Advice for new multi-purpose build

[jeanpgrove]

I would appreciate some advice and pointers. My current PC is ten years old. It still does most of what I need, but it gets annoyingly slow at times. The motherboard is starting to give some warnings that it may be on the way out, and I don'w want to be caught with my pants around my ankles.

Usage:
Some gaming, mostly of the Civilization/ Sim City variety
Lightroom and Photoshop, mostly Lightroom. Lightroom has been getting quite annoying on the current build
Archicad
General office type applications, web browsing, watching movies.

I would like to build something that would ideally last another ten years (or at least get a very good lifetime). Some upgrade/ changes along the way are fine, but not major rebuilds.

Budget is not critical, but I still want value and use for what I spend. I've come up with a system, that strikes me, possibly arrogantly, as fairly balanced, but a nagging little voice tells me that my ego is buying a lot of capacity that will go unused.

Suggestions for the correct level at which to pitch the build (or suggestions for tweaking) would be greatly appreciated:

Intel 7820X
MSI X299 Gaming Pro Carbon MB
G.Skill f4 ddr4 3200 c14d ram 32Gb (4 x 8)
Samsung 960 Pro 512 NvME SSD
(carry over old SSD and HDD from current PC additionally)
750W PSU - undecided between Corsair RM750i and Corsair 750HXiM
Case - Bit of a headache. From what is locally available, the Thermaltake Suppressor F51 is the logical choice, but is does not appeal to me. Considering an import.
Antec Mercury 360 for cooling (if there is benefit to Corsair H150i Pro other than the RGB, I'm open to convincing)
I'd love a Geforce GTX 1080Ti - not sure I need it - run dual 1080p screens. With the current shortage, I'm considering hanging on to my Geforce GTX 660Ti until a good deal becomes available.

If this is good value, I can get to the pricetag, but would prefer to pay less - and if I'm not going to get value from it, I would certainly not want to throw money away

 

[Darkbreeze]

What country are you in and what would you consider your "target" budget range?

I agree that for you listed priorities, the 7820x is probably not not the correct choice for you, nor is the X299 platform. I don't really see much on your list of needs that requires that, even down the road. Mainstream Coffee lake with it's higher core count and slightly increased IPC are plenty.

IN reality there is very little in the way of VMs, CAD software, Adobe applications, gaming, rendering, encoding or anything else that I can't still perform at a very high level with my Skylake i7 so any mainstream Coffee lake i7 should be suitable for the long term and is certainly as capable as anything else out there unless you are able to find some kind of amazing deal on an X299 configuration that makes it impossible to ignore.

It would help to know exactly what you have now as well. for comparison. Truthfully I've been telling people that it is a very bad time to upgrade or build due to the current memory and graphics card prices, but obviously in some cases it's unavoidable and then people may just have to bite the bullet in a couple of areas.

Probably also matters, at least minimally, what OS you plan to use. Are you currently on Windows 10 or an older version?

 

[jeanpgrove]

What country are you in and what would you consider your "target" budget range?

I agree that for you listed priorities, the 7820x is probably not not the correct choice for you, nor is the X299 platform. I don't really see much on your list of needs that requires that, even down the road. Mainstream Coffee lake with it's higher core count and slightly increased IPC are plenty.

IN reality there is very little in the way of VMs, CAD software, Adobe applications, gaming, rendering, encoding or anything else that I can't still perform at a very high level with my Skylake i7 so any mainstream Coffee lake i7 should be suitable for the long term and is certainly as capable as anything else out there unless you are able to find some kind of amazing deal on an X299 configuration that makes it impossible to ignore.

It would help to know exactly what you have now as well. for comparison. Truthfully I've been telling people that it is a very bad time to upgrade or build due to the current memory and graphics card prices, but obviously in some cases it's unavoidable and then people may just have to bite the bullet in a couple of areas.

Probably also matters, at least minimally, what OS you plan to use. Are you currently on Windows 10 or an older version?

I'm in South Africa. The prices differ substantially between SA and say Amazon (I expected some difference, but not quite as much). I'm quite comfortable at say R25 000 to R35 000, where that builds comes between R35K and R40K (w/o graphics card).

Current Spec's:
Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 2.4 Ghz
Gigabyte P35C-DS3R MoBo
8Mb Ram
Geforce GTX 660 Ti
2.7 Tb HDD
460Gb SSD

I'm running Windows 10 and will stick to that.

My fear with the Coffeelake is that it is "end of platform", buying into a dead end street. On the other hand, I have upgraded RAM, graphics cards, hard drives, but never the processor, so it may be a theoretical fear. It also doesn't seem all that certain that Skylake X will necessarily have a long run. It's the trouble with not being able to buy tomorrow's newspaper today.

