CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor
Motherboard: ASRock H97 PERFORMANCE ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Storage: Crucial MX100 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card
Case: Corsair SPEC-03 Red ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: Antec High Current Gamer 520W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit)
Monitor: Acer G246HYL bmjj 60Hz 23.8" Monitor
Keyboard: Cooler CM Storm Devastator Gaming Bundle Wired Gaming Keyboard w/Optical Mouse
Headphones: Kingston HyperX Cloud II 7.1 Channel Headset
Speakers: Logitech Z323 30W 2.1ch Speakers
It will run it quite well. The CPU is mid-range, and the GPU is on the upper end. I would get more RAM though, 16GB should be OK.
The SSD will fill up fast, and that power supply is not great in either output or efficiency. I’d go with a better CPU and PSU, ontop of getting more RAM, as UE will literally eat up every bit of ram you’ve got.
Yeah, definitely go with more RAM. I have 8GB and it still feels sluggish when using UE4. Still very workable, but could be improved!
I’m jealous of your 4GB GTX 970. I just have an R9 280x AMD card, gets the job done but man, the new Nvidia 9XX series is quite good!
RAM won’t affect general performance that much, if you get faster RAM it can improve the speed that things are loaded, but increasing the amount will only affect the limits of what you can do—for instance when building lighting it loads everything into RAM so if you have a large level you could run out of memory.
Indeed, for me it takes on average 1-2 minutes for the Unreal Editor to load, even with just a simple template. Usually it runs very fast after launching though.
What takes a while (and this is true despite your amount of RAM) is building lighting, depending on the size of the level it could take AGES. I once built lighting for a smallish level and it took about 2 minutes to fully calculate it. However, that may have been due to me not utilizing the functionality properly, and I very likely had too many things set to full blast when I should have had it on lower settings.
RAM would at least give you more memory to work with, which in turn would help speed things up a tad, but as you said not that much. Really, it would only help with rendering things, the more RAM you have for rendering the faster it will go (usually). This is why it would be nice to have a render farm! 
More RAM won’t make the rendering faster (though if it doesn’t have to use the page file it might be faster), it just increases your capability.
The thing that will directly affect your performance will be the CPU and GPU. i5 is a good CPU for playing games, though if you’re doing lots of light building and want to make it faster then you could improve that with a with a better CPU.
There is no problem with having 8GB ram, your graphics card is perfectly fine but in my opinion you should of saved up a bit more money for you could buy the i5 4690k and just use the SSD for your most used applications
I use 8gb of ram and it works fine (16gb would certainly see less loading and hitching in editor) Though with 8gb you might need to increase your virtual memory to 10-20 GB when you want to build lighting, otherwise you will run out of memory and crash.
PSU is a little weak, I’d go for 6-800 watt.
I use a 128gb SSD for my OS partition, and trust me I want a bigger one. So many programs, UE4 included, use %appdata% in C: without an option to change it. You end up filling your OS partition even if you install to a disk.
GTX 970 and i5 will be great, I use a clocked i5 2500k and GTX 580, they run it perfectly even being a few years old.
Windows 8.1 Ehhh… I think 7 is better for no BS utility, but it’s personal preference.
Either way, (s)he will be upgrading for free to 10 in the summer. 
I would say, get 16gb RAM instead, the difference in price is much smaller than a lot of other upgrades but gives you a huge improvement. 8gb means you won’t be able to run anything but UE and your browser. Having to turn off other heavy softwares you need (like 3d modeling, texturing and so on) every time you want to switch over to another one is going to get old quick, and waste lots of time. Having to rely on pagefiles sucks and it sucks even more if you only have 120gb SSD space.
Also, don’t get Crucial ssds. I’ve had a bunch of my colleagues having very, very weird issues with them. Two of them turned to **** after a few months, making virtual machines (running Win7 32bit) load in 45 minutes, instead of about 10 seconds it took initially.
I would say always go with Samsung, they are slightly more expensive, but they’re well worth it(also, they do have 5 -10 years warranty now). I have 5 Samsung SSDs that range from 830, 840 and 850 and they have all worked perfectly for years(and they usually outperform the others in benchmarks). Go with the EVO versions, the PROs are not worth the extra pricetag.
Also, 120gb will fill up very fast, Win 8 64 bit takes up around 20gb (win 7 is around 30) and after that you’ll get drowned in appdata and other **** which will deplete 120 very fast.
Also a lot of softwares (such as Zbrush) refuse to use any other disk than C: for their temp files (which are huge), which sucks when you’re on limited space.
It’s worth it to pay for 250gb now, rather than having to get another ssd later to switch (which I just did in on of my machines).
I thought I would test…
My System is lower spec on the CPU/GPU
i5 4570
16GB of pretty slow DDR3
GTX 560ti
840ProSSD
Changing around a few things on a demo level inc lighting, and doing a production build, of about 8min.
All the way through the build the RAM was less than 6GB - it was the CPU that took the beating, going up to around 80%.
Going by that If it was a choice between more than 8GB of RAM and a better CPU, the smart choice would be a better CPU.
&stc=1
There are lots of reasons to get 16GB, but if funds are limited, and your only building small uncomplicated levels, you may be better with a CPU upgrade first
If you have an i7 or better, and you run other programs in tandem,
Or you maps are large with lots of detail, then more is better. It’s down to individual circumstances.
I don’t agree that Jeeks needs to get more RAM for his listed system though, if he’s just tinkering around, but more serious use of the engine will MAX out the RAM really quick.
For another Example -
Rebuilding the Lighting for the Landscape Mountains Demo, and I was 14.9GB in use constantly
Although I would agree that Samsung make great (but pricier) SSDs, I use the Corsair MX 100 512GB, and it is a lovely piece of kit. I’ve not heard of any problems with Corsair stuff from anyone I know, or read about it on the net. (Not a jibe at Sitrec, just a contrasting opinion).
I’ve heard great stuff about Corsair’s SSDs as well but never used them myself. I do however always use Corsair for cases, close-loop watercooling and PSUs. It’s a great brand.
My apologies, after doing a quick Google searched I discovered why I was misinformed - I didn’t read far enough down the page.
Although for certain apps (like Blender, for example), the more RAM the better since it can eat memory up quick. Even with 8GB Blender still can crawl for me, with CPU usage at an acceptable level. Though I could certainly upgrade my CPU as well. I plan on doing an upgrade next year when things are worth the upgrade.
I have a 2 Kingston Hyper-X SSD’s (240gb + 120gb) and a Samsung EVO 500gb SSD, all of them work really well no issues whatsoever. There was an article recently that tested the lifespan of the drives, with the Kingston 240gb lasting the longest of them all (Samsung was the first to go, but still lasted a really long time in the endurance tests).
It’s an interesting read if your looking into lifespan for an SSD, here’s the link:
Really? I’ve heard that Kingston are one of the “not great” brands, but I suppose they could have turned that around (they’d have to if they wanted to stay in the business!). Samsung was always recommended to me over Kingston, but they were just too expensive. I still only have a standard HDD, perhaps I’ll look into upgrading to an SSD soon and check Kingston out again!
I have
Windows 7
CPU - amd phenom black edition X3 2.8 GHz
Memory - DDR2 (6 GB)
Video card - Radeon R9 270 2GB
And I am runnig every demo at 70 - 115 Fps
Holy Moley, a HyperX II 7.1 is something that exists? Yay! (Not sure about pairing it with 2.1 speakers, though, if the OP is genuine).
Yup, and just like the first one, it has gotten great reviews. The surround isn’t all that good but it’s still the best headset for that price. I was set on buying one last week but got an Astro A40 for cheaper (70% off) so I went with that one instead.