Will try to answer your questions, but first a brief story of why.

I do IT for a private school, and we change out all of our computer hardware (laptops, tablets, desktops) every 3 years. Well the next change will be coming summer 2014. When we do this, we usually have no choice but to use the current OS at the time, which will me Win 8 (we are windows shop). So, generally we get a budget to build a PC so that we can start researching the new OS, new software i.e. Adobe CS 6.0 vs 5.5, Office versions and a whole host of other crap. Unfortunately, my team all has to agree on the hardware that we order for the most part, we are allowed Cases and Video cards of our choice. So hopefully this explains why some of it is not "ideal" and perhaps overkill.

Motherboard was the better of the two choices we had, while none of us are serious OCer's, Gigabyte does have an app called Easy Tune which quickly OC's your system to mild, medium or insane. I just did the mild one, and went from a 3.5Ghz CPU speed to 4.1. No, i didn't look at how it stepped up the RAM, OCing is just not my thing, but I figure as easy as the Easy Tune is, why not. The Thunderbolt is a nice feature, and I will give it a go down the road, but for right now it's just chilling there.

I didn't buy an extra internal drive because we all have the 1 TB Western Digital Black, and I have a 3 TB External USB 3.0 drive, so the 512GB SSD was plenty for me. Plus, other then my movies, I just don't have that much stuff.

As for the amount of RAM, it was more of a "Just because we can" thing. Our last system that we built had 6 Gigs, and I barely used that, 32 is just ridiculous, but again, why not?

Windows 8 is because we have to do research to figure out how we are going to deploy it to our users in a way that will work for them, and meet our guidelines.

Power supply was an experiment, yes there were others, but along with our CPU cooling solution, we thought we would try this just to see.

My case is a Antec Dark Fleet-85 it's huge, but air flow is great, and I have never had any heat issues with it.

CPU cooling solution is the Antec Kuhler H20 620. We wanted to go with a different solution, but they were out, so this was a last minute decision and we thought we would try out the closed liquid cooling system. If it works, great, if not, we will find something else.

Are you a nVidia guy?

Just asking because I am and if I were going to build a computer with the cards that are on the market right now it would definitely be an AMD card.

I'm running a AMD 6970.. Just curious, why would you DEFINITELY go with AMD?

I won't be staying with AMD.

edit: And the OP is correct with the OCing taking place on the motherboard - that board is crazy easy to OC. Also, isn't this thread supposed to be about games that will push this system? I'm the only one that has listed games...

Because as it stands right now you get more bang for your buck from AMD.

You can get a 7950 for the same price as the 660ti. From the factory those 2 cards are neck and neck... and then you start OCing and the 660ti just can't keep pace.

IMO, the 660ti needs to drop about $20-30.

AMD drivers are atrocious - there were at least 4 or 5 games last year that were unplayable for me on launch date because of their shit. Catalyst is an absolutely ****ing disaster. Their OpenGL support is garbage.. I don't guess you have a crossfile setup - waiting for crossfire profiles is always fun.
Aside from a $$ standpoint - Nvidia wins.

With that said, I've grown to like my 6970 but I'd only recommend AMD GPUs to people who are on a tight budget.

Nvidia also rapes the shit out of AMD for video/graphics editing if you're using ANY adobe products.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home_new.html

I can get a 660ti for about $240.

That is odd that you say that, because I have had no issues running my 6970 the last two years. Not only have I had no issues, but there hasn't been a game yet that I couldn't max out on that card, at least one that I haven't tried. I also like the AMD cards for the Eyefinity, which is awesome with my 3 monitors. That is why I stayed AMD and went with the 7970. If you notice though, that is GHZ version of the XFX card, top of the line.

I like nVidia, always have, so definitely not slamming their cards.

And I don't know what Metro 2003 is, I will have to look that up, but I will for sure give Witcher 2 a go, the first game was a lot of fun.

You didn't notice that AMD had to push updates to Catalyst out every week for quite some time last year?
Metro 2033 is fantastic. I know I talked a few people on here into buying it when it was on the Indie Humble Bundle.

Yeah, didn't nVidia partner with Adobe?

Not really. But I also don't go crazy over installing every driver update released. As long as everything is running smoothly, I wait a few updates then do it.

Something I don't like, is when installing Win 8, it put the windows drivers for the vcard in, I have never had any sort of success with Windows drivers.

Currently I have a 6850 and Skyrim was completely unplayable for weeks because of a ****ed up update. That's when I decided to switch to Nvidia.

Haven't used an ATI/AMD GPU for years.

Ironically, I haven't used anything BUT AMD CPUs for a similar amount of time.

I owe you a game. Have you played Legend of Grimrock? I may pick it up for you if you haven't -- whether you want to play it or not -- awesome oldschool RPG.

Huh. I played skyrim maxed out with no issues what so ever. Infact Im thinking of reloading it on the new system just to check it out.