Case Options for first time builder

[panthervca]

Hi Everyone,
Just hoping to get some ideas for building my first PC after years of having a Mac.
Looking over some cases to work with I really like the cooler master mastercase maker 5 or 5 pro but was wondering any others that might be a good option to work with. The Rosewill Nighthawk,Fractal Design r5 series,Phanteks Eclipse and Evolv cases also caught my eye so just wondering on some opinions of ease of working in and adding to over time,especially a second video card and CPU water cooler.
I would also like to put a bit of lighting into the case and possibly do some painting externally at some point.
Core components I plan on initially are
Asus Maximus VIII Formula
EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW GAMING ACX 3.0 (eventually would like to go with 2)
Intel i7 6700k 4.0Ghz
1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD
Not sure yet if I would get a CPU water cooler or not at this time but would probably put one in.
Thanks in advance for any recommendations.

 

[lehtv]

Fractal Design Define S offers very good cooling capabilities and liquid cooling compatibility. There's a windowed version. I'd go with that, unless there's need for a 5.25" DVD drive in which case the Define R5 is more suitable. But what I particularly like about Define S for SLI purposes is the ability to mount three 140mm fans as front intakes, which allows superb front to back airflow for cooling a high wattage SLI setup properly. R5 can only mount two 140mm fans in the front due to 5.25" slots taking up space.

Some slightly off topic stuffs follow:

Asus Maximus VIII Formula
EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW GAMING ACX 3.0 (eventually would like to go with 2)
Intel i7 6700k 4.0Ghz
1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSD

VIII Formula seems very overkill. You can do OC + SLI perfectly well on a board like Z170-A, Z170 Pro Gaming, Z170 Ranger, Z170 Pro that costs half of that Formula board.

What monitor do you plan to use? Unless you're doing a triple monitor setup, I can't see GTX 1080 SLI being worth it. A single GTX 1070 runs 1440p with GSync very well, and for 4K you can do GTX 1070 SLI. GTX 1070 offers considerably better performance per dollar than GTX 1080.

Not sure yet if I would get a CPU water cooler or not at this time but would probably put one in.

There are good arguments for both for and against. Assuming you are planning to overclock the CPU, that is. If you're not planning to overclock, then you can forget about liquid cooling, any cheapo 92-120mm tower will do fine.

Chiefly the pros and cons of AIO liquid coolers versus standard air coolers:
+ higher maximum performance
+ pretty looks
+ more room around the motherboard, making it easier to deal with cables or switch other components once the CPU cooler is installed
- price - you pay a premium for liquid cooling, compared to similarly performing air cooling
- noise - air coolers use fewer and lower RPM fans and have no pump to generate noise
- pumps are moving parts, they can fail
- maximum performance often comes at the cost of additional noise; dBa for dBa, high end air coolers like Noctua D15 and 240-280mm liquid coolers perform nearly the same

Also, note that when cooling a Skylake processor for high overclocks, the bottleneck is actually in the CPU itself, not in the actual cooler. This is because the IHS (integrated heat spreader) is not soldered on to the CPU, but merely uses basic thermal paste for transfering heat off of the CPU. So, to take full advantage of the higher performance of a 240-280mm AIO, you'll want to either
1) delid the 6700K, meaning take off the IHS, scrape off the glue and clean the CPU and IHS underside of Intel's rubbish thermal paste, and apply some liquid metal for improved thermal conductivity
2) buy an X99 chipset board and a hexacore processor such as i7-5820K and i7-6800K. IHS is soldered-on so no delidding is required for optimal cooling performance.

Given your seemingly high budget, I would definitely recommend the hexacore approach.

I would also like to put a bit of lighting into the case and possibly do some painting externally at some point.

Maybe a board with RGB lighting? Like Asus X99 Strix. Though you may want some other lights in there as well. I'd suggest using magnetic LED strips, I have nothing but bad experiences using strips that are attached with glue adhesive tape. However... the only magnetic LED strips I know of come from Phanteks, and they seem to be compatible only with their own cases, so you may want to pick the Evolv ATX or P400S case instead.

