a TON of questions about my new PC Build

bennyd87708

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May 16, 2015
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I made this post on Reddit but got a lot of annoying, unconstructive criticism and no actual answers to my question, so I hope you guys can help. I've been using a prebuilt i7-870 pc with a 750 ti slapped in it for many years now and have finally saved up enough money for a proper build/monitor to go with it. Here's the PCPartPicker I have laid out if you are curious - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Tq3pwV

A few questions,
is another $20 worth DDR4-3000 over DDR4-2400 for mostly gaming? How about for rendering videos/animations in after effects, which I do from time to time? What about even higher speeds? Is 32GB better right now or is 16 plenty for gaming? I would have to stretch my budget quite a bit to get 32 GB I think...

What's better, the fractal design celsius s36 or the thermaltake water 3.0 ultimate or some air cooler or saving up more money for custom water cooling? My goal is to overclock to 5Ghz for the fun of it =)

Is the M.2 SSD that I picked good for the money/even compatible with the motherboard? What's the difference between a PCIE M.2 SSD and a SATA M.2 SSD? Can I even put windows on an M.2 SSD? I don't know much about them/haven't done enough research, all I know is that my previous SanDisk SSD for games on it died and all I have left is my shitty OCZ Trion 150 with windows and I would like to use the M.2 instead for games, windows, I WANNA GO FAST

Should I get my own thermal paste instead of what comes with coolers for the best thermals? How hard/dangerous is delidding the cpu? What are the odds that my chip if bought normally (not from silicon lottery) will not be capable of hitting 5Ghz?

Am I okay not going with the i7-7740x? It seems to have almost the exact same performance with a higher price and all of the motherboards are still really expensive

Would I be better off waiting for the next generation of CPUs/GPUs? I saw a comment on a YouTube video today saying that everyone who has bought CPUs in the last 2 years feels cheated... Maybe I should wait for the prices on the 7740x and the x299 motherboards to come down and use that or even an even later series that Linus teased on the WAN show recently?

How is the gpu market doing? Will NVIDIA launch another set of cards in 3 months and I'll cry that I bought a 1080ti for $800 and wish I had waited just a bit longer?

Will the build be compatible with Windows 7? I have tried and disliked both Windows 8, 8.1, and 10 and wish to stay with Windows 7 but remember hearing things about Microsoft forcing Windows 10 with their new cpus. Was that ever actually done and if so could it be bypassed? For clarification, I do not want your opinion on Windows 10, I want to know if Windows 7 will work.

Any other suggestions? Thanks

One more clarification, I also do not want your opinion on the monitor. I've already purchased the monitor and I'm very happy with it. I've never been a fan of higher resolutions. (had a 3440x1440 and got bored of it) Sorry if that came off brash, I've been getting nothing but "Don't get that monitor it's trash" as help >.<
 
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Ill start with DDR speed. Go with the 3000MHz. It will make a slight difference and would say it justifies the extra $20.

I am not an expert on liquid CPU coolers so I will let someone else answer that one.

Always go with NVMe M.2 drives over sata ones. The bandwidth between PCIe x4 and sata is 32GB/s vs 6GB/s. Typically you will see speeds of about 2 to 3 times faster than sata SSDs.

You will have to hit the silicon lottery to get an i7-7700k to hit 5GHz, thats at the high end for that CPU, but there are many variables. The i7-7740x will be easier to hit 5GHz, but thats not a CPU that many people recommend, due to the cost of the CPU and lack of motherboard features. Plus the performance is very similar to the i7-7700k anyway. I...

Hardware Brad

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Ill start with DDR speed. Go with the 3000MHz. It will make a slight difference and would say it justifies the extra $20.

I am not an expert on liquid CPU coolers so I will let someone else answer that one.

Always go with NVMe M.2 drives over sata ones. The bandwidth between PCIe x4 and sata is 32GB/s vs 6GB/s. Typically you will see speeds of about 2 to 3 times faster than sata SSDs.

You will have to hit the silicon lottery to get an i7-7700k to hit 5GHz, thats at the high end for that CPU, but there are many variables. The i7-7740x will be easier to hit 5GHz, but thats not a CPU that many people recommend, due to the cost of the CPU and lack of motherboard features. Plus the performance is very similar to the i7-7700k anyway. I have also never de-lidded a CPU so someone else can take that as well, but I wouldn't do it or recommend it.

There will always be a new GPU or CPU coming out a few months down the line, it never ends, so when you feel ready to make the purchase, pull the trigger. the 1080ti is a great card, I personally love mine.

This hardware is NOT compatible with windows 7 unfortunately. Intel dropped support for windows 7 with their 7th gen i-series CPUs, and AMD Ryzen does not support windows 7 either. Not to say there isn't a work around, but installing windows 7 fresh, especially on an NVMe drive (NVMe didn't exist mainstream when 7 was released) will cause a lot of problems. If you do get an NVMe drive and try to install windows 7 from scratch on it, it will not even see the drive as an option without a work around that I am not familiar with.
 
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