Some time back I had issues with my PC re-booting at random, link to the thread is here
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1498660-random-restarts/

Shortly after that thread was posted, once again, the PC started behaving "normally" for quite some time. You know the drill: "If you don't behave, I'm going to fire you and replace you with something newer and better." Well, it worked for a while. About two months ago the same thing started happening, including a BSOD right after the Windows splash screen. Trying to get it to restart into safe mode failed. Finally restarted and it was back to normal again. No idea why. At the suggesion of a geek friend, I ran Memtest86 for a day and a half - nothing - everything's working fine. We figured that there's either a bad memory controller on the MB, the CPU is dying, bad RAM (not sure). I'm still thinking there's a screw loose in there somewhere.

I finally gave up on it. I decided to re-build and this time really go whole-hog.

CoolerMaster HFX full tower (fan in front, back, rear top and side)
Crucial 1 TB SATA SSD hard drive
Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR3 16 gigs RAM (2600 Mhz - wanted 2800 Mhz but it was out of stock)
Asus Z87 pro motherboard
Intel i5-4690k CPU
Gigabyte GeForce GTX970 - 4GB GDDR5
Corsair HX750i 750W modular PS
DVD writer 24x
Toshiba external 1 TB HD for backup.

And yes, it will run Skyrim.

http://eldorf.tripod.com/newpc/

Finally finished installing everything, tested it out. This thing sips electricity like a mizer. In economy mode the only case fan running is the one on the side (powered directly by the PSU), the rest of them are controlled by the MB so it really drops power usage when in idle. Very impressed with this build.

Congrats to your new build. !!!

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DDR3-2133 is really the sweet spot on Haswell processors. Higher memory speeds have a practical meaning if you run benchmarks, but not in real life gaming.

The performance gain will be negligible.

It would be smarter, if you would invest on a nice after market cooler, if you want to overclock that baby. And even not, the Intel cooler is nothing to right about, if it comes to temperatures.

Actually, compared to any other after market cooler, it's the worse you can get. (On high loads, It will do the job just fine, if your air circulation system works as intended, inside your case. But nothing more.)

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Just take a look here:

We used two different CPU coolers - the stock cooler that came bundled with the Core i7 4790 and the budget-friendly Cooler Master Hyper TX3 which only costs about $20.

To make this as real-world as possible, we installed our test hardware (Asus Sabertooth Z97 Mark II, Intel Core i7 4790, 4x Kingston HyperX LoVo DDR3-1600 4GB, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980)

into a Fractal Design Define R4 chassis with the stock fans running at 5V.

http://images.pugetsystems.com/images/pic_disp.php?id=34614&width=631

As you can see from the graph above, even a very affordable CPU cooler like the CM Hyper TX3 is able to dramatically lower the CPU temperature under load.

While the stock cooler is easily hitting 100 °C during the benchmark run, the CM Hyper TX3 only ever hits a maximum temperature of 80 °C.

In terms of how much the CPU was overheating, the stock cooler allowed the CPU to run at > 99 °C about 20% of the time.

According to our graphs, we should expect a measurable, albeit small, drop in performance with the stock cooler.

We found that using the stock cooler made the CPU perform about 2.5% slower than it did with the CM Hyper TX3.

My PC sometimes Blue screens on boot after it has been sitting overnight. A simple reboot and everything is fine. There are a number of things it could be such as temp stress, my overclocks, etc.

It happens from time to time but I never worry much about it. These types of problems are an absolute pain to Troubleshoot simply because you can't reproduce the issue easily.

A TERRABYTE SSD???? Holy smokes, that couldn't have been cheap.

I would say it's passable, for an 1TG SSD.

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-BX100-Internal-Solid-State/dp/B00RQA6LIM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425486767&sr=8-1&keywords=Crucial+BX100+CT1000BX100SSD1

Wow. Price isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Those have REALLY come down in price.

