I went with a forged crank and my engine guy had it precision ground and re heat treated. This was a gen I sbc 406 10.2:1 CR Comp 264 roller cam, edelbrock aluminum heads, but hyper pistons..........it doesn't have any power adders and is in my 79 C20. Other builds similar to this came out a something like 420hp and 525 tq and the builder said to save the money on the pistons by reusing what was in it and prevent the fit/noise that can happen with forged.
He said at 500-600 Hp, or power adders, that forged pistons would be a must.
The previous build was from another engine guy with a scatt 9000 cast crank and he used stock bearings which didn't match the crank shape and the thrust bearings wore. I had starter issues and eventually it killed the pump in the trans and that is when we saw the crank play and pulled the engine and had it done again.
With the amount of money into parts and porting, and the towing use, better parts were used for more reliability. The roller cam was for reliability but also for better ramp rates and it does perform better at part throttle than the bigger flat tappet cam in the first build of my 406.
Yes, built engines are damn expensive, but they are far more expensive when you end up rebuilding them a couple years later from faulty parts or human error.