Under $2500 OC Build. Thoughts?

[rick711]

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/rick711/saved/PYTtt6

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($307.27 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Thermaltake Water 3.0 Ultimate 99.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($139.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 OC FORMULA ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($186.13 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Trident X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory ($169.98 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Intel 730 Series 480GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($219.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card ($406.13 @ Newegg)
Case: Corsair 760T Black ATX Full Tower Case ($159.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: Corsair 850W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($189.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: LG BH16NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer ($87.26 @ OutletPC)
Monitor: Asus VG248QE 144Hz 24.0" Monitor ($264.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $2131.72


These are the components I came up with after weeks of researching benchmarks and reviews.

The whole idea behind this build is to allow expansion for an additional GTX 970 and a 1440p or 4k monitor. I already bought the SSD, RAM, and MSI GTX970 Golden Edition on Black Friday, and am going to buy the other components soon.

I haven't researched which additional fans to get, and if I should replace the existing case/liquid cooler radiator fans. Any ideas on the best fans out there?

I have to play it safe with the ASUS 1080p monitor (the one everyone has) and one video card until I can afford the expansion. If I do get an additional video card, it probably won't be the Golden Edition as only 2,000 of them were made and they're sold out! That last part has me a little worried because the 2nd video card will not be identical. Do Sli video cards need to be operating at the same clock speed?

Any thoughts or suggestions for alternate components?

Thanks and can't wait to hear criticism!

 

[escrow4]

I wouldn't bother with a 4790K now that the 5820K is out. 6 real haswell cores with 6 hyperthreaded cores you can easily overclock to 4.0GHz - it will last longer now with these sloppy console ports. For $2K I'd want a meatier CPU.

 

[Essence_of_War]

I respectfully disagree that Haswell-E is a shoe-in for this budget range. Platform costs for Haswell-E are VERY high, and I think the 4790K is an eminently reasonable alternative, especially given that it's clockes so bloody fast right out of the box.

Any thoughts or suggestions for alternate components?

Thanks and can't wait to hear criticism!

A couple of things to consider:

CPU Cooler: Thermaltake Water 3.0 Ultimate 99.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($139.99 @ Amazon)

I'm not in love with the AIO's from a cost benefit perspective, but reasonable people can disagree here. I'd rather go with a high-end air cooler like the NH-D15, the TR Silver Arrow, or the Phanteks TCP14. They will save you ~$60 and they have a much more graceful failure mode. 😛

Power Supply: Corsair 850W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($189.99 @ Newegg)

This seems steep for this PSU and I suspect a lot of that cost is the extra 2% efficiency of platinum. You can get the top-tier EVGA 750W supernova for $110 AR and +$10 gets you the 850W supernova.
It's Gold vs. Platinum, but it's also much less expensive, still fully modular, and comes with both impressive warranty and reviews by JonnyGuru.

 

[escrow4]

How is $200-$300 "very high" for a box that will last? Get a cheaper PSU and its hardly anything.

 

[mfenn]

Ouch, its a shame that you bought the GPU, SSD, and RAM already, they are not great deals and are some of the things that I was going to recommend better prices on. Is there any chance you could return them for a refund?

And yes, if you're running SLI you need the cards to be running at he same clock speed to cut down on microstutter as much as possible.

 

[mfenn]

I wouldn't bother with a 4790K now that the 5820K is out. 6 real haswell cores with 6 hyperthreaded cores you can easily overclock to 4.0GHz - it will last longer now with these sloppy console ports. For $2K I'd want a meatier CPU.

Technically speaking all the logical cores are hyperthreads when HT is enabled. There isn't one set of threads which is faster or preferred.

Anyway, the claim that you'll require a 6-core CPU due to "sloppy console ports" isn't really properly evidenced. As it stands today, the i7 4790K is several factors faster than either console in terms of raw CPU power. You've got to remember that both consoles are running AMD's Atom competitor at low clock speeds.

