With regards to Intel CPUs I wouldn't get too hung up on waiting for the next gen unless you are going to use the integrated graphics or want to hit a specific power envelope. That's where all the CPU R&D has been going over the past few years as opposed to IPC performance which only goes up a few percent with each revision.
Skylake brings something like a 15% IPC increase, nothing to sneeze at. Plus there's a good chance that Intel will stall at this microarchitecture for a few years, so the new socket will have a decent upgrade lifespan.
That CM HAF XB Evo is an odd case, aimed at a certain use, which is not mine. Looked at the Refine R5. Looks alright, but there might be better. The Silencio does not appear to be sold anymore.
The Fractal cases are alright, but stale. It's the same basic design going back to basically the beginning, just with some updates here and there. Still very traditional ATX with the hard drives stuck in front of the fans and not a ton of thought in terms of direct GPU cooling. Other companies are doing things smarter these days. As for SSDs, I've been very pleased with my Crucial M550s and MX100s, especially now that they've released a proper SSD software tool. They are among the lowest cost SSDs on the market, yet have very competitive performance, and no dogcrap Sandforce or largely untested FOTM controller like you get from a lot of the smaller players. Built-in power loss protection, and none of the issues I've been reading about with Samsung drives. If I had bought a bunch of 840 EVOs I'd be none to pleased. I always thought TLC was bullshit. I lost interest in Intel when they went to Sandforce for their consumer level drives. Here's what I would suggest looking at in terms of a case. Couple of degrees hotter than an open air test bench for both CPU and GPU. Direct cooling path to the components and full dust filtration, WITH the ability to still mount a bunch of drives. Front mounted HDD trays can be added one at a time, really clever stuff. The doors also swing out and lift off, so it's about as easy to work inside as it's going to get. PWM fan hub on the back, so a single motherboard chassis fan header can control all of the case fans at once. IMO Phanteks is showing everybody else how it's done. It's also worth noting that there's no I/O on the front cover, it's just a cover. The power switch is on top, I/O is under a panel that is part of the case. So if you want to maximize intake airflow, just leave the front cover off. http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cases/2015/06/01/phanteks-enthoo-evolv-atx-review/1
@Chris FThe chip upgrade is somewhat about performance, but is mostly about updating the platform as a whole, and getting in on the 1151 socket at the beginning, with perhaps some upgradability later. This burned me on the 1156 socket, being an early adopter, but the 1151 seems to have legs. Moving to the 100 series chipset gets me several smaller tech upgrades as well as the faster main processor, so it's about the sum of the parts, rather than just getting a fast chip.
Phanteks case looks nice, but no spot for an optical drive.I don't know if you didn't see the list, but yes, I do plan to have several hard drives loaded. I currently use 5 hard disks 1 ssd and an optical drive.
