Input on a high-end gaming rig

[nxr_]

Hello builders and enthusiasts,

I'm designing my new rig for the end of 2017 - early middle 2018. It's the first time for me to build a system from scratch. But I've read a lot and tried to keep myself updated with the new trends.

I put together a few parts (pc part picker link below) and will follow the template provided to describe my build. After that, I'll have a few questions to submit to the community.

***** PC PARTS *****

PC Part picker link here.

Approximate Purchase Date: End of October - Mid November

Budget Range: Max 4500USD

System Usage: 4K Gaming @ 60 FPS, Ultra / Very high settings on recent releases.

Monitor: Asus - PG27AQ

OS: Windows 10 Pro 64

Location: Tokyo (we have kakaku.com, an excellent PC parts retailer. And Akihabara )

Overclocking: Probably not

SLI or Crossfire: Probably not. At least not now.

Monitor Resolution: The Asus ROG one selected is 3840*2160.

CPU: i7-7700K

CPU Cooler: AIO Corsair H100i v2, with stock fans.

Mobo: Asus MAXIMUS IX Hero (ATX form factor)

Ram: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2*16) DDR4

Storage: Samsung 960 Evo Pro 1TB (nvme ssd) & Samsung 950 Evo 256GB.

GPU: MSI GeForce GTX 1080TI 11GB Gaming X

Case: Fractal Design Define S (/w side window)

PSU: Full modular platinum EVGA SUperNova p2 850W

Fan: Stock fan for the PSU AIO watercool solution mounted in the front with the rad as intake.
1*Fractal Design - HF14-BK 118.2 CFM 140mm Fan mounted top back as exhaust.
NZXT - Aer F120 (Twin Pack) 63.0 CFM 120mm Fans mounted top as exhaust.

************************

The reason why I moving on with the i7-7700K and not the new CPU from Intel (i7-7800X) is that we will have the new 10nm CPU Ice Lake coming in end of 2018, which will bring a massive upgrade. I don't want to invest now in a x299 mobo and CPU if I'll change this one in 8 months.

A few questions now:

1. The i7-7700K has "just" 16 pcie lanes available. Since I'll have my ssd using *4 pcielanes, I'll just have 12 (8) available for the 1080TI. Will it bring a big performance issue gaming wise if I'm not leveraging the full *16 pcie lanes for the gpu?

2. Is the overall cooling solution good? (CPU AIO rad mounted front with 2 120mm as intake, 1 in the back as exhaust and two on top as exhaust, no blower style GPU)? I'm not planning to do any crazy overclocking.

3. Is the monitor a good pick for 4K gaming?

4. Any comments on the general performance of the build?

Thanks a lot for your help and for reading my post.

Have a great day.

 

[whm1974]

The reason why I moving on with the i7-7700K and not the new CPU from Intel (i7-7800X) is that we will have the new 10nm CPU Ice Lake coming in end of 2018, which will bring a massive upgrade. I don't want to invest now in a x299 mobo and CPU if I'll change this one in 8 months.

A six core/12 thread Coffee Lake CPU will last you for years. And the CPUs will require Z370 chipsets not the X299. And why would you need to replace the CPU and motherboard in 8 months anyway?

 

[nxr_]

whm1974,

Thanks for your reply.

Well, it's always the same story right. How long are you willing to wait in order to get the latest tech and save some bucks. The Coffee Lake might last for years. Release is expected next month . However, as far as I know, the performance upgrade with Coffee Lake, Skylake X is not as big as the one expected next year with Ice Lake.

Before moving on:

"THe Cpus will require Z370, not X299" > I was talking about i7-7800X proco (Skylake X), not Coffee Lake.

Then to answer your question, I basically have three choices here:
1. Go with Skylake X (and buy a X299 Mobo and SX CPU).
2. Go with Coffee Lake (and buy a a Z370 Mobo with a Coffee Lake CPU).
3. Go with "Old's" i7-7700k ("cheap" but still pretty good proco, cheap mobo) and wait for the Ice Lake which will bring a huge performance boost over Skylake X / Coffee Lake.

See where I'm coming from? I have a good budget but feel like wasting money investing in a new arch which will be completely outperformed by a new one next year.
You can tell me it's pretty much always the case but with AMD's new offers and jumps on the market, I feel like mass CPU upgrade from Intel would worth the waiting time.

 

[whm1974]

whm1974,

Thanks for your reply.

Well, it's always the same story right. How long are you willing to wait in order to get the latest tech and save some bucks. The Coffee Lake might last for years. Release is expected next month . However, as far as I know, the performance upgrade with Coffee Lake, Skylake X is not as big as the one expected next year with Ice Lake.

Before moving on:

"THe Cpus will require Z370, not X299" > I was talking about i7-7800X proco (Skylake X), not Coffee Lake.

