Skylake Build (moderately small and quiet)

[Kartajan]

1. Use: Occasional Gaming, HTPC, Media Conversion (MP4/ MKV), General Use
2. Budget: under 1400
3. Country: US.
5. Brand preference. N/A.
6. Current parts: BitFenix Shinobi Case, 2x Asus VE278Q Monitor, KB, Mouse
7. NO Overclocking.
8. Resolution: 3840x1080
9. WHEN do you plan to build it? within 2 weeks
10. No Software needed (have all on hand).

Note that I want to keep the power envelope low in order to minimize heat and noise.

Proposed Build:
ASUS GeForce GTX 970 STRIX-GTX970-DC2OC-4GD5
Seasonic SS-660XP2 ATX
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4
ASUS Z170M-PLUS LGA 1151 Intel Z170 Micro ATX
Intel Core i7-6700 8M LGA 1151
Samsung 850 Pro 256GB (SSD) QTY2 RAID 0

All CONSTRUCTIVE criticism is appreciated.

 

[arcenite]

I wouldn't bother with the RAID0 SSDs but that is just me... been there done that not worth the hassle.

 

[Kartajan]

So are you saying that t would be better to go for the Intel 750 Series HHHL (CEM2.0) 400GB PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) ?

 

[lehtv]

A normal 500GB SATA 6Gb/s SSD will be just fine. Not sure what makes you think your use case warrants a high end expensive SSD.

AsRock Z170 Pro4 $118 (Shinobi fits ATX boards so no need to get mATX, unless purchasing a new mATX case)
i7-6700 + 2x8GB Corsair DDR4-2666 $418 (after $25 combo discount)
Arctic i11 $23
Asus GTX 970 Strix $305 AR
Crucial MX200 500GB m.2 $193
EVGA 550 G2 $60 AR (shell shocker, grab it fast - this is a 10/10 PSU)
= $1114

I suggest exploring the motherboard BIOS for an option to force all four cores to the maximum turbo speed.

 

[Ken g6]

I'm not even sure RAID-ed M.2 drives (in PCIe mode) would bring any speed benefit. They still have the bottleneck of [thread=2450115]the DMI 3.0[/thread].

That said, a single M.2 in PCIe shows a huge performance gain on Z170:

 

[Deders]

Why not go for the Samsung 950 pro? Trades blows with the Intel for a fraction of the price. Should be available within the next 2 weeks.

 

[Kartajan]

re: use case and a "ballin' SSD"

I spend a lot of time in media conversion, and want to cut that down.. Note that my current setup is capable of doing all of my tasks, just not meeting my desires as to performance.

 

[lehtv]

I would think media conversion is CPU intensive rather than disk intensive. It's not like copying where you just have to read from A and write to B.

 

[Kartajan]

you are correct in that the process is more CPU than IO constrained, but I am looking to cut both bottlenecks down.

And I love speed anyway......