Biscuit Boy

I'll adjust the extra storage if you want to include a 1tb ssd so fast and big storage, or you could go with the 4 tb of storage for that bigger profile you talked about. Really up to you at this point for storage

Let me find a build list i put together that should be good for this, then I'll edit based on what you need to have prioritized
 
 

Right now for what I can find, a 7700k is around 380$, so I'm not sure how out of budget you would want to go, but if you would like to put money toward the 7700k and downgrade your budget for your gpu, that would work. Also, with the cpu, while I'm not an expert by any means, its not a bad cpu. If it can still run games well with what you plan to play, and you don't need a big boost in productivity workloads, then it should still be fine. If you are mainly focused on gaming, I would say keep the cpu, and upgrade to a 2060 or a 1660 super, and leave the cpu. If you want to upgrade the cpu and gpu together so you don't have to deal with two separate upgrade time frames, then I would upgrade the cpu to the 7700k, and assuming for pricing right now you buy it for 380$, that still leaves you with around 220 to work with on a gpu. This can be improved by selling your older 970 card, which goes for around 100$ or more used right now on ebay. This means, if you don't mind waiting for a bit for your new card, your budget can be a little higher than previous, at around 320$ for a gpu. If this is the case, then go with the previous reccomendation of a 2060 or 1660 super. If you can find better deals when this happens, then go for those.  This next part assumes you don't sell the 970 card, and just buy for around 220$ for a new card. GTX 1660 cards that are non ti or super are around 200$ right now, some a bit higher around 215$-250$. These are all still good options, especially since the 1660 super only gives a slight bump over the non super 1660 cards. I would aim for around that price point, though there are some good rx590 deals for around the same price, and deliver about the same performance. This link is the improvement from a 970 to an rx 590: https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-970-vs-AMD-RX-590/2577vs4033
 
and this link shows improvement from 970 to 1660: https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-970-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1660/2577vs4038
 
Again, both of these options assume you don't sell the old card (gtx 970) for a larger budget, allowing you to hit rx 5600xt and 2060 territory, maybe even a good deal on a 2070 if you can find it.

I would call Micro center as soon as you can, just for the professional opinions of those that actually sold you the product, and if they hear or find something wrong with the card, then you can ask for a refund or new card, meaning you don't have to waste time looking through posts and videos about troubleshooting that may or may not apply to you.