New Gaming Build - Looking for Feedback

[CRash55]

t has been 4 years since I built my last PC and the only internal component I have upgraded was the video card (GTX 690 to GTX 980Ti). Below is a notional build. I am looking for any and all input on what it is good or bad. I am located in NY.

Time frame - By the end of Jul (spare Windows 8 code I can use to get Windows 10 free)

Budget - Whatever it takes within some reason.

Usage - Primarily gaming - 4k. Occasional CAD, photo and video editing.

Existing Components - Monitor (Dell P2715Q - 4k), Keyboard (Logitech G11), Mouse (Logitech G502), Speakers (Klipsch Pro Media Ultra 5.1), Power Supply (EVGA 1200 P2 - got it half price when I bought the 980 Ti)

Possible Components:
Case: Cooler Master HAF X (I used it for my last build and like the front hot swap bays)
Video Cards: Two EVGA 1080 GTX FTW
Motherboard: EVGA X99 FTW K
CPU: Intel Core i7-6950X
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Silver Arrow IB-E Extreme or Le Grand Macho RT
Memory: Gskill TridentZ Series 4 x16GB
Boot Drive: Intel 750 Series 1.2TB
Data Drive: WD 4 TB Black
Optical Drive: LG WH14NS40
Firewire: Vantec 3 port (need it for scanner and video camera)

I am not wed to any particular store or component at this point. I have no desire for water cooling. Unsure about overclocking or not, though I would like to have the ability.

Tell me where I can improve or went overboard. I am already thinking i7-6850K may be better choice

 

[UsandThem]

Well, you pretty much picked top-of-the-line components, so I imagine you have a very high budget.

If you want to save money and mostly game, you could get a 6700k and a z170 motherboard. Just look at some benchmarks on the possible CPUs and decide what is right for you.

Also, that's also a LOT of ram. Gamers are perfectly fine with 16 GB. But if you believe you will need 64 GB or just want it, go for it.

 

[CRash55]

I was going with X99 over z170 to get the 40 PCIe lanes instead of 20. That will allow me to run both video cards at x16 and the Intel HD at x4.

I didn't miss something there did I?

As for the RAM I figured half fill it so that I can upgrade later if need be without needing to get rid of any.

 

[lehtv]

For 4K gaming I would have dual 980 Ti's or dual 1070's. A single 1080 with medium settings would also work, but 1070's offer better perf/$. Given that you already have the 980 Ti and a powerful PSU, dual 980 Ti's offer the best perf/$.

What is your current CPU?

Case - I find HAF X to be outdated in its design, although if hot swap bays are a must, I don't really know what else to recommend. Personally I don't need hot swap bays and would look towards Corsair 400Q or Fractal Define S with additional fans.

Video cards - OK

Motherboard+CPU - I don't see any need for X99 or a hexacore here. CAD and photo editing need an i5 or a quad core i7 at most, occasional video editing is also easily accommodated by a quad core i7, and Z170 chipset supports x8/x8 PCIe. x16/x16 won't offer that much of an advantage, it's not worth it in terms of perf/price. I would get Asus Z170-A or Z170 Pro Gaming with i7-6700K.

Memory - 64GB RAM for occasional editing? I think you'll be fine with 2x8GB 2666MHz, 2x16GB at most.

Cooler - HR-02 Macho Rev. B takes i7-6700K up to 4.5GHz while being quiet and cool enough.

Boot - Seems overkill. 500GB SSD is enough for OS, programs and a relatively large Steam library. If you need scratch disks for editing programs, it's best to have it be physically separate from the OS disk anyway. 120GB should be enough for multiple scratch partitions, but generally 250GB drives have better cost per GB.

Data - I would probably buy WD Blue 3TB 5400 RPM. Black drives are a little noisy and just unnecessarily expensive, the difference in performance between Blue and Black is peanuts.

Optical - OK
Firewire - OK

I was going with X99 over z170 to get the 40 PCIe lanes instead of 20. That will allow me to run both video cards at x16 and the Intel HD at x4.

Why would you need to run Intel HD at the same time with two 980 Ti's? Does integrated graphics even use PCIe lanes...??