Then to answer your question, I basically have three choices here:
1. Go with Skylake X (and buy a X299 Mobo and SX CPU).
2. Go with Coffee Lake (and buy a a Z370 Mobo with a Coffee Lake CPU).
3. Go with "Old's" i7-7700k ("cheap" but still pretty good proco, cheap mobo) and wait for the Ice Lake which will bring a huge performance boost over Skylake X / Coffee Lake.

See where I'm coming from? I have a good budget but feel like wasting money investing in a new arch which will be completely outperformed by a new one next year.
You can tell me it's pretty much always the case but with AMD's new offers and jumps on the market, I feel like mass CPU upgrade from Intel would worth the waiting time.

Well I kind of doubt Ice Lake will have a major performance boost over Coffee Lake and SkyLake X, Well nothing that would make me upgrade a Coffee Lake system If I built one this year anyway in 8 months.

I would only build a X299 system if I needed the quad channel memory, 10 or more cores, and a large number of PCIe lanes. Otherwise I would just go with Coffee Lake.

 

[nxr_]

whm1974,

Well I kind of doubt Ice Lake will have a major performance boost over Coffee Lake and SkyLake X

Shifting from a 14nm to 10nm. I'll be honest with you, I don't know how "great" it is (still a newbie). But it seems to be actually quite a thing within the specialized press.

I would only build a X299 system if I needed the quad channel memory, 10 or more cores, and a large number of PCIe lanes

A larger number of PCIe lanes is actually my concern (see Q.1 in my original post.)

To be honest with you, the fact that Coffee Lake has the same number of pcie lanes as the old gen, with a few core more (which won't make a big deal in gaming) and maybe a turbo clock speed slightly higher than the i7-7700K makes me feel I don't really have a big plus going with Coffee Lake instead of the good ol' i7-7700K gaming wise.

 

[whm1974]

Speaking for myself, if I was building a new system this year or early next year I would go either with Coffee Lake i5 and i7, or with the Ryzen 5 and 7 CPUs. The X299 motherboard and CPUs are too expensive for my taste.

 

[nxr_]

Hmm, you make a point. Now I'm seriously considering switching to Coffee Lake after seeing some preliminary benchmark. Still have to dig on a decent mobo for this arch though... And have someone alleviate my concerns on the 16* cpie lanes...

 

[whm1974]

Hmm, you make a point. Now I'm seriously considering switching to Coffee Lake after seeing some preliminary benchmark. Still have to dig on a decent mobo for this arch though... And have someone alleviate my concerns on the 16* cpie lanes...

You should be fine with a single 1080 Ti. SLI is more trouble then it is worth. Are you planning on getting a NVMe PCIe SSD?

 

[nxr_]

Are you planning on getting a NVMe PCIe SSD?

Indeed. The Samsung 960 Evo 1TB one. Leaving me only with the choice of running my GTX1080TI on a *8 PCIe slot.

 

[whm1974]

Indeed. The Samsung 960 Evo 1TB one. Leaving me only with the choice of running my GTX1080TI on a *8 PCIe slot.

Wouldn't you be able to use the Samsung SSD off the chipset PCIe lanes?And from what understand the PCIe v3 16x slots have way more bandwidth then current GPUs can use anyway. So you should be fine.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If you are concerned about number of PCI-E lanes, then get ThreadRipper. They have a fairly-inexpensive (8C/16T) 1900X model for $550-600, plus a nice $400 mobo, plus $600-700 for RAM, you'll have a nice system for sure, that is fairly future-proof (*).

(*) Well, the next three years, I feel.

 

[whm1974]

If you are concerned about number of PCI-E lanes, then get ThreadRipper. They have a fairly-inexpensive (8C/16T) 1900X model for $550-600, plus a nice $400 mobo, plus $600-700 for RAM, you'll have a nice system for sure, that is fairly future-proof (*).

(*) Well, the next three years, I feel.

A 16C/32T CPU is way overkill for gaming. And I think the OP concerns about the number of PCIe lanes he might need are overblown.

 

[nxr_]

Thanks VirtualLarry and whm1974 for your replies.

First thing, I made myself confused and also confused people with the PCI-E lanes limitation thingy... I will - in any case - benefits from the 16* CPI-E lanes for my GPU since I'll leverage the CPU CPI-E lanes by mounting the GPU on the first *16 CPIE slot on the mobo. Every other devices (nvme ssd) will use the chipset CPI-E lanes, as whm1974 stated earlier. Since I won't go for a SLI, no bottleneck / limitation will occur.

For the CPU, after reading a bit more documentation and article, I think I'll stay with the i7-7700K. My PCI-E lanes concern disappeared. For this machine, I don't really need a big amount of core/thread since once again I'll use the system for gaming. The Threadripper looks indeed a bit overkill. But I'll keep the proco suggested by VirtualLarry in mind for my next Unix hypervisor (off topic for now).

