Alright. I dont mind the extra $200. So you are postive the second will be a beast?
The second build murders the first build for not a lot more money, yes. It will obliterate anything you throw at it at 1080P and will do very respectably at 1440P as well.
If you want a lighted case, the best thing to do is to pick up a light, as was already mentioned. You can get cases that already include LED fans, like the 760T. Or you can get whatever case you want and pick up LED fans for it. They don't really light up the inside of your case very well though. For that you want to pick up a light strip.
Honestly, at your budget range, I wouldn't throw any money at anything superfluous like replacing all the fans in the case with LED fans or picking up a light strip, given that you can take that $50 and throw it at a higher capacity SSD or something else that will affect the actual operation of the PC and improve your user experience. A light in your case is cool to show off to your friends, but the coolness factor only lasts an hour. A larger SSD or HDD or a better quality power supply is a benefit that will last you years. There are other practical improvements you can look at too like card readers, fan controllers, etc.
PS- I made a mistake in the second build. I picked a case that didn't have a price for it, so the cost will actually be an extra $50 over what I quoted you. I suggest you pick up a Corsair 200R as that is the best sub $50 case there is in my opinion. You can negate this extra cost by cutting the SSD down to 128GB. 128GB is more than enough for Windows and your most important programs. Game installs can happily exist on your HDD, and if you use Steam (which you should) for your game purchases you can easily make the install directory on the HDD.
http://pcpartpicker.com/user/mistersprinkles/saved/BmCCmG
Here is the build re-configured with the case. I got it down to the same price by switching the power supply and SSD up.
The Corsair CX power supply is half decent, but the one I had chosen for you previously was better quality if you don't mind spending the extra $20.
Also, for comparison, here is a similar build with 2 benefits:
http://pcpartpicker.com/user/mistersprinkles/saved/cfdMnQ
1) it has a better motherboard and CPU allowing overclocking. You can put an extra 1Ghz on the CPU no problem. It's stupidly easy to do.
2) it has a higher capacity power supply allowing you to add a second GTX 970 down the road for even more insane performance and the ability to play games at 4K (4X1080P) resolution.
Personally, I would build the overclockable system, because I am an overclocker. If you're not sure that's something you want, save the $100.
If you choose the build without the Z97 motherboard, you are limited to 1 GPU, as the second slot on H97 boards is a 4X slot, not an 8X slot, and will bottleneck a second GPU significantly.
DO you know of any that aren't too outrageous and will still work? I can always wire it up, but I'd rather not have to do that
