New machine, would appreciate input

[gheedorah]

I'd like to build my own machine, and learn all the ins-and-outs of a lot of concepts of hardware operations, but I'm a very slow learner, and right now just isn't the right time for me to undertake a task like this. So, that being said, I am buying a machine today, and have gone as cheap as possible on the motherboard (ASUS P8Z77-V LX), and want to know from you resident experts here whether that will in any way negate:

Paying for a mild overclocking of the 3770k
Splurging for the 7970 HIS IceQ X2 GHz Edition

And if so, what is the lowest-cost motherboard to sub in?

I cringe when my lady buys a new Mac every other year (omg you're throwing money away), and I'm assuming that would be the same reaction to the aforementioned paying for the OCing, but like I said, that's where I am right now.

Thanks for any feedback.

Also, if necessary for answering my question, the rest of the build is:

8 GB 1866Mhz RAM
128GB SSD
1TB 7200RPM HDD

Sufficient power supply, lots of fans, etc.

(P.S. would I see any gain going beyond 8 gigs of RAM?)

BTW, this will be for random gaming (I have phases of MMO's for a few months at a time- Rift or Aion or Secret World or whatever), as well as Photoshop/Illustrator/Indesign/Captivate/some light video editing.

 

[ksham]

Probably the wrong adjective. My point was that it's not silent, but no where near loud. Just a faint noise.