Thanks both of you for the CPU suggestions.
Would be very cool if you guys (and others ) could also provide me some feedbacks about the cooling solution described and / or overall system configuration.

 

[whm1974]

Well the K CPUs don't come with a HSF, so you will have to buy one. If you are not going to overclock just get i7-7700 CPU instead as that come with the HSF.

 

[DaveSimmons]

For real-world use, SATA is fine for SSDs. Maps load as fast as the CPU and often remote server allows.

Coffee Lake makes much more sense than X299. According to the announced specs, it's as fast as the 7700K but with 2 extra cores for future proofing.

What you might want to upgrade next year is the GPU, when the GTX 2080ti is eventually released. By not wasting money on X299 you'll already have it in this budget.

For storage I like to have the OS on one drive, Steam / Origin / etc, on another. I'd probably get a 256 - 512 GB boot drive + 1-2 TB game installs drive, both EVO SSD. That also slightly improves I/O since each has its own controller and buffers, so OS activity and RAM paging does not affect map loading. I'm not fond of hybrid drives, they sometimes have "issues" (Apple dropped AFS support for them in the initial release of 10.13 while working to resolve those "issues.")

If the 8700K is like the 7700K, you'll want to pay the $50 to have someone like SiliconLottery delid it for you and apply good thermal paste. SL can also sell you a CPU that they guarantee will hit a certain overclock.

I don't plan to overclock, so I'll be getting the 8700 non-K for its 65 watt TDP instead of 95 watt, with just a 100 MHz drop in turbo speed. It should be fine with just a Noctua 120mm air cooler.

 

[whm1974]

Personally I would build a Coffee Lake system as you are doing a new build anyway.

 

[nxr_]

Well the K CPUs don't come with a HSF, so you will have to buy one.

I'm using an AIO for the CPU cooling anyway. I know it might be overkill since I'm not planning to do crazy overclocking, but I simply prefer the aesthetics better.

DaveSimmon,

You made a point. I actually reviewed my storage configuration. I ditched the hybrid and replaced it with a Samsung 950 Evo 256GB. I'll either put that one in a SATA socket or PCIE one. I'll use the 256GB for OS and the 1TB M2 for applications / game.

Coffee Lake makes much more sense than X299. According to the announced specs, it's as fast as the 7700K but with 2 extra cores for future proofing.

Thing is, I don't really need these extra cores for now. And by the time the majority of games would be able to leverage an optimal multicore configuration, I would have switched to cannonlake / icelake anyway.
Coffee Lake is not even out yet, and I'm not really confident playing the early adopter on a setup, which might be initially unstable, for a minor / unnoticeable performance boost ingame.

f the 8700K is like the 7700K, you'll want to pay the $50 to have someone like SiliconLottery delid it for you and apply good thermal paste. SL can also sell you a CPU that they guarantee will hit a certain overclock.

That's an interesting proposition but I don't think SL ships in Japan. And my Japanese level is not good enough to scout for any local retailers and ask them to do that .

I'd like to keep the "K version" because I'm not excluding playing a bit with overclocking in the future (mild one). But it is by no means a requirement in my build.

 

[Campy]

I wouldn't worry about PCIE lanes.

I have the Define S myself with a 360 rad up top as exhaust, and 3x140mm intake in front. Cooling will be fine with a 240 rad too. By the way the Define S doesn't have tempered glass(just normal window), maybe you're thinking of the Define C Tempered glass version or Meshify C? Crossing my fingers that they release a Meshify S too.

I don't know anything about the monitor because I favour high refresh rate gaming at 1080p.

As for performance I would get Coffee Lake since it's so close to coming out. Overclocking would be great and it's very simple these days, 6 cores at close to 5GHz will yield amazing performance for gaming that will last many years.
The only problem is high end intel cpus tend to have some thermal issues due to terrible thermal interface material between the cpu die and heatspreader, and this problem requires delidding of the cpu to fix. This is also an issue with the 7700k. As a poster above mentioned you can buy a CPU from silicon lottery that is already delidded and put back together, which also has a guaranteed clock it will hit.

Consider getting 3200MHz CL14 memory such as this. It's unfortunate that RAM is so expensive currently and this will probably not have a very large impact on performance, but with such a high budget I would go for it anyway if it were my build.

 

[DaveSimmons]

, but with such a high budget I would go for it anyway if it were my build.

Only if enough is set aside for a GTX 2080 ti. That will have a huge impact compared to everything else on the list, possibly combined. At 4K it's the GPU that matters.

Thing is, I don't really need these extra cores for now. And by the time the majority of games would be able to leverage an optimal multicore configuration, I would have switched to cannonlake / icelake anyway.

