New computer build complete, I want to keep going BS thread.

*Edit* New computer complete *Edit*

I'm looking at building a new machine. My brother, who is broke and in college, needs a new tower for school so I'm looking at modernizing with a video card upgrade. Here's the specs of my current computer.

i7 3770K (3.5 GHZ) with decent air cooler
8GB Ripjaws at 1600 mhz
ASRock Extreme3 Z77 MB
nVidia Geforce GTX 680 card (EVGA I think)
128 GB Samsung SSD OS drive
256 GB Corsair GT Gaming Drive
1 GB WD Blue Storage Drive
Corsair 750 W powersupply
Win 10
Corsair not so limited edition White Knight case.

I'm figuring that my system is still worth $500 CAD (that's like $350 USD) easy but I'm just going to give it to him as a surprise gift. I really want him to make more effort to get to know our 1 year old and I think having something to game with again, we used to game together a lot, could help find us some more common ground when he's not in school.

Here's what I'm looking at. I'm on a budget. Please answer the questions in (*).

i5 6600K (3.5 GHZ, what kind of OC can I hit with a decent board? Will OC put it up where my ivy bridge i7 will? Are the Skylake CPU's more energy efficient? I think Intel under rated my current CPU for power. I shut my computer off for a couple of months and it made me back $10 . Basically can a new i5 hang around with my old i7 and a new high end card? )
Possible H100i (Last one I had didn't work with a shit but I hear they fixed the issues?)
Some Z170 MB ($200 spending limit, probably MSI, ASrock or ASUS. I hear USB 3.1 isn't worth it because it's not native which slows it da fuck down, opinions?)
$500-$600 Video card (AMD or nVidia? LOL I know right. I love nVidia stability but AMD seems to be MUCH more bang for buck right now and the drivers have been getting better while nVidia has slipped IMHO. Should I wait for the 1080 GTX to come out? They are claiming huge gains but you know how those claims go. My 680 GTX doesn't really struggle with anything and it's 3 years old yet according to nVidia they've gained 30% performance every year )
New SSD's (Probably a single 512 GB. The cost is low enough now and I don't need RAID performance)
Corsair 750 W supply (A new one. My bro is getting the old PC intact.)
Win 10 (No debate here. I like Win 10. Microsoft is going to force a switch anyways. The multibillion dollar company that I work for is going to Win 10 soon so I'm guessing that makes it okay once you do some fandangling.)
No idea on the case, probably something cheaper than last time because the sweet Limited Edition case I bought last time ended up being super popular and not so limited.

Thanks.

 

The difference between an i5 quad-core and an i7 quad-core is hyperthreading. Hyperthreading adds 0 to 20% performance boost in multithreaded scenarios, and does not provide any performance boost if the workload completely saturates the cores, or not bottlenecked by four prefetches. Most games fall into the latter scenario, using at most 2-3 threads (and thus cores), though a few rare games are able to utilize hyperthreading and more than 4 cores. Highly depends on the game, but for most games out there, an i5 with more per core performance generally does better than an i7. Additionally, Skylake has about a 10-15% per core performance increase from Ivy Bridge.

Not a fan of AIOs in general, if you're not aggressively overclocking and using a large enough case, I would say go with an air cooler. There are lots of good ones out there.

Asus has horrible RMA. Buy an Asus board with the expectation that it rarely breaks, but if it does, it won't get fixed. I prefer MSI and Gigabyte. ASRock's RMA terms are just too vague and confusing. As for the features, that's really up to you what you want.

Wait another couple months for the GPU. The Skylake iGPU is good for some basic gaming, and will tide you over. The next generation of GPUs will be released in the next 2-3 months, which will at minimum drive down prices of current GPUs.

Watch Slickdeals for an SSD. Plenty of 512gb ones in the $100 range nowadays.

I highly recommend looking at an EVGA PSU. You don't need anywhere near 750 watts if you stick with single GPU. Your current system uses 400 watts, max. Your planned system will max out at 500 watts. I would recommend an EVGA 550 GS or G2 PSU. If you insist on Corsair, look at the RMx.