 

[panthervca]

Thanks for all the info Lehtv!
You have definitely given me some more research to do. I think when I was looking at Fractal Design the case didn't fit the EVGA Supernova 1000W PSU that I was going to get. It might be a bit overkill,an 850 would probably cover me even adding a 2nd GPU later on but I kinda wanted to use the budget up that the boss is allowing.

VIII Formula seems very overkill. You can do OC + SLI perfectly well on a board like Z170-A, Z170 Pro Gaming, Z170 Ranger, Z170 Pro that costs half of that Formula board.

On the motherboard, I was really just going on what PC gamer had put as a sweet spot,and then choosing slightly above, I think they had the Hero board in their write up (astetically I also liked the look of the card). For a display I currently have a single BenQ 27 inch that goes to 1440,but I would like to go to 3 4k displays at some point in time. The 1080 is more again to just future proof myself for eventually getting 2-3 displays that are 4k or better down the road.
For processors and Liquid cooling probably from your con list, the moving part failing is what mostly would concern me about it then anything else. Not sure if I plan on overclocking as I never had but I probably would tinker a little bit with it.
RGB lighting isn't something that is a major thing at this point,but I had also read to get magnetic strips for doing any.
Thanks again for all the info I will be doing more research into a build first.(especially on the processor and motherboard)

 

[theNEOone]

Thanks for all the info Lehtv!
You have definitely given me some more research to do. I think when I was looking at Fractal Design the case didn't fit the EVGA Supernova 1000W PSU that I was going to get. It might be a bit overkill,an 850 would probably cover me even adding a 2nd GPU later on but I kinda wanted to use the budget up that the boss is allowing.

On the motherboard, I was really just going on what PC gamer had put as a sweet spot,and then choosing slightly above, I think they had the Hero board in their write up (astetically I also liked the look of the card). For a display I currently have a single BenQ 27 inch that goes to 1440,but I would like to go to 3 4k displays at some point in time. The 1080 is more again to just future proof myself for eventually getting 2-3 displays that are 4k or better down the road.
For processors and Liquid cooling probably from your con list, the moving part failing is what mostly would concern me about it then anything else. Not sure if I plan on overclocking as I never had but I probably would tinker a little bit with it.
RGB lighting isn't something that is a major thing at this point,but I had also read to get magnetic strips for doing any.
Thanks again for all the info I will be doing more research into a build first.(especially on the processor and motherboard)

Have you ever used 3 monitors before? Even in the most intense multitasking sessions I find that there is absolutely no point in having 3 monitors. It takes more time for you to swing your head from monitor 1 to monitor 3 than to simply alt-tab your way to your destination. Not to mention that you'll have an insane amount of real estate on a single 4k monitor, so you can just multi-window to your heart's content. Seriously -- just do a single high quality monitor and be done with it. I've even reached the point where two monitors is more of a nuissance than a benefit, but maybe I'm just getting old.

My $0.02


=|

 

[lehtv]

It might be a bit overkill,an 850 would probably cover me even adding a 2nd GPU later on but I kinda wanted to use the budget up that the boss is allowing.

Yes, 850W will be more than enough (but 1000W is fine too as long as it's just $10-20 more). Pascal isn't a very power hungry GPU. I'd probably go for Corsair RMx series, they are quieter at high loads than EVGA units.

On the motherboard, I was really just going on what PC gamer had put as a sweet spot,and then choosing slightly above, I think they had the Hero board in their write up (astetically I also liked the look of the card).

I would say the Hero board is already above the sweet spot in terms of what you get for what you pay. For someone who's not even sure about overclocking, it is most definitely overkill.

However let's forget about LGA1151. You definitely have the budget for LGA2011v3 and hexacore CPU, it will give you better longevity than a quad core.

The 1080 is more again to just future proof myself for eventually getting 2-3 displays that are 4k or better down the road.