I've been feeling "not the right time" for two years now. I keep losing Ram chips, HDD's lose connection at times; inserting USB occasionally cause the machine to freeze, I get "out of memory" errors while the task manager reports available RAM. My lay opinion is that it's the motherboards end of life. I'd rather buy when I have time to think than have to make a rush decision if the thing finally goes. Maybe it's got a year or three left, but it could be next week.

The graphics card I should definitely be able to hold out with. I suppose I could delay the M.2, but everything I read suggests that it is the best way to up the Lightroom and game loading (Civilization I now cook, garden, work, whatever else between turns. Getting it to load up is just madness).

RAM-wise, I hate the idea of buying something and replacing it while it is still good, so my initial idea was to get 4x16 and if I then want to upgrade I can get another 4x16 and be at capacity. Some sense suggested that I drop to 32, but the idea of "wasting" it in the theoretical situation where I need to go to 128Mb grates... With the current Ram prices, perhaps I should learn to deal with grating. I work on relatively large ArchiCAD models. While I'm not an everyday renderer, the models do chew up a fair bit of RAM. It will run on 16, but not sure that it will always be smooth. For everything else 16Gb should be ample.

 

[why_wolf]

well for value you'd want to go for the AMD Ryzen CPUs over Intel. How serious is your Lightroom/photoshop usage; just home/hobby or heavy/professional level?

 

[geofelt]

Good points from darkbreeze.
What are your current specs?

I might add some thoughts:
1. Today, I7-8700K and a z370 based motherboard will cost you less and probably outperform the x299 based system for less.
That might be overkill, but it is about the best available today.
The 8th gen processors overclock nicely, perhaps to the 4.7-5.0 range.
I know for civilization 4/5/6 turn times are much improved with higher clock rates.

2. Z370 is dual channel ram architecture. You will be better off with a 2 x 16gb kit.
3200 speed is about right.

3. Love the 960 pro nvme. In time, the optane devices may be stronger, but the 960 pro is as good as it gets today.

4. 750w is a good size for a psu, and the corsair rm series are tier 1.

5. On the case, buy one you love. Looks count. You will be looking at it for a long time.
Quality counts. Assuming it can hold your motherboard and other peripherals, most cases work well.
One of my must-have features would be good cooling.
To me that means at least two 120/140mm front intake fans or the equivalent 180/200mm fan.
It must have a washable and easily removed front filter.
If all the air intake comes from one source, your parts will stay clean.
Whatever you are considering, try to read reviews of the case.
Silverstone, NZXT and lian-li make good quality cases.

I very much do not like liquid cooling if you do not need it.
With a decent case, the noctua NH-D15s will have all the cooling you would ever need, even for an aggressive overclock.

My canned rant on liquid cooling:
------------------------start of rant-------------------
You buy a liquid cooler to be able to extract an extra multiplier or two out of your OC.
How much do you really need?
I do not much like all in one liquid coolers when a good air cooler like a Noctua or phanteks can do the job just as well.
A liquid cooler will be expensive, noisy, less reliable, and will not cool any better
in a well ventilated case.
Liquid cooling is really air cooling, it just puts the heat exchange in a different place.
The orientation of the radiator will cause a problem.
If you orient it to take in cool air from the outside, you will cool the cpu better, but the hot air then circulates inside the case heating up the graphics card and motherboard.
If you orient it to exhaust(which I think is better) , then your cpu cooling will be less effective because it uses pre heated case air.
And... I have read too many tales of woe when a liquid cooler leaks.
google "H100 leak"
I would support an AIO cooler only in a space restricted case.
-----------------------end of rant--------------------------

Your pc will be quieter, more reliable, and will be cooled equally well with a decent air cooler.

Lastly, yes, I would defer on the graphics card purchase until you really need it or to when these crazy prices drop.

 

[Darkbreeze]

3. Love the 960 pro nvme. In time, the optane devices may be stronger, but the 960 pro is as good as it gets today.

For now. I think we'll start seeing these before too long though, probably a month or three, so it might be worth waiting because these have 960 Pro sequential type speeds with Optane type random speeds. I was going to get a 960 Pro PCIe M.2 drive but I'm going to wait until either these drives, or ones using the same controller become available, depending on what they go for of course, because the random and not particularly queue depth dependent speeds are hard to ignore.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/phison-e12-fastest-ssd,36298.html


My rant on liquid cooling.

They can, and do leak. Not often, but often enough that I've seen ten or fifteen cases of it, myself, verified cases, over the last few months. Even with pretty high end AIO closed loop coolers, in just the last few weeks here on Tom's. One was on a moderators system. The other was on another members system. I avoid water cooling.