The real impact of the new consoles is going to be an increased demand for VRAM since the games are being written with the assumption that they have access to 8GB of GDDR class memory.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

NBA 2K15 is reported to be struggling on on 4-threaded systems and causing massive stuttering and pausing. On an i7 or FX-6xxx CPU or more threads, these issues aren't present. When I disable two modules and run with 4 threads, the game does indeed lock up intermittently even at 4.4Ghz and becomes very choppy. When I underclock my CPU to 2100Mhz or 3400Mhz at 8 threads, there is no perceivable difference in play quality than at 4.2Ghz. Same can be said about 3 modules at full speed.

This is only going to get much worse with lazy developers porting 6-threaded+ console ports to PC. In 2K15, apparently every bit of code from each thread needs to be synchronized before the next frame. It is one of the only games that I own where It'll be 30-80% on cores 0, 2, 4 and 6 while ALSO having 5-20% utilization on cores 1, 3, and 5, rarely on 7. This means that the developers explicitly wrote that each of the 6/7 threads be ran on separate available threads. Otherwise it would all be on the first core of each module (0,2,4,6) since the overall CPU usage is 25-40%. Said usage is during gameplay itself. During load times the CPU is pegged at 90-100%.

With what I explained above, if you have 4 threads or less available you're at the mercy of windows scheduler to ensure those very lightly threaded tasks don't get buried and cause the pauses that people are experiencing.

 

[Termie]

Ouch, its a shame that you bought the GPU, SSD, and RAM already, they are not great deals and are some of the things that I was going to recommend better prices on. Is there any chance you could return them for a refund?

And yes, if you're running SLI you need the cards to be running at he same clock speed to cut down on microstutter as much as possible.

He got them on Black Friday. You can be sure the prices were far better than what you'd get on anything remotely comparable right now. The TridentX DDR3-2400 kit was an insanely-low $135, and the SSD was under $200.

Running two different cards in SLI is easy, by the way - you just use MSI Afterburner to sync the settings.

 

[mfenn]

He got them on Black Friday. You can be sure the prices were far better than what you'd get on anything remotely comparable right now. The TridentX DDR3-2400 kit was an insanely-low $135, and the SSD was under $200.

He listed out the prices in the OP, which is what I based my comments on. Now it's possible that he didn't pay the prices that he listed, but that seems like an unreasonable leap of logic with our present info. We won't know for sure if/until the OP clarifies.

 

[mfenn]

NBA 2K15 is reported to be struggling on on 4-threaded systems and causing massive stuttering and pausing. On an i7 or FX-6xxx CPU or more threads, these issues aren't present. When I disable two modules and run with 4 threads, the game does indeed lock up intermittently even at 4.4Ghz and becomes very choppy. When I underclock my CPU to 2100Mhz or 3400Mhz at 8 threads, there is no perceivable difference in play quality than at 4.2Ghz. Same can be said about 3 modules at full speed.

This is only going to get much worse with lazy developers porting 6-threaded+ console ports to PC. In 2K15, apparently every bit of code from each thread needs to be synchronized before the next frame. It is one of the only games that I own where It'll be 30-80% on cores 0, 2, 4 and 6 while ALSO having 5-20% utilization on cores 1, 3, and 5, rarely on 7. This means that the developers explicitly wrote that each of the 6/7 threads be ran on separate available threads. Otherwise it would all be on the first core of each module (0,2,4,6) since the overall CPU usage is 25-40%. Said usage is during gameplay itself. During load times the CPU is pegged at 90-100%.

With what I explained above, if you have 4 threads or less available you're at the mercy of windows scheduler to ensure those very lightly threaded tasks don't get buried and cause the pauses that people are experiencing.

I searched around and couldn't find any concrete discussion of this topic in conjunction with recent i5 or i7 CPUs. Perhaps you can link?

At any rate, in this thread we are discussing the suitability of a Haswell i7 for future games vis a vis a Haswell-EP i7.

