Which parts will povide the best perfomance upgrade to my system:
I've heard a little about them, but the little I have heard is that the NVidia ones are not much of an improvement because they did almost nothing to align with the DX12 architecture and as a result are a very limited upgrade on the 980 series.
As to the new AMD cards , the release of them won't be until Zen and that has already been pushed back twice - I'd be surprised if they are realease before next year now.
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gtx 1070 and gtx 1080 (+-40%) are both faster than the gtx 980 Ti.
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Option 2. If you care about RAM that much, just go to 32 and get a decent SSD. Diminishing returns when you want to make a beast more beastly.
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Definitely get an SSD (m.2 preferably), but one of the first things you might want to do is to exchange motherboard for a one with Z170 chipset, so you can make use of the unlocked multiplier the cpu has. Next thing - just because the board supports 64GB of ram doesn't mean you have to stick them there. If you want to extend memory, 32GB will be more than enough, especially if it's only/mostly for gaming.
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Originally I was going for a Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming 3 - but the added expense of those boards not supporting DDR3 meant that I'd have to get new DDR4 RAM as well - While I was ok with that my wife was not :P
I compromised by getting the H170 and using 16GB from my old machine.
The H170 also supports OC the CPU through the UEFI, though to be honest I have not done it yet - the reason I got this chip was because I don't need to OC it yet - in a year or 3 when the next gen of games comes out I'll have that option.
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Only the SSD. Do you need more than 15GB RAM? Then buy 2x8GB+SSD. doesn't found 16GB 1600 RAM? Whats with that: http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Technology-64-PC3-12800-KVR16R11D4K4/dp/B0088SSV6G
Or buy two 2x16GB Kits ;-)
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An SSD (not even M.2) will make the most difference, and an upgrade in video card would be second. More RAM would just be overkill/future-proofing. Have you checked your stats while gaming, do you ever max out the RAM? I have 16GB and never do. My video card is always the bottleneck (R9 390).
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Unless you're doing some video editing, you won't need more than 16gb of ram. I would highly recommend a samsung SSD as at least your boot drive. As far as the graphics go I would suggest waiting and then upgrading to a single better graphics card (GTX 1080 possibly).
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I looked at a few i7's before settling on the 6600k, I decided against one because currently very few games support more than 2 cores anyway - you can force 4 core on some games but the 6 and 8 core i7's seemed overkill and had lower reviews on CPUBoss.
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Any reason why you intend to upgrade your Ram? For just gaming there's no point.
SLI / CX of mid range cards is generally a bad idea.
In short: half the time it's not supported, the other half it doesn't work well. And if it does, you gonna be vram limited. A (used) 970, 980, 390, 390x, would be also a decent upgrade, or better: just wait for Polaris / Pascal.
IMHO, if the SSD you've been offered is decent, then throw it in for OS & some games.
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Difference between M.2 SSD and SATA3 SSD now in real-world scenarios is next to zero. Windows boots a second faster and programs open 0.5 seconds faster. Just stick to a SATA3 Samsung 850 EVO.
Not to mention that H170 only supports PCIE 3.0 in 1×16, so even if you get an NVMe M.2 SSD, it would run at quarter speed since the chipset wouldn't be able to handle its data.
CrossFire/SLI usually improve frame rates in games that can support them by 50-70%. It is more worth to sell the card and buy an R9 380X or 390 than trying to fiddle around with CrossFire. Dual-card setups are rarely, if ever worth it under the high-end range, when you simply don't have a stronger single card to upgrade to.
If you just game and don't do really memory-intensive work, 16 GB is enough. Get more with the next motherboard, preferably a DDR4 one, so your 8 GB sticks won't melt each other.
Bottom line: if you really want to upgrade your rig, either wait for the next AMD line or get a 390. It won't give such a huge improvement though.
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Just buy a normal 500GB or 1TB SSD. Everything else is just ott for marginal performance gain. The Nvidia 1070/1080 and AMD R8 480/490 are around the corner and worth waiting for.
Also, some of your wording is a bit off:
"I looked at a few i7's before settling on the 6600k, I decided against one because currently very few games support more than 2 cores anyway"
More games are appearing now that won't even start on 2 cores, 4 cores have been supported for years. The more cores/threads your system has, the better.
16Gb Ram is the max any normal person needs.
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If you a good answer go to websites specialized and qualified, not here.
Here no one cares or know it. For example LittleBibo1 the person above me, all day's play only world of tanks and left4dead2.
I wish you luck to find exactly what you want.
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What the fuck is that supposed to mean? What is your problem?
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So about a month ago I managed to get most of the parts for my new PC and put it together (some of the parts came late - like the damn case). I didn't quite get everything I wanted because the wife suddenly found a few more things that were needed and the guy I ordered my video card from cancelled my order because the one he had in stock was apparently sold to someone else. I still have my Sapphire Dual X R9 380 and it plays everything well enough so I didn't bother looking again until now.
My current specs are:
CPU : Intel i5 6600K 3.5GHz
Motherboard : ASRock Fatal1ty H170/D3
RAM : 16GB 1600 DDR3 (2x8)
Cooler : Coolermaster Nepton 140XL (this has a huge radiator btw - if you are going to watercool stick to the 120's or 240 that can be top or rear case mounted - I had to install this in the front - but damn it works - full load never goes past 55 Degrees Celcius)
GPU : Sapphire Dual X R9 380
PSU : Cougar 1200W Bronze Modular
The motherboard supports up to 64GB RAM, but I can't seem to find 4x16GB 1600 chips anywhere (It only has 4 banks).
I was tempted to get an M.2 250GB SSD for the boot drive (currently using a 2TB Seagate Hybrid that boots into windows 10 in about 45 seconds), but then I was offered a 250GB SSD (2.5inch) for $40.
I also want a second R9 380 for XFire, to improve some gameplay - but until more games come out with DX12 it's essentially not going to improve too much. Once 12 is more active then it will apparently make a huge difference with the added GPU processing that is supposed to be introduced (or so I'm led to believe by some websites).
My quandary is this:
I can afford the GPU - but is it much use yet? If I do, I can't buy anything else until I save up again.
Instead should I buy another 16GB ram (giving me a total of 32GB), And the M.2 or the SSD (I still can't decide between them).
OR should I keep trying to locate 4x16GB DDR3L chips to max out my RAM?
Whichever I choose I won't be able to afford parts again until September - So what is going to be the best upgrade from the options?
It should be noted that the only really graphically intense games I play are Dragon Age: Inquisition and ARK: Survival Evolved - DAI supports Xfire currently but ARK does not - however once the DX12 Patch comes out it is supposed to support both Xfire and SLI, and future DX12 games are supposed to be able to use MultiGPU rendering/Processing independent of Xfire and SLI.
Edit
OK guys thanks for the debate. I've decided to get the RAM and the SSD. Come September, if AMD's launch dates are accurate I'll be looking into the R9 490X for an early Christmas present for myself. Votes had the potato in the lead but then I realised I've used all my USB ports so it'd be wasted.
Cheers.
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