First off, graphics cards aren't really "future proofable", there's no sense in which buying the fastest card now makes financial sense in the future. It always makes more sense to buy the best value for money and upgrade that when the need arises, though I do understand a lot of people will want the fastest card despite that. Graphics cards don't need to be future proofed either - in just 1 year, you can sell and upgrade to a next-gen card. Apart from RAM, it's probably the easiest component to upgrade in the entire PC.

Future proofing applies most to
1- motherboards, power supplies and cases due to compatibility reasons (available connectors, space and cooling capacity)
2- processors: their performance develops more slowly than that of graphics cards, so an unnecessarily fast CPU will be relevant for years to come and will handle future graphics cards without bottlenecking
3- perhaps also to disk capacity (since higher capacity drives tend to cost less per gigabyte)

4K surround gaming is not going to happen with two GTX 1080's. (And dual monitor gaming isn't really a thing, so it's either 1 or 3 monitors.) A single GTX 1080 struggles at 4K in demanding games / high graphics settings. Dual GTX 1080's will struggle even more on 4K surround.

I would just stick to one monitor for gaming, and buy a secondary monitor for productivity if needed. For example, a curved 3440x1440 offers excellent image quality and immersiveness in games, and can be run very smoothly with GTX 1070 SLI. Acer X34A can do up to 100Hz with GSync.

For processors and Liquid cooling probably from your con list, the moving part failing is what mostly would concern me about it then anything else. Not sure if I plan on overclocking as I never had but I probably would tinker a little bit with it.

Should definitely overclock a hexacore processor, there's good potential in them, and it should benefit framerates with a SLI setup. 4.2GHz is quite easily doable, but with higher end cooling you can even do 4.4-4.5GHz.

 

[panthervca]

I really only wanted 3 monitors for Elite dangerous or Star Citizen then anything else. Any productivity or home use work won't be used on this machine,strictly for gaming.
I only have used 2 monitors at work in the past,and i get what you were saying about it being a nuisance theneOone.
That was more why I was leaning towards the 6700k i7 and not the 6800k as most things I had read had the 6700 as a slightly better gaming processor. I would probably be happy with either chip really in the end.
Interesting on the 1080 struggling at 4k,I definitely would have just assumed it would perform well,and like you said upgrading the GPU is very easy so it makes a lot of sense probably to go with the 1070 and just keep upgrading every few years.

 

[lehtv]

That was more why I was leaning towards the 6700k i7 and not the 6800k as most things I had read had the 6700 as a slightly better gaming processor.

This is because 6700K is clocked higher at stock settings, and most games are unable to take proper advantage of the extra cores of 6800K. But we can expect the utilization of more than 4 cores to continue to improve in the future, as game developers are given better tools for that than before (Vulkan and DX12), and the faster improvement of GPU performance will force developers to optimize their games better for multiple cores. At least, that's what I would expect, but I may be wrong

Also I'm pretty sure Star Citizen which uses CryEngine will be extremely good at using multiple cores. Good support for high end CPUs has been one of the goals from the very beginning, AFAIK. I would expect better scaling than in Crysis 3, given the time Crytek has had to develop their engine further since then, and the time CIG has to optimize it, and the fact that it will be a massive online game which typically requires a lot of CPU.

Spoiler

 

[EliteRetard]

So you just want to use up the budget "the boss" has given you? Did I see that?
If so, what is this budget?

I wouldn't mind configuring a fancy PC build...but I wanna know what the total fundage is first.

 

[panthervca]

For budget I was at $5500 before tax, Canadian. I am probably going to try and keep it down to about $4k though with a newborn on the way.
I am definitely debating now the CPU, i was really locked in for a 6700k,but it's interesting reading about the 6800k(or 6850k) as well. The one concern I have with them though is there seems to be less options for mortherboards(maybe that is a good thing though,less going back and forth) and I was reading elsewhere that this is the last chip on that socket type,where as the skylake chips are the first. Again processors are probably not something I am going to upgrade anyways (I am fine with a 2009 Xeon for the last 7 years).This thread should probably have gone to the processor section!

