Gaming setup for £1000

Been tasked to compile a viable gaming rig for a freshly promoted 'manager', ideally for 1440p gaming. Limit set for £1000, including labour and all components (keyboard,mouse,monitor). OS and all the necessary paid software liberated from the local IT department. As small as possible gaming rig (means size ITX for me).

CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 (£155). Skylake too expensive but the Haswell platform least leaves room for future upgrade (i7 or Xeon to be able to take advantage of DX12/Vulkan later).
Cooler: Arctic Cooling ACFZ11-LP (£16). Got this cooler myself as well. Great LP cooler. Quiet. Within the height limits for the ITX case. Because no OC is planned(rather OC the GPU within the thermal limits of the case airflow), it can accommodate the future i7 or Xeon upgrades too.
MoBo: MSI H97I AC (£78). ITX. With integrated WiFi card. Suitable for the needs. Cheapest.
RAM: Mushkin Blackline 16GB (2 x 8GB) (£61). Cheapest 1600 Mhz 16GB DDR3 kit. Not much else to say.
SSD: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB (£118). 500GB of quality SSD for £110-120. Dare you to suggest a better buy within the price range.
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 4GB (£250). ITX compatible nVidia card. Chosen for the small size, positive reviews and power efficiency compared to a AMD card (due to the cramped space in the case).
Case: Cooler Master Elite 110 (£34). Got few myself. Sold builds with it. Client seen it as well and he loves it. Not much else to say. Small, fairly presentable and efficient (not too expensive, can accommodate gaming systems plus a full sized ATX PSU as well).
PSU: EVGA 430W 80+ (£30). Only possible components, no doubts, will be much criticized. Initially wanted to choose a 350W be quiet! unit but now not entirely sure if it would be able to power the system (to maximize efficiency & reduce noise).
Monitor: AOC Q2778VQE 60Hz 27.0" (£220). 2560 x 1440 resolution. Fairly positive results. Fits the budget limit. 27" big (bigger is better). Aware of the poor stand and the lack of non-luxury perks.
Rest: wireless/bluetooth keyboard+mouse,basic speakers/headphones.

Thoughts?

Skylake's only marginally more expensive. Perhaps £10 more on the motherboard and £5 more on the ram if you go for a DDR4 motherboard. The 6500 is the same price as the 4590.

I'm not sure I'd call Samsung a quality SSD after the issues they had with the previous models. Plenty of other choice of brands at the same price though.

The Elite 110 is a pretty big case at 20 litres. Consider similar sized Micro ATX alternatives as you can get much cheaper motherboards for them (albeit without wi-fi). The smallest Micro ATX case I'm aware of is Sharkoon's 17.3 Litre CA-M which is current £30 in silver on Amazon. It supports longer cards and larger CPU coolers, but fewer hard drives and fans.

Given everyone who tried it seems to love variable refresh rates I'd be pretty disappointed to get a £1000 machine without them so I'd consider going for something like an LG 29UM67 and an AMD card.

Power supply is fine, but PSUs are usually quieter at lower loads so it's worth looking at the 500W and 600W units in the range as they're not much more.

I wasn't aware that entry level Skylake CPU's are that cheap. I think my subconsciousness remembered the hype about the K class CPUs and the inflated prices.

In the price range £110-120 only a Samsung EVO 500GB and a SanDisk Ultra II 480GB are available. And if I compare the price difference, rather pay the extra few £££s for the extra 20GB of capacity. Unless I can get a special deal online.

The case. Uhm. Sharkoon's case dimensions are 27.0 x 22.5 x 28.5 (cm) vs 26.0 x 20.8 x 28.0 (cm). I don't think those dimension differences make up 3 liter of space. Accidentally the Elite 110 comes out to be smaller so I don't know how you made your calculations (17.3 liter CA-M vs 15.1 liter Elite 110). Customer specifically stated ITX. So ITX it will be. He would like to have in the future the option to add further HDDs or SSDs, so Elite 110 it is for now.

I like the monitor suggestion. I would go for a AMD GPU solution but needs to fit the confined space. And produce similar results. Anyway, the monitor will be probably a go. Including the Skylake platform suggestion. But the price difference would push the budget to £1000 and cut down finances left for the labour and peripherals. Need to do some more number crunching.

Adding the new platform plus the monitor while staying with the nVidia 970 takes me over £1000. Hmm..

Ah, my mistake. I misread the 208mm on the diagram as 280mm and misremembered which of Coolermaster's range was 20L (it's the more popular 120).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by EndlessWaves

Ah, my mistake. I misread the 208mm on the diagram as 280mm and misremembered which of Coolermaster's range was 20L (it's the more popular 120).

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I have the Elite 120. And I love it :) Was only £9.99 when I purchased it. Opened box, nothing else. And white, not the black. But for £9.99 inc.delivery you shouldn't complain.

Btw, the customer changed his mind (again). Suggested the possibility to cut out the monitor, make the PC 4k capable for gaming (even if only low/medium details) and he wanted to buy a 4k TV anyway. So that would change the setup from nVidia 970 > nVidia 980 and change the CM Elite 110 for something bigger. Maybe even go for a mATX case, mATX MoBo and a nice small case like the Sharkoon you suggested. I am having loads of fun...

If you will be held responsible for the machine in anyway I would use Dell for the monitor, Crucial for the memory and SSD and something SeaSonic based for the PSU. Best RMA service/lowest failures. I would also build an MATX machine for the sake of longevity (better cooling options and upgrades) And under no circumstance use desktop Seagate drives.

For around £1000 I would probably go with something like this, and buy as much of it as possible from Amazon with a credit card.
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/LqFdkL

No mATX. The potential customer seen my 'smallest' mATX build and it was still a wee bit too big for him (TJ08B-E). ITX or smaller. He would like to keep it in the living room as well. I offered flat APU system with picoPSU but he would like to retain the option to play 'games'.

I will use Bespoke/Flubit and TopCashback as a financial solution.