Zalman isn't really known for making good cases. You might want to consider a Corsair, Phanteks, Antec, or Silverstone. If you want something flashy I don't think you can beat Corsair's 760T. It's a bit pricey though. You can add lights to any case through LED fans and LED light strips. It's not expensive to do.
I'm not familiar with the "EVGA 220 CPU cooler". You sure you're not thinking of the Swiftech H220X? I'd suggest going with a big air cooler or a 240mm ALC liquid cooler. I like the H220X but it is quite bulky and tough to fit in some cases. I'd look at an NZXT Kraken personally. Either that or a Noctua NHD14. Both are quite easy to install. The NHD14 has the advantages that it'll never leak (though ALC leaks are rare) and it has no pump to jam or fail. Also less noise due to no pump.
GTX 970 is a good choice. You should be aware that it has just recently been discovered that the GPU on that card can't address the final 512MB of VRAM on the card at full speed, or anywhere near it, due to some "interesting" design choices by NVidia. This results in a minor performance loss when exceeding 3.5GB of VRAM usage in games/applications. Don't let that discourage you from buying the card. It still performs well. You should just know what you're getting.
The 4790K is a good choice of CPU. Yes we would all recommend you overclock it. This forum is overclockers.com after all. It's not to what extent you overclock, but rather, to what voltage. On your average 240mm liquid cooler or large air heatsink the 4790K starts to get toasty around 1.25-1.3V so you don't really want to be going over that. It basically comes down to "Whatever you can squeeze out of the CPU @ less than 1.3V". Usually 1.25V is enough to get a decent overclock out of them. Your mileage will vary, as all CPUs perform differently above their manufacturer specifications. You should be aware that if you do not want to overclock, you can save money both on the CPU and the CPU cooler (you won't need one. Just use the one in the Intel box.) You can get a Xeon equivalent to a 4770K for about $240. 4 cores, hyper threading, 8MB L3 cache, but no overclocking.
The 1600Mhz RAM is sort of "meh"... It's 2015. I think everybody should be going for at least 2133 if not 2400. Team Xtreem 2400Mhz Cas 10 RAM is cheap if you shop around. Below that look for a 2133 cas 9 kit. Cas 11 @ 2133 is what you're going to see the most of and that, too, is rather "meh". Will the RAM make a huge difference in gaming? No. You might gain maybe 1 frame per second, but since the price differences from 1600 to 2400 are like $10 these days, why not? Know what I mean?
Power supply wise, if you only ever plan to have the single 970, you can get away with a pretty skimpy power supply. You don't actually need 550W but I'd suggest you the Seasonic G-550
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...cm_re=Seasonic_SSR_550-_-17-151-119-_-Product
You can get it cheaper than that. Go to pcpartpicker.com and shop around. But that's the one I would suggest to you for a single GPU system. Very good quality.
The motherboard choice depends entirely on whether you will be overclocking or not, and what features you want.
Overclocking, great sound, great connectivity:
ASRock Z97 Extreme 6
Overclocking, good sound, good connectivity, few $ cheaper:
ASUS Z97-A
Overclocking, decent sound, decent connectivity, even cheaper
ASRock Z97 Extreme 3
Mild overclocking, acceptable sound, acceptable connectivity, cheaper still
ASRock Z97 Anniversary
No overclocking, acceptable sound, acceptable connectivity, very cheap
ASRock B85 Anniversary
Without going into too much detail, at the top we have a board that sells from $160-180 US, depending on where and when you buy it, and has everything including the kitchen sink. SLI/Crossfire support, the best integrated audio codec available, a seperated PCB section with seperated L/R channels on different layers for the audio, quality electrolytic audio capacitors. It has 12 phase CPU power, dual M.2 SSD slots, one of which is Ultra M.2, SATA Express, dual, very high quality network adapters, dual removable BIOS chips, 12K solid state capacitors. It's fantastic.
At the bottom we have a board that sells for $50-60, has no SLI/Crossfire support, has mediocre integrated audio and a mediocre network adapter, limited SATA connectivity, no M.2, 4 phase CPU power cheaper capacitors. But hey, it's $50. And it works.
Why did I pick out so many ASRock boards? They deliver good value per dollar spent. That doesn't mean they are the best motherboards. There are better boards. The ASUS Maximus VII extreme or the Gigabyte Z97XWifi BK gaming G1 are way better than the ASRock Extreme 6, but they are firmly in the "diminishing returns" bracket. They are better than the Extreme 6 in the same way that a Geforce Titan Z is better than a GTX 970. Twice the power, but very inferior price to performance ratio.
You should also be aware that, if you choose the correct motherboard (not listed here), cpu cooler, and GPU, you can fit these parts into a VERY small case, if that interests you. Cases like the EVGA Hadron and Corsair 250D are very attractive and very portable.
There are even "designer" cases like this Lian Li train PC (but you can't fit a long video card in it)
I would like to have a look at a couple of choices of possible. Thank you very much!