 

I can't answer most but I will say I run the h100i on my 4770k and have had no issues.
Also when the 10 series cards come out from nvidia, you can probably expect the the 980ti to drop quite a bit in price.

I'm still running evga 770 sc dual 4 gig cards in sli and they are still eating up everything I throw at them.

Ram is dime a dozen.

 

I bought my last i7 for the hyperthreading since it seemed like at that time more games were being tuned towards using more cores (multithreading). It seems like games still aren't there though so it's good to know that. My 3770k runs at basically the same clock as the new Skylake so the 10-15% difference plus an overclock should lead to a faster experience regardless. I don't encode videos or anything like that either where hyperthreading shines.

Yeah, I'm thinking about going with the new Coolermaster Evo product. I run a 212 in my current rig and I've never, ever, had temp issues. My i7 stays cool.

I didn't even think about building now and then waiting for the graphics card. I might just wait a month though because, after even more research, it looks like the 1070 will likely beat a 980 for performance at less cost. At $400 CAD a pop a 1070 would be very affordable and, if I find it slow, there is always SLI.

I'm looking at a MSI board right now that I like. I really try to avoid Gigabyte. I've had terrible luck with their products on builds I've done for others. Asus and ASRock never seem to fail for me (they are the same company, just different divisions). It'll be hard to leave them.

Any SSD's I should avoid? Is it worth making the jump to something PCIe based at this time?

I've had really good luck with Corsair powersupplies. If I spend the money to go up to something really nice it'll probably be Antec.

 

DX12 is where hyperthreading and multiple cores are supposed to really help out, but that is taking time. By the time those games are to the point where they really demand more cores, it's probably upgrade time.

If you want to jump to a PCI-E based SSD, get a true NVMe SSD, which are faster than the older AHCI based ones. They are expensive though, with the only real consumer ones at the moment being the Samsung 950 Pro and Intel 750. Otherwise, I'm not really familiar with SSDs to say avoid certain brands. I will say Samsung and Intel are generally the favored ones in terms of raw performance and reliability. Micron (aka Crucial) are well known for good budget SSDs.

EVGA has been very aggressive on the pricing of their PSUs, and offer excellent bang/buck, which is why I recommended them. The G2 and GS PSUs are top of their class in performance, while being cheaper than most of the competition. Not to mention EVGA's excellent customer service and warranty. Then again, Corsair is excellent in that department as well.

 

i second the evga psu. great product!

 

Thanks. I'm switching gears and going to an mini-itx build. It would be nice to get rid of my huge tower for something smaller.

 

In that case:

Get a motherboard that supports M.2 NVMe. The only M.2 NVMe SSD currently in existence is the Samsung 950 Pro, but others should enter the market soon. That would greatly decrease the amount of space needed, as the SSD would literally be part of the motherboard. Fortunately, the interest in good ITX boards have greatly increased in recent years, and the selection of enthusiast ITX boards is much better than it was a few years ago.

Corsair SF600 would be the PSU of choice. The other choice in the SFX market are Silverstones, which appear to have poor reliability according to Newegg.

This is where an AIO would be a good choice. Something like a H60 or other similarly sized AIO.

 

Yikes, those new drives are nifty but too costly for me right now. I'll stick to a SATA drive, which the case I'm going with supports, and then upgrade when the costs come down.

 

Here's what I think I'm going to go with:

ThermalTake Core V1 case
Corsair Vengeance LPX 2133 mhz DDR4 memory (2x8 GB)
Core i5 6600K
MSI R9 Gaming 390 8 GB
EVGA SuperNOVA 550 GS Powersupply (case supports ATX power supplies)
ADATA Premier SP500 SSD (480 GB)
ThemalTake Water 3.0 Performer C Cooler
Win 10 Home 64 bit
Gigabyte Z170N-Wifi board

Should run me about $1500 CAD, which is similar to about a $1K USD price tag. I'm pretty happy with what it is and it should be better than what I have. Plus I won't be banging against the memory limit on the GPU which happens to my 680 all the time.

Any comments on DDR4 memory?

