Could I plop a R9 280 or 290 on this and would it be wise?

That's probably an average. There should be power spikes in that setup that could go well over 500W, and for some brands that's enough to blow up a 500W PSU.

 

I run an i5-3550 + HD7950 with a couple SSDs and an HDD from a 450W Silverstone SFF power supply with no problems at all. I think people waaaay overestimate how much power their PC draws.

TR's test rig only drew ~350W at load with an R9 290X.
http://techreport.com/review/25602/amd-radeon-r9-290-graphics-card-reviewed/8

The factory OCed 290Xes drew slightly less than 400W.
http://techreport.com/review/26092/custom-cooled-radeon-r9-290x-cards-from-asus-and-xfx-reviewed/3

A decent* 500W PSU can easily handle 400W sustained over long periods of time. And a decent 500W PSU can handle transient spikes well above 500W just fine.

*

Spoiler

The key word is decent. A $40 500W Coolmax special will blow the fuck up.
Only $10 more will get you a very solid 500W unit.

 

Running a PSU at ~80% sounds like a recipe for mysterious random BSODs / reboots to me. Maybe lots of fan noise as well. Also need to take into account that the 12V power rating can vary wildly across PSUs.

 

With DX12 coming do you guys think budget gaming rigs will start using more APUs as the processor if its true about the API sees both GPUs as a single unit?

 

Almost all consumer-level processors are becoming APUs so yes, regardless of whatever DX12 brings to the table.

 

PSUs are standard design. The only time you need to worry is if your case doesn't take standard ATX size PSU, if the PSU is larger than ATX and if it will fit, and lastly if you have an enthusiast GPU does it have enough 6+2 connectors?

 

Connectors are on the psu not the motherboard
If you dont have enough you can buy adapters
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Athena-Po...642?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item23422f072a

 

That power supply has all the connectors you will ever need.

 

You should be ok... But you never mentioned what the power supply specs were. I thought you had a 500W too?

 

What are the PSU specs?

 

If it's a Corsair 450W then it should be fine. The 970 doesn't use that much power, so even with that absolute hog of a CPU you won't pull >350W. Wouldn't recommend overclocking that processor though.

 

Whether you want to replace or add a new HDD, size and RPM doesn't matter. But, IIRC, if you want to use HDD bigger than 2TB as boot drive, you need to initialize it using GPT (otherwise the OS can only use 2GB) and your must have UEFI mainboard instead of the standard BIOS. If you want to move your Windows installation to the new drive, then you need a cloning software (like clonezilla or something else). I don't know what kind of problem will arise when moving a Windows installation from MBR to GPT, but from what I read, it is doable.

As for cable, make sure you have the SATA data cable (usually it isn't included when buying a new HDD) and make sure the power supply have an unused sata power plug, otherwise you need to buy a splitter or molex to sata (if you have spare molex plug... the one with the 4 big 4 holes).

 

Nope, the new drive doesn't have to be a boot drive. The new drive probably can boot faster, but if you're okay with your current boot speed, then just plug the new drive and use it for storage.