Fairly high-end Gaming and Work PC

[beagle2011]

Hi,
I am a new member, even if I've been reading Anandtech for a long time. I appreciate the discussions in this forum, so I thought I might ask here for opinions about a new PC.

I am currently running a 4-years old Core 2 Quad Q8200, to which I more recently added a GeForce GTX 460 and a Samsung 840 500 GB SSD, as well as a Corsair 600 W power supply.

I use my desktop PC for Lightroom as well as occasional gaming. However, with my new build, I would also like to keep a Linux VM running when I'm not home, so that I can access it via SSH from work and run some tasks that are usually highly-parallel (some MPI code that I wrote myself, Matlab, etc).

I thought of waiting Haswell, but I'm now more inclined to get a 3930k. I'm curious of coding with AVX2, but doubt I will have the time to and, even if I did, in many tasks I don't think it will compensate for the two extra cores of the 3930k. For gaming I guess Haswell would be better, but then again, looking at what's going into the next-generation consoles, I bet a 3930k will be good enough for several years. I am not sure if Lightroom would make use of 6 cores, but it would certainly convince me to go for the 3930k if it did.

I thought of the following build:
BUY
- Corsair Carbide 500R
- Asus Sabertooth X79
- Intel Core i7 3930k
- Noctua NH-D14 SE 2011
- Kingston HyperX Anniversary Edition, 32 GB (4 DIMMs), 1600 MHz, CL 9
- Windows 8 Pro 64-bit OEM
KEEP
- Corsair 600 W power supply
- GeForce GTX 460 1 GB
- SSD Samsung 840 500 GB
- 1 TB hard drive

What do you think? Should I worry about any compatibility issues? The HyperX modules seem low profile enough to fit below the CPU cooler. Considering I don't plan to overclock, the motherboard and the CPU cooler might be a bit overkill. However, I chose them because I thought they would make the computer more reliable, especially in the summer. The GPU is not high-end anymore, but it's still good enough (and probably limited by the Q8200) so I thought I could replace it later on.

 

[Termie]

Welcome to the forums, beagle2011!

Well, you've done your homework. That build looks great. Perhaps the one question is what your budget is. That would help determine if the cpu, motherboard, and cooler are the right picks.

Since the code you're going to run is your own, you'd be the best judge of whether it can use six cores. If it can't, then the 3930 probably isn't the right choice. It uses much more power than Ivy Bridge systems, and is rarely faster than a 3770k in games (and is sometimes slower).

Photoshop can definitely use six cores, but lightroom would probably be less likely to need six cores. I wouldn't recommend spending that much money for lightroom alone, unless your budget really is unlimited. These benchmarks show the potential of six cores in CS6:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-3970x-sandy-bridge-e-benchmark,3348-7.html

By the way, the Corsair 500R is currently being offered at a huge discount on Newegg. If you want it, get it now, as in today. It's $80AR, about $30 less than usual.

 

[beagle2011]

Hello Termie, thank you for your response.

Fortunately, most of my code should scale easily to multiple cores. In fact, I would love to test if it does. Even when it doesn't, I often run many jobs simultaneously (queues of tens to hundreds of jobs). I have a couple of Core i7 920 machines at work, but they are starting to feel dated and I could use this build for personal use in my free time.

As for my budget, the new components cost around 1400 € where I live, which is pretty much the maximum I would like to spend. It's a lot for me, but since it would be used for both hobbies and work, I can feel the money is well spent. I guess I would only feel bad if a 4-core Haswell part ends up being as fast as a 3930k or if a ~500 € 8-core IVB-E is released this year...

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Wait till you see results from Haswell

 

[Ken g6]

Wait till you see results from Haswell

I generally agree with this. I expect Haswell to be better at integer hyper-threading than the Bridges. Floating point is more complicated - apps will require a recompile to get optimal floating-point performance, and even then I'm not sure if the compiler will be smart enough to substitute an FMA for a floating-point add where appropriate.

I personally am excited about AVX2, but I've done work with SSE2 intrinsics before. So working with AVX2 should be very similar.

One other question: Have you looked into CUDA programming for that GTX 460? For the right task (highly parallel, high memory latency, few registers per thread), it can be much faster than any CPU on the market today.