 

For Skylake, you ideally want something faster than 2666 mhz for DDR4. Ideally around 3200 mhz, but that might be prohibitively expensive. http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015...76700k_ipc_overclocking_review/6#.VzqoepErKUk

I would really suggest waiting on the GPU purchase. Like I said before, the Skylake iGPU is viable for light gaming purposes.

 

I get where you are coming from but the 390 exceeds my needs already...

Plus I doubt the 1070 will fall within my price range. I can get a 390 for $450 CAD right now which is nearly nothing.

 

Is there a noticeable real world difference between 2666 and 3200mhz?

 

Are you going with a "Water Cooler"? Electrics and water do not play well. They use some type of solution mixed with the water...which still needs to be refilled on occasion. Leaks can be expensive. Go with an air cooler, and several fans.

The biggest improvement I've made was going to SSD's, then lots of memory (12 - 16 GB), once the app or apps are loaded they stay in memory.

 

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Already built



If DDR4 is anything like DDR3 was, and from everything I read it is, the higher speed memory really only shows up in gaming and some heavy RAM applications. I do game so I went with 2666 mhz memory which seemed to be the value performance sweet spot.

I ended up with a prebuilt water cooler. Yes I understand the risk of a leak but with the prebuilt coolers the risks are much much smaller than they are with a custom setup. The highest temps my i5 6600k hits are under 40c... under full load prime which shows the value of water cooling.

12 fans? Overkill. A few large fans and speed control will pay off over that many 80 or 120 mm fans. One llw speed 200 mm moves as much air and, more importantly developes as much flow, as 3 120mm fans running at high loud noisy speed.

One comment I will make is that the R9 390 is definately a hot running card. 80 c is nothing for this card. What is cool though is that how, on its side, the MSI card blows all of its hot air upwards and out of my case. The top of the case gets warm but the hot air from my card totally misses my CPU and MB unlike an ATX board.

 

I have a Fractal Midi R2 case. I have 3 140mm fans that are pretty quiet. My Noctua NH-D15 also came with 2 140mm fans. They're also pretty quiet. Cooling performance is on par with most of the pre-built water coolers.

 

Remember my build was mini ITX based though. There is no way I could of fit a NH-D15 on my MB without clearance issues. Not to mention its large weight on a board that is only secured by four screws and is already holding a full sized video card.

I decided to abandon the ATX format because mini ITX leaves so much more room for everything else. Unfortunately that does require considering watercooling the CPU to get acceptable temps. I'm very happy with the initial results. This isn't my first build, nor is it my first prebuilt water cooler, but this is the first one I'm happy with. Historically I'm a big Evo 212 fan (get it )

I went with the Thermaltake X1 case. I got a steal of a deal on it (paid $60 CAD!) One 200 mm fan blow tons of cool air in and a 120 mm fan for the radiator, I'm having no temperature issues. My MB temps are below 30c, my video card is below 80c (which is cool for the R9 390), and my CPU barely hits 40c in Prime95 stress testing. Like I said, due to the smart design of the ITX cases the MB sits flat which means any GPU coolers that blow air out laterally end up blowing their air up, and in the case of a well ventilated on top case, out of the case without the need for a top mounted exhaust fan.

Something nice with this build too was how I concentrated on getting some naturally quiet components. MSI cards shut off their fans when they aren't needed, like when I'm just surfing onine, and the EVGA GS PSU does the same. Until I'm gaming things are cold and dead quiet, which is always the best combo.

 

I couldn't do a mini ITX case simpy cuz of the HDDs I have in mine. Unless I went with all USB storage. I have 3 2TB USB3 HDDs in RAID0 for backup, and it's pretty quick.

I used to have an Evo 212. Couldn't keep up with my 4790k.

 

One drawback to the ITX format is definitely the lateral board. I know, I just said that's a huge advantage for the graphics card, but it also makes cable management a lot more difficult. Right now I just have most of the cables in a bundle that runs through the middle of my 200 mm fans air flow. This isn't perfect nor is it what I want but I'm not having temp issues so I'll leave it for now. One day when I'm not busy I'll try to run the cables through the bottom of the case but I don't think I have the clearance to do that with everything.