It releases next Friday in the US, and the 8700 non-K has 4.6 GHz turbo clock with 65 watt TDP. At least on paper it's much easier to cool while being faster than the 7700K at stock ( = 4.5 GHz turbo). There's a good chance buying it will give you all the CPU you need for years, meaning you won't need to rush to upgrade.

 

[nxr_]

Thanks Campy and DaveSimmons for your answers.

the Define S doesn't have tempered glass(just normal window)

Yup, you're right, my mistake. Wanted to say a normal window, not a tempered glass one.

I have the Define S myself with a 360 rad up top as exhaust, and 3x140mm intake in front.

Do you think that having the radiator front with two fans working as intake, with two fans on the top and one fan on the rear as exhausts is a good solution? Models I picked for exhaust fans are basically airflow ones and the intake (rads) are static pressure.

With this configuration, I do believe I have negative pressure within my case, which is not necessarily recommended. However, I'm afraid that putting another fan as intake at the bottom of the case will conflict with the GPU fan and create turbulence.

As for performance I would get Coffee Lake since it's so close to coming out. Overclocking would be great and it's very simple these days, 6 cores at close to 5GHz will yield amazing performance for gaming that will last many years.

The 8700 non-K has 4.6 GHz turbo clock with 65 watt TDP. At least on paper it's much easier to cool while being faster than the 7700K at stock ( = 4.5 GHz turbo).

I think that you guys, with wmh1974, convinced me to pick up a i7-8700. Need to find a proper mobo for that socket now.

Consider getting 3200MHz CL14 memory such as this.

Just as DaveSimmons said, it's a bit expensive for no big performance boost, even if the budget allows it. Will prefer to actually make some savings on the budget to get the 2080TI when it gets released.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Just in case you aren't up on the code names, the plain 8700 non-K can't be overclocked. But with 2 extra cores and a turbo that matches the 7700K at stock I don't really think you'll need to. Especially at 4K where the GPU is the limitation. And that 65 watt TDP makes it much more power-efficient.

With the non-K you don't need to spend extra for higher speed RAM, just get that at stock speed too.

You also don't need to buy a $200+ motherboard with eleventy-phase power to support an overclock. A basic Z370 in the $100 - 150 range will be fine.

 

[nxr_]

Thanks DaveSimmons.

Yup, I think I'll be fine without OC. I still want to go with an AIO cooler. At least just for the look (I hate those big HSF monsters).

The RAM I put in my original post (Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200) is overkill?

And for the mobo, thanks for the advice. Will wait to see what constructors release and then will update my part list.

 

[whm1974]

Well the stock HSF that the non-K CPUs ship with are not really all of that big. The money you save on the AIO cooler, you could use in other areas.

 

[Campy]

Only if enough is set aside for a GTX 2080 ti. That will have a huge impact compared to everything else on the list, possibly combined. At 4K it's the GPU that matters.

Agreed.

Do you think that having the radiator front with two fans working as intake, with two fans on the top and one fan on the rear as exhausts is a good solution? Models I picked for exhaust fans are basically airflow ones and the intake (rads) are static pressure.

With this configuration, I do believe I have negative pressure within my case, which is not necessarily recommended. However, I'm afraid that putting another fan as intake at the bottom of the case will conflict with the GPU fan and create turbulence.

I don't know what the best setup is, but lots of people have the radiator up front so it should definitely not be a problem. Having an extra intake at the bottom can in my mind only help since fresh air directly at the gpu should be a positive, but then again i'm not an expert and airflow/cooling through cases is a very inaccurate science due to there being so many variables. Either way you will be fine in terms of cooling.

 

[nxr_]

Thanks guys for your insightful comments. It really helped me a lot.

I revised my setup a bit after taking into consideration some of your remarks and doing a bit of additional research on my own.

1. Thanks to Campy, I replaced the Define S case with the Meshify C. I simply love how this case looks. And I want it to be part of my rig.

2. Since I'll probably get the 2080 TI next year, no need for me to put extra dollars / yen in fully optimized / factory overclock 1080 TI. A default, sober 1080 TI would actually do the trick and be cheaper. I changed the MSI 1080 TI with the Asus Turbo GTX 1080 TI. Main differences are that the GPU has now a blower-style fan, is cheaper, has slightly less performance, but looks better (at least for me).

3. I won't do any overclock, at least with this generation. As wmh1974 suggested, there is no immediate need for me to invest in a AIO cooler. Since I do care about the appearance of my rig and proper cooling, I chose to replace the Corsair H100i V2 AIO with the Cryorig H7 Quad Lum.

Now, what I'd like to do, is to revise my can fan configuration. Will probably have three intake at the front, one exhaust rear and two exhausts top.