't see a point in wasting a lot of money on very large storage SSD (unless you only have 1 drive space) or 10k+ RPM HDD, but that's just me.

Back to your GPU though, ASUS (not Gigabyte, like I first said) was definitely the best brand to get the 900 series cards, at least when they first came out. I ended up getting the EVGA version (considered a not-so-good choice for the 900 series) simply because it was the only one in stock and I needed a new card. I dunno, mines is still running fine and I haven't had any problems that I can recall after a little over 3 months. I think Gigabyte is perfectly fine though if you want to go with that.