 

[aigomorla]

thats a very big budget for a 6700K.

my 2 cents on SLI... dont.. just dont get into the hype.
Why?
Because i have SLI, and well, lately nvidia sucks at SLI drivers.
There is never launch ready SLI drivers.
It takes more then a month for SLI ready drivers that work to come out.
By then your alreadly near done with the game and probably wont really enjoy the SLI drivers.

Just get a single Titan.

Lastly, the motherboard is probably the 2nd most important aspect in picking out a case for you.
Because there are many different form factors..
EATX / ATX / MATX / ITX

So you should look at boards and decide on which one you want.

 

[lehtv]

For LGA2011v3, ATX (or EATX for the really high end boards, not applicable ITT) is the only form factor one that makes sense, to be honest.

 

[panthervca]

So after thinking about things a bit, the 6800k probably suits me better for a little bit more. Maybe I benefit from it,maybe I don't.
But if some games or if I do end up using it beyond gaming start utilizing the extra cores it's worth it. And even if the socket changes,i've been totally fine with a xeon from 2009 until now(and really still am)
This is what I put together on pc part picker.
http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/mcmxsJ
The Samsung evo and WD 1TB are current drives I may carry over,it was more just to see power usage then anything else. (Same with the 2nd GPU).
Only reason I am going with EVGA at this point for a PSU over the corsair you recommended is I have had great service with EVGA on a dead GPU before.
For a case I keep coming back to the Master Case 5,just love the look and it seems very open for working in,a few neat aftermarket products as well. I really want a Cosmo 2 but that is overkill.

 

[panthervca]

thats a very big budget for a 6700K.

my 2 cents on SLI... dont.. just dont get into the hype.
Why?
Because i have SLI, and well, lately nvidia sucks at SLI drivers.
There is never launch ready SLI drivers.
It takes more then a month for SLI ready drivers that work to come out.
By then your alreadly near done with the game and probably wont really enjoy the SLI drivers.

Just get a single Titan.

Lastly, the motherboard is probably the 2nd most important aspect in picking out a case for you.
Because there are many different form factors..
EATX / ATX / MATX / ITX

So you should look at boards and decide on which one you want.

Probably the reason I won't go with a Titan is using some money on a new desk or joystick then anything else.
For the motherboard at the end of the day, I am probably not going to do some overclocking as much as I have a bit of an interest in it. The X99 Strix mobo as lehtv mentioned earlier fit a bit with doing some lighting which is more then likely the extent of anything I will do. I guess OC'ing the RAM is something I might consider as well but the board looks like it supports that if I ever wanted to go that route.

 

[EliteRetard]

Probably the reason I won't go with a Titan is using some money on a new desk or joystick then anything else.
For the motherboard at the end of the day, I am probably not going to do some overclocking as much as I have a bit of an interest in it. The X99 Strix mobo as lehtv mentioned earlier fit a bit with doing some lighting which is more then likely the extent of anything I will do. I guess OC'ing the RAM is something I might consider as well but the board looks like it supports that if I ever wanted to go that route.

The Canadian price for the GTX1080 is horrific. $900 is dang near Titan X price anyway ($1,200). Problem is I can't find any of the new Titan X (Pascal) in Canada, just the old one.
Seems like it's only available direct from Nvidia (but currently sold out) http://www.geforce.com/hardware/10series/titan-x-pascal

I totally agree with Aigomorla though, 1x Pascal Titan X around $1,200 would be way better than 2x 1080 at $1,800.