As for the RAM I figured half fill it so that I can upgrade later if need be without needing to get rid of any.

I don't get it. OS uses a few GB, games typically use another few GB. Most gaming PC's are fine with 8GB of RAM. Having more RAM than you need doesn't make any difference to performance. Just because an X99 motherboard has 8 RAM slots doesn't mean you need to fill them all up with maximum capacity modules at some point.

In any case, mixing different kits is not guaranteed to work, especially when talking about total of 8. Even four modules can have problems working together if they are from two dual kits.

 

[CRash55]

Thanks for the input.

Current CPU is i7-3770K

I am not really concerned about the cost more about performance. I figure for once go for the best regardless of price. I could see myself never possibly replacing the new build since as I get older I seem to game less.

I will look into those cases. I have used the hot swap several times and found them convenient though not a deal killer.

For the mb/CPU combo - Again performance over price. if the X99 with a 6850k will give me better than a z170 with a 6700k than I will stick with the X99. I will so a bit more digging though and see what my extra money would get me.

Memory - was planning on half filling whatever board I got. Since the x99 board supports quad channel that wound up being 4x16.

Cooler - thanks good to know

Boot - I checked and on my current rig I am using 500 GB+ on installed apps and games. I know cost wise I am better off with a smaller drive but since cost isn't an issue..

Data - Good to know. Last time I bought HDs everything wasn't color coded. I will look at the Blues instead

 

[mnewsham]

Why would you need to run Intel HD at the same time with two 980 Ti's? Does integrated graphics even use PCIe lanes...??

Pretty sure he is talking about the Intel 750 SSD, since it's an NVMe drive it will use the PCIe lanes for the 2.4gbps read speeds.

 

[CRash55]

Pretty sure he is talking about the Intel 750 SSD, since it's an NVMe drive it will use the PCIe lanes for the 2.4gbps read speeds.

Yes that is exactly what I was talking about. Somehow I missed those bottom two comments in his post when I first read it. So two video cards at x16 and one SSD at x4 means I am using 36 lanes. If I change to the z170 then I would be running the GPUs at x8.

As for the memory issue I was planning on buying a quad channel kit. I know 64GB is overkill. 16GB is what I have now and it runs fine for the most part. Every time in the past that I have had to upgrade RAM I seem to wind up with reducing speed or getting rid of modules to make everything work correctly. I figure 64GB is future proofing. It also leaves the slots closest to the CPU cooler open to minimize any clearance issues

 

[lehtv]

6850K gets you 200MHz more stock speed and 12 more PCIe lanes over 6800K. If you're going to overclock anyway, the stock speed difference is irrelevant. As for PCIe lanes, running x16 instead of x8 only gives you a few percent benefit, not enough to warrant paying $200 extra for the CPU.

On the other hand if you're not going to overclock, you won't see much benefit compared to 6700K which performs better per core. See for instance Guru3D 6850K review (linked page and the next 6 pages).

Overall this means 6700K offers excellent performance out of the box while for overclockers the 6800K makes the most sense out of the top end CPU's.

Boot - I checked and on my current rig I am using 500 GB+ on installed apps and games. I know cost wise I am better off with a smaller drive but since cost isn't an issue..

You know you can always make Steam backup images of any games you don't play, right? Doesn't even take that long, and you can easily reinstall games that you want to start playing again by loading them onto the SSD from the backup image. I'm a pretty active gamer and I have a 500GB SSD for OS, programs and games, only 250GB of which is taken up by games. Most of those games I haven't touched on for over a year.

I'm not saying you should make compromises in order to save money. On the contrary it seems to me there is no compromise to be made here, so why spend the extra on stuff that's pointless. No matter how much money you have there's almost certainly something better and more meaningful to spend it on than overkill PC components. But if you're sure these extra spendings on PCIe lanes and stupidly big SSD's and whatnot aren't pointless, go ahead.

Pretty sure he is talking about the Intel 750 SSD, since it's an NVMe drive it will use the PCIe lanes for the 2.4gbps read speeds.

