Gaming PC build

[Geoff]

Mulling over getting a new gaming rig. How does this look?

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (£257.80 @ Amazon UK)

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler (£67.98 @ Ebuyer)

Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 3.5g Thermal Paste (£11.27 @ Overclockers.co.uk)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD4H ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£177.57 @ PC World Business)

Memory: Corsair Dominator Platinum 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£199.26 @ More Computers)

Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 512GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£167.94 @ Aria PC)

Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£166.74 @ Aria PC)

Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card (2-Way SLI) (£268.98 @ Amazon UK)

Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 970 4GB Twin Frozr V Video Card (2-Way SLI) (£268.98 @ Amazon UK)

Case: Fractal Design Define R4 w/Window (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case (£69.98 @ Amazon UK)

Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£71.99 @ Aria PC)

Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£11.49 @ Ebuyer)

Wired Network Adapter: Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/100/1000 Mbps PCI-Express x1 Network Adapter (£25.63 @ Amazon UK)

Total: £1765.61

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-14 15:50 GMT+0000

[synaesthesia]

Looks spunky, but 650w might be pushing it with dual graphics cards - probably should raise that slightly just to be on the safe side.

[Geoff]

UPS is 1000VA, so the UPS will shut down before the PSU get's overloaded. PC Part Picker estimates the load to be 524W. Edited January 14, 2016 by Geoff

[LeMarchand]

You could save a few pennies on the drive by using one of the sellers on Amazon: Samsung SAM 850 Pro 512GB 2.5 inch SATA III Solid State Drive: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

 

Plus (probably a dumb question but) do you need a network card in addition to the mobo one?

[DalekSec]

Do you need 2Ghx Cards? I have a 980ti (£510) and it's arguably better than the two you have chosen

[Geoff]

I have three monitors.

[DalekSec]

I have three monitors.

 

Fair enough, don't do what I do ( My PC is a better build than the one you have listed and all I do is play Solitaire and WoW..........Oculus Rift ready though!)

[synaesthesia]

Take load calculators with a pinch of salt and always play safe. It is by far the most important part of any computer and should something go wrong parts can fry before your UPS even blinks an eye.

[pete]

I have an earlier version of that case without the window and it is really nice.

 

The only caveat is that the PSU (in my version at least) sucks air from the underside of the case, so ensure your case is on a hard surface or short-pile carpet.

[GuyJD]

I'd be tempted to go with a 980ti instead of the 2 970's you'll only have 4GB (3.5GB) with the SLi 970s but 6GB on the 980 and you can run 3 screens off of it

 

Build looks good though, wish I had that amount to spend on mine

[ICTDirect_Dave]

If you can afford a little more (£50 or so) I'd go for this personally

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (£289.14 @ Aria PC)

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler (£67.98 @ Ebuyer)

Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 3.5g Thermal Paste (£11.27 @ Overclockers.co.uk)

Motherboard: Asus MAXIMUS VIII HERO ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£169.96 @ More Computers)

Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£209.06 @ More Computers)

Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 512GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£167.94 @ Aria PC)

Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£166.74 @ Aria PC)

Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Video Card (£549.98 @ Amazon UK)

Case: Fractal Design Define R4 w/Window (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case (£69.98 @ Amazon UK)

Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£71.99 @ Aria PC)

Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer (£11.49 @ Ebuyer)

Wired Network Adapter: Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/100/1000 Mbps PCI-Express x1 Network Adapter (£25.63 @ Amazon UK)

Total: £1811.16

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-14 17:21 GMT+0000

Both machines would be amazing butI'd be tempted by DDR4 and a 980Ti now.

Edited January 14, 2016 by ICTDirect_Dave

[Geoff]

Budget is £2k.

[caffrey]

Why not go all out and get the m2 samsung 950 pro (MZ-V5P512BW) seems to be compatible with that board

[Arthur]

The spec @ICTDirect_Dave suggested looks good, although I would go with 2 x 16GB DDR4 DIMMs instead of 4 x 8GB since it gives you the option of upgrading to 64GB RAM in the future. The difference in price is minimal.