Let's put it into simpler numbers, let's say 1x 1080 is performance 1.0, that makes a 1070 0.8, and a Titan X 1.3
When SLI works lets say it averages 70% scaling. Also consider it's likely to only work in maybe 20% of games. And the other downsides of 2 cards, more power/heat & usually less ram/bandwidth.
If we look at the 1070, 2x it would be performance 1.36. At a cost of $550 CAD each, 2x 1070 looks like a poor option next to a $1200 Titan X. And Nvidia doesn't support 3x SLI anymore.
2x 1080 then would be 1.7, impressive, but only in that 20% of games. Compared to the Titan X 1.3, it's 30% faster 20% of the time and the other 80% it would be 30% slower (back to 1.0).
Consider cost, a Titan X is 34% more expensive than the 1080 at $900, but offers 30% more performance. 2x 1080 would cost 50% more than the Titan X for that occasional 30% gain, but more frequent loss.
And again, don't forget that 2x 1080 uses more power, creates more heat, has less VRAM (the 2 cards don't add up their memory), and less bandwidth than the Titan X.
At least in Canadian prices, the Pascal Titan X actually looks like a pretty good bargain, if you buy 1. And it's performance is enough even in 4k to last until it's replacement comes along in a year or so.

I'd like to suggest this to you as well:
https://siliconlottery.com/products/6800k44g

These guys do ship to Canada, and they guarantee this CPU to run at 4.3GHz+ at 1.38v or less (with a good MOBO/cooling). They offer even faster options, but this is a good balance of speed, voltage, and price. Since spending more only gets you extra cores, this is an easy way to buy more performance (without taking the risk yourself). At this speed it will keep up with a 6700k in single threaded stuff, and beat it down with 50% more cores in everything else. I would only suggest the 6800k for single GPU setups though...if you really intend on going with an SLI setup (at any point) then I'd highly suggest getting the 6850k:
https://siliconlottery.com/products/6850k44g
This is because the 6850 offers more PCIe lanes (40 vs 28), which you'll need if you want to feed 2 high end GPUS (2x16=32 lanes) and PCIe storage (typically x4 each) and any other peripherals like Thunderbolt/USB 3.1. If you plan to keep the system for another 5 years, the price difference between these 2 CPUs is minimal.

Here's a possible build I tossed together:
http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/q2zk9W

It includes an overpriced 6850k (the 40 lane option) as if you were to buy the OC version from siliconlottery.
32 GB RAM (why on earth did you pick 16GB?!) This is a nice moderate speed DDR4-3000, at a good low latency 15-15-15-35 and with a fairly low profile heatsink
Asus X99 AII much cheaper and nearly identical to the ROG Gamer, it drops the wifi and some software (ROG cache, internet optimizer, and audio overlay)
NH-D15, vs NH-D15S Difference is the S version only has 1 fan (vs 2). For 10$ extra the second Noctua fan is totally worth it even if you use it elsewhere (those fans are like $30 each)
2TB 850 Pro SATA only but still crazy fast and you get double the storage for your money. Has a 10 year warranty and insane 300TB endurance (install/uninstall as many things as you want)
Corsair 760T Just an alternative case for you to look at. Similar price range and high end features, and a clear side for all those LEDs you wanted. Clearance for thick radiators top and front.
750 watt EVGA P2 these are fine units, this is the smallest in the P2 line and $70 cheaper. 6800/6850 OC @ 1.38v max is 200 watts, Titan X OC is like 300 watts max. Lots of room to spare.
If you want to go 1080 SLI, then the 850 watt unit would be plenty, it's $40 less than the 1,000w. If you want to run ANY 2x GPU (like 2x Titan or some future power hog) then go for a 1kw unit.

 

[panthervca]

The only thing about dropping WIFI on the board is either I need to keep using my airport express for access (which should probably work, it work on my Win 10 side for that) or to get a PCI WIFI card.
Going through the boards visually the Asus X99 a-II or deluxe probably do the job, also the GA-X99-Designare EX has the visual appeal. Much more comfortable going with an ASUS board.
I probably will just go with a stock CPU although getting one pre overclocked for near same pricing interests me, its just a little out of my comfort zone not having the manufacturers warranty.

 

[TemjinGold]

OP: If you just want an awesome gaming system that spends down the cash, instead of paying premiums for things that might not be worth it (i.e. SLI, 6800K vs. 6700K, 950 PRO instead of 850 PRO etc.), why not stuff like a really nice monitor, a VR set, and a high end set of speakers?

