Well, I need to finish paying my car off (this summer!!!!) before I can 'safely' drop $300+/- a month on parts for six months. So far looking at...

- Intel i7-470K 4.0GHz processor
- Asus Maximus VI Hero motherboard
- 2x G.Skill Sniper Gaming Series  16GB (2x8GB)
- Samsung 840 EVO 120GB SSD
- Barracuda 2TB HD
- GeForce GTX 970 4GB STRIX video card

...but now that I'm looking at it, it'll probably qualify as just a mid-range PC. I imagine I should go for a better video card & CPU.

It's not midrange, though it's not high end either. It's the performance segment. Highend would be either 980 SLI or whatever becomes of big maxwell.

If you have the money upgrade to a 980 or depending when it's released maybe a 390X. Also depending on your PC gaming habits I would strongly recommend getting a bigger SSD. You should have your games running on the SSD and since it is usually also housing your OS you will run out of space very quickly. I currently use a 256GB SSD of which 128GB are reserved for games and I have to uninstall constantly.

Your CPU is not going to bottleneck gaming platforms for years. I mean, if you want some more performance from it just overclock it (I assume that is why you would buy a k series i7.) The only game that seems to even benefit from 8 threads is Dragon Age Inquisition and that is because it is so disgustingly unoptimized that it maxes four-threaded/core CPU's for no reason. Not only that, but your cores are clocked at 4.0ghz (4.4 ghz with turbo boost) and even more if you overclock it. That is fantastic IPC performance. I personally would only get an i7 if I'm doing a lot of video-processing (or similar CPU intensive activities.) Otherwise, i5's are plenty fine for gaming, and it probably won't be until the end of this generation that games will benefit greatly from more than four threads.  You'd save a lot of money ($100) by just getting an i5-4690k and likely won't see any performance difference (5 fps at most in games that benefit from hyperthreading.) 

The same holds true for the GPU. 

There is no way this computer would be construed as mid-ranged. Mid-ranged would be an i3/AMD CPU + GTX 750 Ti (or r9 270.) This computer will be a high-ranged PC for at least three-four years I'm thinking. 

Honestly, you can build a pretty monster rig for 1K assuming you aren't counting things like the monitor.

Ahhh, you beat me to the punch.  Deminishing returns is a great term in the case of a PC build.

While it is all true what you said, a 970 will already be mid-range in maximum 2 years. By then it should be in the range of a x50ti. Don't forget we have a big shrink incoming. And games will not get more PC friendly over the next years.

In 4 years 4k will be prevalent and a 970 on 4k with a modern game engine would probably break^^

lol

Browsing this site on a tablet is an abomination. It is not mobile friendly at all. For info, I have an iPad Air 2. You also cannot see the VGChartz Buddy on the side and you cannot go straight to a reply to your post or the last posts.

Nopes, the on-screen keyboard isn't good enough for more than a couple of short sentences. Anymore than that and it's a hasssle.

A tablet also doesn't support all file formats and you cannot actually save, for example, all mail attachments to the tablet. Overall, unless you're not an adult and only use the web for lightweight browsing, you need a laptop over a tablet. Heck, I can't even listen to youtube while browsing the net on the iPad.

I can see going for a better video card, but the bigger SSD is a hard pill to swallow. 1TB costs $400 at best, taking the build over $2k.  Well, I've got half a year before I start actually shopping this out for real, so things might change a bit by then.

Lol, You don't have to go full 1TB. 256GB is good if you minimize the capacity for the OS, 512GB is perfect. It's just that you really don't want your games to run from an HDD anymore. If I had to make a choice between between either and upgrade from 970 to 980 and 128GB SSD and 512GB I would most certainly pick the latter. A GPU can always be upgraded, adding space to existing storage is never as easy. If money is a concern I would keep away from the top performance cards anyway. As already mentioned a 970 is plenty powerful already.
If AMD hurries up a bit we might even already have a 390 in 6 months, which should cost around the same as a 970 but is more powerful.