 

[Sleepingforest]

My only criticisms are: Sabertooth motherboards tend to be pretty substantially overpriced for the ports, slots, and features you get, even relative to other Asus motherboards. Overclocking could potentially ruin Matlab results and the like (even if testing, reveals no errors) so you might want to just go with stock; in that case, the Noctua cooler is unnecessary, and you can get away with the stock cooler , which is actually very quiet. Finally, your graphics card is pretty weak for gaming, especially when compared to your other parts. You'll definitely be GPU limited and not CPU limited in the gaming future. The only thing is that the current Kepler cards aren't as good as the last generation of Fermi cards (5XX) for CUDA, though they are better for gaming.

 

[mfenn]

My only criticisms are: Sabertooth motherboards tend to be pretty substantially overpriced for the ports, slots, and features you get, even relative to other Asus motherboards. Overclocking could potentially ruin Matlab results and the like (even if testing, reveals no errors) so you might want to just go with stock; in that case, the Noctua cooler is unnecessary, and you can get away with the stock cooler , which is actually very quiet. Finally, your graphics card is pretty weak for gaming, especially when compared to your other parts. You'll definitely be GPU limited and not CPU limited in the gaming future. The only thing is that the current Kepler cards aren't as good as the last generation of Fermi cards (5XX) for CUDA, though they are better for gaming.

Agree. That Sabertooth board really sticks out to me. OP, do you mind filling out the sticky and updating your post?

 

[beagle2011]

My only criticisms are: Sabertooth motherboards tend to be pretty substantially overpriced for the ports, slots, and features you get, even relative to other Asus motherboards.

My main reason for going with the Sabertooth is that it comes with a 5 year warranty. It's only 50 € more than a P9X79 PRO and I thought it would be worth it.

Overclocking could potentially ruin Matlab results and the like (even if testing, reveals no errors) so you might want to just go with stock; in that case, the Noctua cooler is unnecessary, and you can get away with the stock cooler , which is actually very quiet.

I do not plan to overclock. The 3930k does not come with any stock cooler and I thought a decent cooler would at least help the CPU reach TurboBoost frequency more easily, as well as keeping the PC more silent compared to the cheap Intel BXRTS2011AC.

Finally, your graphics card is pretty weak for gaming, especially when compared to your other parts. You'll definitely be GPU limited and not CPU limited in the gaming future. The only thing is that the current Kepler cards aren't as good as the last generation of Fermi cards (5XX) for CUDA, though they are better for gaming.

The GTX 460 is still able to run any game I have right now, so I could replace it next year or whenever I feel the need to. In the end, replacing the graphic card just takes 10 minutes so it's not a big deal. For GPGPU, if I start being serious about it, I will need double precision, so the only cards I could consider as an upgrade are the high-end Radeon and the GeForce Titan. OpenCL is less mature than cuda and the GeForce Titan is very expensive. I'd rather wait and see what comes out next year.

I generally agree with this. I expect Haswell to be better at integer hyper-threading than the Bridges. Floating point is more complicated - apps will require a recompile to get optimal floating-point performance, and even then I'm not sure if the compiler will be smart enough to substitute an FMA for a floating-point add where appropriate.

I am excited about the new Haswell micro-architecture, but from what I heard it will take until August before motherboards with the fixed chipset will be available. I'm kind of running out of patience, unfortunately. Also, the results published by Tom's Hardware are good but it seems like it won't match a 6-core Sandy Bridge in most highly-parallel workloads. On a side note, it would be useful to test whether my code can scale to 12 threads compared to 8.

I personally am excited about AVX2, but I've done work with SSE2 intrinsics before. So working with AVX2 should be very similar.

One other question: Have you looked into CUDA programming for that GTX 460? For the right task (highly parallel, high memory latency, few registers per thread), it can be much faster than any CPU on the market today.

I am excited about AVX2 too, and I would like to have the time to use intrinsics in my code. But most likely I won't have the time to and will eventually rely on the C++ compiler. Gather instructions should help the compiler a little bit, but I suspect auto-vectorization will only affect a relatively small portion of my code. I also have plenty of Python and Matlab scripts.

If I do have the time to revise my code for data-parallelism, probably I would like try OpenCL so that I can run the code on both the CPU and the GPU. I do have an interest in GPGPU programming and I have experimented with it, but it will take some time before I start doing something serious.