 

[panthervca]

OP: If you just want an awesome gaming system that spends down the cash, instead of paying premiums for things that might not be worth it (i.e. SLI, 6800K vs. 6700K, 950 PRO instead of 850 PRO etc.), why not stuff like a really nice monitor, a VR set, and a high end set of speakers?

Right now I am more wanting to change over to a new computer then anything else. I have Audioengine A5+ speakers that I am happy with(very happy really) and Sennheiser headphones which both should be more then fine. My monitor I upgraded last year and it does the job for now. I probably will look at a new monitor at some point,(or going to 3 although that leads into needing a new desk to)but it isn't pressing at this point.
Not really interested in the VR sets, haven't tried it but it just isn't my cup of tea at this point,maybe I'm just getting old.

 

[TemjinGold]

Right now I am more wanting to change over to a new computer then anything else. I have Audioengine A5+ speakers that I am happy with(very happy really) and Sennheiser headphones which both should be more then fine. My monitor I upgraded last year and it does the job for now. I probably will look at a new monitor at some point,(or going to 3 although that leads into needing a new desk to)but it isn't pressing at this point.
Not really interested in the VR sets, haven't tried it but it just isn't my cup of tea at this point,maybe I'm just getting old.

Doesn't need to be those. What I mean is, if you are interested in spending a certain amount and the only way to do it is to "upgrade" to things that won't help you, it might be worthwhile to instead look at things that you could do with better of. Now if you don't need to spend it all, saving the difference is never terrible. Just pointing out that you don't have to say get 1080 SLI only because you have spare budget. There's lots of other things to spend money on too!

 

[panthervca]

Ah I think I get what you mean more.
The SLI was more just something I may or may not do down the road then anything else.
Well I decided to drop the Intel SSD drive in favor of a Samsung 850 1TB and I will still get very acceptable performance out of the drive.
I went with the Asus x99 Deluxe 2 because I wanted the thunderbolt card and wifi in the end,as well as the board has reinforced pci-e slots on 4 of them rather then 1 (maybe its gimmicky maybe not?)
In the end I feel like I am saving money because this was about a thousand less then a Mac I had priced out,(and it gives me a project to work on) and it can go to the newborn fund.
Thanks again to everyone for giving me some opinions and advice it was very helpful. Next up will be deciding to custom pain the case when I am on paternity leave next summer.


http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/M24hkT

 

[ClockHound]

...Next up will be deciding to custom pain the case when I am on paternity leave next summer.

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/M24hkT

If you want custom pain on that Mastercase 5 and you haven't had seen the custom pro pain, have a look at wild Bill's Gulf Racing 917 Mastercase 5 mod. He applies the pain and then takes it away. ;-)

Have a fun, painless build!

 

[panthervca]

If you want custom pain on that Mastercase 5 and you haven't had seen the custom pro pain, have a look at wild Bill's Gulf Racing 917 Mastercase 5 mod. He applies the pain and then takes it away. ;-)

Have a fun, painless build!

Haha didn't realize my typo, but yes hope it's painless to,a little pain isn't bad. Now I need to find a nice tool kit for building as well. His paint thread is what kinda inspired me to try doing some painting!

 

[bonehead123]

on the original question, a case for a rookie, my advice is:

Go Big, or go home

Whatever you do, get a case that has removable HDD/SSD cages....they put way too many of them in todays cases IMHO, (unless you want to build a server/SAN/NAS box) and all they really do is get in the way, by blocking airflow and/or reducing space for other components like monster GPU's, cooling towers etc...

Bigger cases give you a couple of advantages:

A) More room to work with overall. A big plus for those who may need to learn the best ways to maneuver both their hands and the components inside the case to avoid damage and make the build go smoother.

B) More room for more fans/rads/coolers....a Big plus if/when you feel the urge to overclock, reconfigure etc...

 

[QueBert]

OP, look up the NZXT Hue+ for lighting, I just got it the other day. It's fricking awesome for lighting, definitely the best thing I've seen for that.