 

For a few £s more I would also change the PSU to an EVGA SuperNOVA G2. The NEX models are made by FSP whereas the G2 models are made by Superflower for EVGA. The latter are much better.

 

On a £2k PC it doesn't make sense to choose a Core i7-4790K and DDR3 RAM IMO.

 

• RAM: £207.14 from Scan
  https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/corsair-memory-cmk32gx4m2b3000c15
   
   
  
• PSU: 650w = £74.99 or £79.99 / 750w = £90.11
  http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-power-supply-220g20650y1
  http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-power-supply-220g20750xr
  

Edited January 14, 2016 by Arthur

[Geoff]

Most if not all of the Z87 chipset boards can not handle more than 32Gb of ram. Otherwise (I think?) I'd have to look at C226 based chipset boards.

[Arthur]

Most if not all of the Z87 chipset boards can not handle more than 32GB of RAM.

Z170 motherboards with four DIMM slots can. There's one included in the spec @ICTDirect_Dave did.

 

www.anandtech.com/show/9483/intel-skylake-review-6700k-6600k-ddr4-ddr3-ipc-6th-generation/2

 

... prices of DDR4 have dropped significantly since last year, and there is only a small premium over DDR3. The benefits of DDR4 include a lower operating voltage, a more stable design, and the ability to purchase 16GB modules with ease. That means that a Skylake platform will happily take 64GB of memory.

 

With that last point, we should point out that Skylake is a dual memory channel architecture, supporting two memory modules per channel. This gives a maximum of four DDR4 tests, and 4x16 = 64GB maximum.

 

We have been told that Skylake’s memory controller, compared to previous generations, is absolutely golden at higher speed memory support. By default Skylake supports the JEDEC standard for DDR4, 2133 MT/s at a latency of 15-15-15, but the overclocking guides we have received suggests that all processors should be able to reach DDR4-3200 relatively comfortably

 

http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2015/08/intel-skylake-core-i7-6700k-reviewed/

 

In addition to faster speeds, a potential benefit of DDR4 is increased capacity per DIMM module. In the consumer space, unregistered DDR3 DIMMs have generally maxed out at 8GB—so with a motherboard with four memory slots the most you could ever have is 32GB. It may sound a lot, but with 16GB now a baseline for any high-performance PC, this fundamental limit has almost been reached.

 

Skylake also features massively faster PCIe lanes (useful for NVMe SSDs and SLI graphics), USB 3.1 gen. 2 and greater headroom for overclocking the CPU should you want to do that.

 

http://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2015/08/intel-skylake-core-i7-6700k-reviewed/

 

The M.2 performance difference between Z97 and Z170 is enormous. With Z97, we managed read/write speeds of around 780MB/sec; an improvement over SATA SSD speeds, but not by much. On the Z170, the M.2 drive managed monstrous read/write speeds of 1740 MB/sec and 1450 MB/sec respectively—more than double the performance, using exactly the same drive. 1740 MB/sec is about three times faster than state-of-the-art SATA SSDs.

 

The real-world performance improvement from using a PCIe M.2 SSD isn't quite as dramatic as the synthetic results show, though. Doubling the throughput doesn’t mean a system that’s twice as responsive or boots in half the time.

 

As before, the K-series Skylake chips feature unlocked multipliers, so enthusiasts can overclock their processor just by changing the multiplier in the BIOS (UEFI), and by increasing the voltage for the higher speeds.

 

Haswell introduced a second way to adjust the clock frequency of a K-series CPU: by changing the base clock (BCLK). Normally this value is 100MHz, but Haswell offered a number of preset straps: 100MHz, 125MHz and 166MHz. Skylake goes further, allowing you to alter it with fractional increments: setting the base clock to 112.5MHz with a 40x multiplier results in a CPU speed of 4.5GHz, for example. This will be a welcome feature for overclockers and high-performance enthusiasts looking to get the most out of their chips.

Edited January 14, 2016 by Arthur