 

[Termie]

He listed out the prices in the OP, which is what I based my comments on. Now it's possible that he didn't pay the prices that he listed, but that seems like an unreasonable leap of logic with our present info. We won't know for sure if/until the OP clarifies.

...
The whole idea behind this build is to allow expansion for an additional GTX 970 and a 1440p or 4k monitor. I already bought the SSD, RAM, and MSI GTX970 Golden Edition on Black Friday, and am going to buy the other components soon.

...

His use of PCPartPicker was the problem - he probably should have just included the prices he paid.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

I searched around and couldn't find any concrete discussion of this topic in conjunction with recent i5 or i7 CPUs. Perhaps you can link?

At any rate, in this thread we are discussing the suitability of a Haswell i7 for future games vis a vis a Haswell-EP i7.

When you search around you'll find there's at least 95%+ of the people who report stuttering as having an i3, i5 or a quad core. The fix is to turn off special effects, lower crowd density and if all else fails, disable AUDIO! Each one of these is separate CPU thread.

http://forums.nba-live.com/viewtopic.php?f=157&t=96674
http://forums.2k.com/showthread.php...oblems-found!!!-(lag-stutter-sound-distortion) (This one states that upgrading from a 6 core FX to an 8 core FX fixed it completely, which is contrary to my 3 module test run. I didn't do it for long so it might just need 8 threads).
http://forums.nba-live.com/viewtopic.php?f=157&t=96670
http://www.nba2k.org/2014/10/stuttering-lag-fix-pc-nba-2k15.html

With the fixes suggested such as disabling audio, turning all settings on low, and disable special effects, CPU usage hovers around 20% in game, but it looks worse than last-gen 2K14 when it's like that. We've already covered this in the CPU forums before IIRC. The STEAM user forums are littered with these "fixes" as well. There's a reason why the recommended specs from the game-specific forums suggest any i7 or FX 8-core CPU.

If I would've known I could do this, the 32nm Xeon X5650 6-Core works in LGA1366 motherboards and would likely be the best CPU for console games being released for PC. That CPU can be had for $75 off ebay.

 

[mfenn]

When you search around you'll find there's at least 95%+ of the people who report stuttering as having an i3, i5 or a quad core. The fix is to turn off special effects, lower crowd density and if all else fails, disable AUDIO! Each one of these is separate CPU thread.

http://forums.nba-live.com/viewtopic.php?f=157&t=96674
http://forums.2k.com/showthread.php...oblems-found!!!-(lag-stutter-sound-distortion) (This one states that upgrading from a 6 core FX to an 8 core FX fixed it completely, which is contrary to my 3 module test run. I didn't do it for long so it might just need 8 threads).
http://forums.nba-live.com/viewtopic.php?f=157&t=96670
http://www.nba2k.org/2014/10/stuttering-lag-fix-pc-nba-2k15.html

With the fixes suggested such as disabling audio, turning all settings on low, and disable special effects, CPU usage hovers around 20% in game, but it looks worse than last-gen 2K14 when it's like that. We've already covered this in the CPU forums before IIRC. The STEAM user forums are littered with these "fixes" as well. There's a reason why the recommended specs from the game-specific forums suggest any i7 or FX 8-core CPU.

If I would've known I could do this, the 32nm Xeon X5650 6-Core works in LGA1366 motherboards and would likely be the best CPU for console games being released for PC. That CPU can be had for $75 off ebay.

I read though those threads and I honestly could not find sufficient evidence to support your conclusion. There's people reporting that they're having no problems with i5's and people reporting that they're having problems with 6-thread CPUs. Many complainants are running AMD GPU's, but a few are running NVIDIA.

And then many people reporting that software fixes such as enabling triple buffering and running in Windows 7 compatibility mode fixes it.

So it sounds to me like NBA 2K15 is for sure a shoddy port. It does really dumb things like enables SSAA by default, which absolutely kills performance on the weaker and lower VRAM GPUs you might expect a mainstream audience to have.