Ah of course

 

[CRash55]

I am curious as to why x16 only gives a slight increase over x8. As an engineer this makes me think that either the card can't handle the x16 speed or the system can't feed it at x16 . I went and did some searching and it looks like even PCI 2 to 3 made little difference.

The Guru 3D review actually recommended the 6850 though I can see where the performance difference is minor.

 

[UsandThem]

I am curious as to why x16 only gives a slight increase over x8. As an engineer this makes me think that either the card can't handle the x16 speed or the system can't feed it at x16 . I went and did some searching and it looks like even PCI 2 to 3 made little difference.

The Guru 3D review actually recommended the 6850 though I can see where the performance difference is minor.

Simple. The current cards are unable to saturate the bandwith provided by the x16 slot. It's been that way for a while now. Might be the next generation, or two, before they take advantage of the extra bandwith.

This isn't to say that PCI-E 3.0 is not faster than PCI-E 2.0, or that x16 is the same as x8, but rather that current video cards and games are simply not able to utilize the additional bandwidth they provide. In fact, we recently showed that the performance of a Xeon Phi card is greatly reduced if you run it at x8 speeds in the blog post Performance of Xeon Phi on PCIe x8.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Impact-of-PCI-E-Speed-on-Gaming-Performance-518/

 

[CRash55]

Since it is a card limitation and not a chipset / cpu one then I would expect the newer cards to show more improvement. The 980Ti showed a slight improvement. I believe the 1080 can handle more data flow than the 980Ti so it should show greater improvement. If I want to be capable of taking full advantage of new cards in a couple years then I would want the X99 to be ready for x16/x16.

 

[UsandThem]

Since it is a card limitation and not a chipset / cpu one then I would expect the newer cards to show more improvement. The 980Ti showed a slight improvement. I believe the 1080 can handle more data flow than the 980Ti so it should show greater improvement. If I want to be capable of taking full advantage of new cards in a couple years then I would want the X99 to be ready for x16/x16.

Maybe. There's always something new coming around. Who knows, in 4-5 years we will probably have 32x or PCI-E 5.0 slots.

Buy based on your needs for today and ride the system out until it you can't anymore. I guarantee there will be something released in the next 5 years that might make you want to build a new system since you seem like a bleeding edge type person, and want to game at 4k.

However, if the CPU performance increases at the same speed yearly it has since Bloomfield (2008), you should be able to keep your system for many years. It has been a complete yawnfest since Sandy Bridge for the most part.

Back in 2000, I would have never thought that a person could build a computer and have it stay pretty relevant for 5-7 years.

 

[CRash55]

My current PC is 4 years old and the only change I made was to replace the 690 with a 980Ti. I am playing Fallout 4 at 4K with no issues so long as AA is off. My daughter is using my previous build from 2007 with some added memory and new videocard (8800GTX to SLI 8800GTX to 750Ti) She plays Fallout at 1440P though the PC is having some issues (blue screens). So history tell me I will replace the video at least once before my next build. That has me leaning towards the X99.

We are near if not at the end of Moore's law. We are hitting a physical limit on how small the traces can be. We will need a breakthrough in architecture or a new technology to see a big jump in performance. In the near term I think we will see bigger processors and possibly a return to separate processors for separate functions (like the old math co-processors)

 

[UsandThem]

You could be right about current tech breakthroughs slowing down.

However, it also hasn't helped AMD hasn't really challenged Intel for many years, and Intel has been more focused on effeciency and power since desktop sales have been declining (10% decline in 2015 the last I read).

I think if AMD actually has a competitive product with Zen (pushed back to 2017 I think), we might actually get a mainstream Intel CPU that actually has a large performance increase over the one it is replacing.

Edit: I just checked, and at the end of 2015 Intel now has a 87.7% market share. AMD was at 12.1%. I think that is the biggest issue.

 

[CRash55]

I was at Nano for Defense last fall a done of the speakers was DR Stanley Williams from HP R&D. He pointed out that we are approaching a physical limit and suggested that we are heading towards specialized processors. So more competition from AMD may help get a boost from Intel but without a radical shift in technology we are going to only see small improvements for a while