I've been using my EVGA P55 SLI, i5-750, and EVGA GTX 570 for awhile now and it has been a good workhorse for my needs. I can play all the games I want to play at reasonable frame-rates, but it's not perfect and could be better.
 
Because I don't have an endless supply of money I haven't been paying much attention to all the options that have become available since my last build...if it's not broke why fix it? If I was flush with cash I'd love to build a new rig every year just because I enjoy the process.
 
I'm sure I'll be doing a lot more research before I jump, but I would just like to hear what others have learned in the last couple of years.
 
I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I'll probably never try SLI (just want to keep things simple), but I like the option of adding a PhysX card if needed. I need at least 4 PCIE slots because I use a sound card and TV Tuner card. I just got a notice from EVGA about a new lineup of X99 chipset boards and it looks like they can only be used with i7 chips. I'm sure i7 chips have an advantage over i5 chips in some applications, but what about gaming? I'm always looking to cut corners to save money and get the most bang for my buck.
 
I've also pretty much come to the conclusion that 22nm (or whatever) is still a ways off and 28nm seems to be the gold standard at present. With rumors of Nvidia coming out with a new lineup shortly (900 Series?) I'm looking forward to seeing how they perform...and if the price is right I might jump.
 
I plan to reuse most of my parts, but I would probably upgrade my memory and add a SSD into the mix.
 
So I'm looking at a new MB, CPU, and GPU and would like to have a simple but well balance combination of those three elements.
 
Any and all thoughts welcomed.
 
Thanks _D

boredgunner
If you go X99, you're going to need DDR4 RAM too, which is expensive (about $300 for 4 x 4GB DDR4 2666).  If you can't afford to go that route, you can go with Z97 and an i5 4690k.  I recommend going with Gigabyte or ASRock for motherboards, especially since some of them (Gigabyte in particular) have better onboard sound than what your sound card offers.  Look for one with onboard Creative Sound Core3D, which is a much better DSP than Recon3D.  This motherboard looks unbelievable for the price: 
 
http://www.newegg.com/Pro...x?Item=N82E16813128706
 
If you can afford to go X99, my brand recommendation doesn't change and you should check out the i7 5820k.  My X99 choice would be this.
 
http://www.newegg.com/Pro...x?Item=N82E16813128747
 
The upcoming NVIDIA cards are the 800 series, which are worth keeping an eye on even if they won't be flagship.

 
Thanks Bored for those recommendations. I now have a base to start my research and it does look like the X99 is a little out of my league. That's a great price on the Z97 board...thanks. I'm glad you pointed out the sound components on that board are better than the sound card I'm currently using...like I say keep things simple...it just keeps getting better.
 
A friend of mine sent this link that says the next generation of cards will be the 900 series, but it won't be long before we know for sure. I always look forward to seeing how new cards do.
 
It will probably be a couple of months before I upgrade. I always like to wait till after the new cards come out just to read about what might work best for me...budget and all.

In a few months, DDR4 will be more affordable and have more options. For a little over 100 dollars you can get 8GB of DDR4 2133MHz to hold you over until it gets cheaper.
 
OR, you could take advantage of everyone else that is jumping over to the new platform and snag a cheap used CPU/Motherboard off eBay or the EVGA Marketplace. You could find a nice i5 2500K or i5 3570K for pretty cheap and a motherboard for under $100... Then upgrade to some faster RAM.

Check your local frys and microcenter. Microcenter is selling i7 5820k for $299 and frys for $344. Of course store pick up only

007vsMaguaI just got a notice from EVGA about a new lineup of X99 chipset boards and it looks like they can only be used with i7 chips.

Yeah, that's the newly-released "enthusiast" line (equivalent to X58 when you built your current PC).  It looks really nice (who doesn't like the idea of 6+ cores, 15MB+ cache and lots of PCI-E lanes?!), but as the others have said, it's likely overkill for you (and Intel recommend water-cooling it) - the Z97 chipset is the closest analogue to what you currently have.
 
As BoredGunner has pointed out, there are some very nice Z97 boards floating around at the moment.  Some board manufacturers (Gigabyte at least) are integrating the Creative Labs Sound Core chip onto the board instead of a Realtek one, which I think is related to the chip on the Sound Blaster Z..? 

007vsMaguaI'm sure i7 chips have an advantage over i5 chips in some applications, but what about gaming?

From what I've heard, most games only use 1 or 2 threads, so you likely won't see much benefit from an i7, although given the architecture of the X-Box One and Playstation 4 (both use 8-core AMD Jaguar processors, IIRC), that may start to change.  Really, if you're looking at a CPU, I think the 2 most sensible options are the i5-4690K (quad-core 3.4GHz with 3.9GHz boost - $240), and the i7-4790K* (quad-core 4.0GHz with 4.4GHz boost - $340).  A co-worker has the i5-4670K (the Haswell non-refresh predecessor of the 4690K), and is very happy with it.
 
* The i7-4790 is $30 cheaper than the i7-4790K with a 3.6GHz base clock, but if you're spending that amount of money, I'd go with the K-version...
 

007vsMaguaWith rumors of Nvidia coming out with a new lineup shortly (900 Series?)

From what I've read, it's going to be the GTX980 and GTX970 that are released early-mid September, with the GTX960 coming at some point before the end of the year.  If the GTX750 Ti was anything to go by for the Maxwell architecture, they should have better compute performance, and use noticeably less power to get the same level of performance as the Kepler architecture.
 

007vsMaguaadd a SSD into the mix.

There's some very good prices on the Samsung 840 EVO 120/250GB ($100 and $140, respectively).  The SanDisk X300s series is marginally more, and looks tempting due in no small part to the 5 year warranty (it's in essence a business-oriented re-brand of the Extreme II).


Dunno if that's any help..?