So far I've had a few 15 minute tests with Skyrim and Train Simulator 2015 - the case seems to handle the temps just fine (I don't overclock; I'm not that daring ). The whole assembly keeps the CPU around 35-40 C with the case fans coming on and off as needed. I thought about an aftermarket cooler so if it becomes necessary, I'll give that a shot.

Train Sim seemed to be the one doing the most work with the video card generating tons of heat that just built up in the case to the point where the case couldn't vent it fast enough. This case seems to be the answer to a number of heat-related issues. I know a lot of people like Cooler Master which is why I went with this one.

The thinking between my friend and I seemed to point to too much heat over a long period of time might have been the cause of all my issues. The last two builds were done in a Zalman case which wasn't venting heat fast enough. Too much heat causing expansion, cooling causing contraction, lather, rinse, repeat. All that expansion and contraction might have caused metal fatigue on a number of the MB components, showing up about two years later as failures here and there, but always at random. I don't overclock, but I believe the fact that the Zalman case wasn't venting the heat fast enough may have been a contributing factor in my BSOD headaches.

That was actually the most expensive element in this build: this was from Tiger Direct, $399.99 after the instant rebate. I could have gotten it from Amazon as the follow-up link shows but I wanted one point of purchase on all these items. I've dealt with them in the past and I like the way their customer service handles issues. They actually remembered my name.

I really, really had to think about that size as well. Considering how fast this thing works/boots up, I'll admit it was worth the price. During the installation of Windows 7, the splash screen shows "Loading Win... oh, we're done, here's your log-in screen already." Of course after other stuff was loaded in (MB drivers, video card drivers, etc) it actually finishes the little animation at the start-up but still gets to the log-in screen within just a few seconds. Loading games, etc is really fast. Also, since there are no moving parts, less heat being generated and that was the target ideal.

Yeah, at the shop I work at, we offer SSD's as an upgrade option in some of our machines. Just clone the HDD to an SSD, stuff it in, and fire it off. I was absolutely STUNNED at how quickly the machines got into windows..... I want one.

Just take a lower capacity SSD, it will cost you less, and the advantages will be the same.

You could just use this utility, and narrow down a possible problematic file or files. !!!

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

Seems like a very impressive machine.

Update on the "old" machine:

Had it on the workbench on Thursday, turned it on to start wiping out the hard drives. Loaded Windows 7, go to disk management and start formating the D drive. 20 seconds into the format the PC reboots itself (remember that problem from before??). Normally I start in safe mode when this happens, during the loading process, BOOM! BSOD. In safe mode. Not good. Tried four times and each time BSOD on the splash screen (looks like I decommissioned this thing just in time, huh?).

Got out the Windows installation disk, loaded just fine, cleared the C drive and re-installed Win 7. Loads just fine. Let it sit there for 20 minutes just to see if anything would glitch. Nothing. Solid as a rock.

So, here's what we had. Older copy of Windows 7 was going bad. Reinstalled on the same HD results in stable OS again.

Conclusion: problems with the old HD, probably bad sectors right where critical boot info or drivers were located. That also seemed to clear the problem the last time I had it about 6 years ago with Win XP; a reformat and reinstallation seemed to clear things up for quite some time.

BTW, those were WD drives, 500 and 750 gigs, 7200 RPM. The candle that burns twice as bright...

Anyway I was able clear both drives and took the thing apart. I was very surprised that the video card had hardly any dust on it, considering that it was in a rather dusty environment. Most of the dust bunnies were slammed on the side of the HDD's since they're right near the two front fans.

Thank you very much! i had some time to test it this weekend as far as temps are concerned. No load shows CPU at 35 C and 30 C for the MB. Had the fans at the 3rd of 4 settings (turbo) for Train Simulator 2015 which caused most of the heat generation in the last PC. Temps went up 10 deg (45 and 40 respectively) and you could barely hear the fans running. Cool down after the game was shut down took about two minutes with the fans still at the 3rd setting, so I'm very happy with the heat management of this case.