 

[beagle2011]

I was reading the installation manual of the Noctua CPU Cooler and I noticed this warning:
"Due to the mass restrictions of the LGA2011 specifications, we recommend taking off the heatsink when moving or transporting your PC. Noctua cannot be held responsible for any damage that may arise due to excessive stress on the socket during
transportation if you keep the heatsink installed."
http://www.noctua.at/pdf/manuals/noctua_nh_d14_se2011_manual_en.pdf
Since I might need to carry over this PC in the future, is this something I should warry about? Honestly, I do not want to have to remove the cooler just to send the PC somewhere.
I've also read good reviews for the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO. It's half the weight of the Noctua and 35 € cheaper (40 € vs 75 &#8364.
http://www.coolermaster.com/product.php?product_id=6741
The Intel BXRTS2011AC retails for 16 €, for comparison.

 

[Termie]

To ship just about anything but a water cooled machine, you definitely want to remove the cpu cooler, plus the video card, by the way.

The Noctua, though, is particularly heavy, and I wouldn't use it even if you'll be transporting the system by hand.

 

[zliqdedo]

Just like the rest, I would generally recommend IVB over SB-E (a 3770/K in this case), or better yet - wait for Haswell. However, obviously you know what you're doing, you know what you're going to run and an i7-3930K would definitely serve you right. Of course, it's hard to tell whether a quad-core Haswell would really be slower than a six-core SB for highly parallel tasks. As you probably know already, Haswell has two more execution ports and the bandwidth to sustain this performance; the front end is slightly improved as well. This combination of being able to extract more parallelism and execute faster might just tip the scales in Haswell's favor. My point is, I wouldn't jump to conclusions until after the official release. That way, you can avoid disappointment. That's not to say you shouldn't buy SB-E now, just be prepared for the possibility of Haswell being a match for highly parallel tasks and, of course, better at other tasks. All in all, you shouldn't feel guilty for buying SB-E now - worse case scenario doesn't look that bad at all. Besides, with SB-E you can enjoy the benefit of having superior system memory bandwidth.

Now, onto the build itself. It's looking quite good, I still have a few suggestions that might make it better though.

I apologize for this long and rather 'romantic' first section. I got the feeling the OP needed a bit of this particular 'advice' so I went for it.

 

[zliqdedo]

The promised suggestions:

You can keep the components you've listed. If the GTX 460 is good enough for now - keep it, you can always change it later on. It's unlikely you'd ever need a more powerful PSU for a single video card build, even with a 130W CPU.

Overclocking. I know you've stated that you do not plan on overclocking a few times, but I would still like to voice a +1 in favor of overclocking. You probably have very good reasons not to, but at least reconsider - SB is a particularly good overclocker and pretty much any X79 board makes it very easy. There shouldn't be any reason to worry about negative impacts on CPU longevity as long as you don't apply an extreme overclock.

Faster memory. This one is kind of tied to the previous one. Any faster memory would be generally speaking 'better'. Again, I have the feeling you've considered this as well and might have a reason against it. You seem to need capacity, why not speed and latency (lower)? 2400 MHz would be your optimal choice, Corsair's Vengeance are reliable and not crazy expensive like the Dominator Platinums. Any XMP-enabled 2400 MHz kit would do. It's very easy to enable too - just flick on the XMProfile in the BIOS/UEFI and you're good to go.

Form factor. Bigger isn't always better. Why not go with a smaller enclosure - you can certainly afford it with no cons whatsoever. My suggestion is to go with an Asus Rampage IV Gene (micro-ATX) and one of the following enclosures: Silverstone SG09, Fractal Design Define Mini, Silverstone FT03 (new version). My favorite is the SG09 - truly genius use of space. The Define Mini is very, very quiet - practically silent. The FT03 would be my last choice, however it's the prettiest and most stylish. You needn't worry about airflow, poor thermals and such - these cases are solid and can accommodate standard-size components. After installing your video card you would still have two spare expansion slots, should you need them.

CPU cooler. I would suggest a closed-loop liquid cooler. Prices on most of these have come down, there are new models, etc.

 

[mfenn]

Faster memory. This one is kind of tied to the previous one. Any faster memory would be generally speaking 'better'. Again, I have the feeling you've considered this as well and might have a reason against it. You seem to need capacity, why not speed and latency (lower)? 2400 MHz would be your optimal choice, Corsair's Vengeance are reliable and not crazy expensive like the Dominator Platinums. Any XMP-enabled 2400 MHz kit would do. It's very easy to enable too - just flick on the XMProfile in the BIOS/UEFI and you're good to go.

