I had planned to update my five year old 3930K system at the beginning of this year, but circumstances worked against me. I became read to go ahead in the same week that the X299 chipset, and i9X processors were announced at Computex, and have been hovering up all the information I can find, but I am definitely having some issues.

 There are a few reviews of the 7900X about already, like this one from Tom's Hardware, and they are not entirely sold on it.  My use will be primarily with Photoshop, which is not particularly hard on system resources, but also as a NLE using Premiere Pro and After Effects, plus little apps like Handbrake that can swamp your system. I'll never use more than the one GPU, but will be heavy on storage (I currently have about 30Tb over 15 drives), so I am looking at i9-7900X and beyond for the lanes (I want to keep open a multi NMVe raid0 option).  So with the proviso that we have limited information on the i9 processors beyond 7900X, I am thinking that for another NZ$300 I might as well go to the 7920X.

The Motherboard choice is still up in the air.  I don't need the coloured lights, but I'd like to max out USB3 direct to board or header connectors for my external drives.  If anyone has any thoughts on X299 motherboards, I'd like to hear them.

I am using a Coolermaster Storm Trooper right now, but the Rosewill Nighthawk 117 case looks interesting.  Toms Hardware likes it, and it has a good front panel with six USB sockets and an LED that does I know not what.  Unfortunately I have not managed to find a NZ supplier of Rosewill cases though.

The obvious alternative to the above build is AMD Ryzen, or wait for the Threadripper, and the only reason I am not pushing in that direction is a total lack of experience with AMD builds, and it is heard enough getting up to speed with i9 and X299.  Note I won't be building this myself.  My sight is not flash nowadays, so I'll get PC Media heare in Blenheim put it together for me.  They built the 3930K box.

So any thoughts insights etc.?

Any info on Rosehill stockists in NZ?

TIA