2400 MHz at 1.5V is basically unheard of. The OP is going to be running scientific workloads that are sensitive to memory errors, so running the controller out of spec doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

 

[zliqdedo]

2400 MHz at 1.5V is basically unheard of. The OP is going to be running scientific workloads that are sensitive to memory errors, so running the controller out of spec doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

Voltage at 2400 MHz is 1.65, XMPs are quite good - if you run the profile for 2400 MHz and apply, at least, a small OC on the CPU there shouldn't be any reason to worry. Some lower-end DIMMs (e.g. ADATA) operate at 1333/1600 on 1.65V and people don't even realize.

If it's such a big issue, the OP can always step down to 2133 MHz which runs at 1.5V.

 

[beagle2011]

Just like the rest, I would generally recommend IVB over SB-E (a 3770/K in this case), or better yet - wait for Haswell. However, obviously you know what you're doing, you know what you're going to run and an i7-3930K would definitely serve you right. Of course, it's hard to tell whether a quad-core Haswell would really be slower than a six-core SB for highly parallel tasks. As you probably know already, Haswell has two more execution ports and the bandwidth to sustain this performance; the front end is slightly improved as well. This combination of being able to extract more parallelism and execute faster might just tip the scales in Haswell's favor. My point is, I wouldn't jump to conclusions until after the official release. That way, you can avoid disappointment. That's not to say you shouldn't buy SB-E now, just be prepared for the possibility of Haswell being a match for highly parallel tasks and, of course, better at other tasks. All in all, you shouldn't feel guilty for buying SB-E now - worse case scenario doesn't look that bad at all. Besides, with SB-E you can enjoy the benefit of having superior system memory bandwidth.

Now, onto the build itself. It's looking quite good, I still have a few suggestions that might make it better though.

I apologize for this long and rather 'romantic' first section. I got the feeling the OP needed a bit of this particular 'advice' so I went for it.

Thanks for taking the time for such a detailed reply! After reading your post, I considered carefully the pros and cons of SB-E and Haswell. Eventually, I ended up ordering the components in the original post. I think it will serve me well, it's much faster than anything I've used so far and will allow me to test my OpenMP and MPI code up to 12 threads. As a side node, one of the workloads that I run in the last 12 months that was extremely sensitive to L3 cache size and memory bandwidth (that code went through a lot of profiling).

The promised suggestions:

You can keep the components you've listed. If the GTX 460 is good enough for now - keep it, you can always change it later on. It's unlikely you'd ever need a more powerful PSU for a single video card build, even with a 130W CPU.

Overclocking. I know you've stated that you do not plan on overclocking a few times, but I would still like to voice a +1 in favor of overclocking. You probably have very good reasons not to, but at least reconsider - SB is a particularly good overclocker and pretty much any X79 board makes it very easy. There shouldn't be any reason to worry about negative impacts on CPU longevity as long as you don't apply an extreme overclock.

Faster memory. This one is kind of tied to the previous one. Any faster memory would be generally speaking 'better'. Again, I have the feeling you've considered this as well and might have a reason against it. You seem to need capacity, why not speed and latency (lower)? 2400 MHz would be your optimal choice, Corsair's Vengeance are reliable and not crazy expensive like the Dominator Platinums. Any XMP-enabled 2400 MHz kit would do. It's very easy to enable too - just flick on the XMProfile in the BIOS/UEFI and you're good to go.

I prioritize reliability. Thus, I prefer the CPU and memory to operate within specifications. Unfortunately, I do need a lot of memory. Today I was using more than 7 GB on my dual-core laptop to run four simulations in parallel. Scale it by a factor of 3 and 16 GB wouldn't be enough.

Form factor. Bigger isn't always better. Why not go with a smaller enclosure - you can certainly afford it with no cons whatsoever. My suggestion is to go with an Asus Rampage IV Gene (micro-ATX) and one of the following enclosures: Silverstone SG09, Fractal Design Define Mini, Silverstone FT03 (new version). My favorite is the SG09 - truly genius use of space. The Define Mini is very, very quiet - practically silent. The FT03 would be my last choice, however it's the prettiest and most stylish. You needn't worry about airflow, poor thermals and such - these cases are solid and can accommodate standard-size components. After installing your video card you would still have two spare expansion slots, should you need them.

CPU cooler. I would suggest a closed-loop liquid cooler. Prices on most of these have come down, there are new models, etc.

The SG09 looks amazing! However, I prefer to have more space for future upgrades. I'm also not very experience with system building and more space should make the process slightly easier. The Corsair case should still fit easily below my desk.

Thank you all guys for your replies. I will let you know how the build turns out!