While it works great for a lot of people, I'm a fan of following the first rule of electronics that says to keep water and electronics as far apart as possible. If the price is right and you are aware of the risks then maybe it's an option. The older those get, the more likely they are to either leak or have pump failures though. Plus, they are noisier than air cooling.

Also, when an AIO closed loop cooler fails, you pretty much throw it away and are completely out of your investment unless it is still under warranty because there are generally no user replaceable parts on them except for the fans. If an air cooler fails, you buy a new fan, period. Heatsinks don't fail unless you do something dumb, like cut the ends off the heatpipes to fit them in a case that is not big enough for it in the first place.

Plus, there are very few 280mm or smaller AIO water coolers that cannot be matched in performance by a good air cooler paired with the right case cooling configuration. I get better temps with my single finstack Noctua NH-U14S on a highly overclocked i7-6700k than the majority of people who I've seen trying the same OC using water. Obiously, custom loops are in an entirely different category, so I'm not speaking to those kinds of systems.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Coffee Lake CPUs only became widely available this past December. They are definitely not "end of life".

X299 is much closer to EOL than Coffee Lake. If there is a concern, then I'd wait for the next Intel release, which might be a while given the current situation with Meltdown and Spectre, or might not, who knows. Or, possibly see what the new Ryzen II chips look like that are expected to release sometime at the end of this or next quarter. New Ryzen releases are expected to be supported on current and future AMD motherboards through at least 2020, so there is a clear upgrade path for those systems whether you have a current board or CPU, you will be able to get a newer board or newer CPU that works equally well or better with it for a few years more.

The single biggest way to improve CAD and Lightroom/Photoshop performance is to get an additional, smaller, dedicated SSD or M.2 drive for use as a scratch disk. My performance increased by like 40% by adding a 120GB fast SSD just for that purpose. Having the program and OS on fast SSD or PCIe M.2 is definitely helpful in some situations, but I think the scratch disk sped things up more than when I went from HDD to SSD for the OS.

I can't imagine you needing more than 32GB no matter what kind of applications you are running unless you work with VMs. I know people, have built systems for them and oversee those systems, that run very high end CAD and graphics machines that don't use the full 32GB I've installed on them. At least, not in most cases unless you tend to run MANY high end applications simultaneously and often. 64GB would be the most, for a non VM intensive system, that I could even remotely see the wisdom in doing, for any point in the next, I dunno, five years, unless something changes drastically or you intend to use some of the memory for a RAMdisk of some kind, which is silly with the speed of modern SSDs and PCIe M.2 drives that can offer the same types of benefits.

 

[geofelt]

You have plenty of budget.
My calculation says that 35,000r is about $2800 us.
Of course your prices might be higher.
The good news is that from a compute point of view the Q6600 which used to be a top processor can now be replaced by a very cheap $60 intel processor.
Your Q6600 quad has a passmark rating of 2963 with a single thread rating pf 924.
For example a current gen $200 I5-8400 6 core has a rating of 11714 and a single thread rating of 2307.
The top dog 12 core $380 I7-8700K has a rating of 16266 and a single thread rating of 2730. More with a 20% overclock.

On ram, a 2 x 16gb DDR4 ram kit will be about $330.
If you ever really think you might need 64gb then buy it all up front for twice the price.
Ram must be matched, you need to buy it all in a matched kit.
Adding ram later is not quarantined 100% to work.
If you ever need more, plan on selling what you have in favor of a larger single kit.

There are always new platforms coming out.
Both amd and intel do this regularly.
If you wait for the next best thing, you will wait forever.
If you have a need now, buy now.
From your description, I think you need to buy now.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I agree. Practically ANYTHING that has been released in the last three or four years will likely double, triple or quadruple (Or more) your performance and there is very little you could buy that has been recently released that would not be a huge improvement.

Basically, whether AMD or Intel, if it was released in the last two years, you will likely be good for another five to ten years, so long as the hardware lasts, if you are still able to even marginally use what you have now. Anything, even a modern i3, would be astoundingly faster than what you have.

 

[jeanpgrove]

well for value you'd want to go for the AMD Ryzen CPUs over Intel. How serious is your Lightroom/photoshop usage; just home/hobby or heavy/professional level?

Lightroom is serious hobby, not professional.

To clarify, I use value for "get a good product with a proportionate price", rather than cheap, I'm not sure how you intended it.

I'm not very familiar with the AMD's. I get the idea that the do better for multithreading while Intel reigns for raw singlethreaded speed. There's also the challenge of comparing everything to the Ferrari, which is not necessarily appropriate if you actually want to go off-road.

Does the Ryzen 3; 5 and 7 roughly match up to the Intel 3; 5 and 7 (and which is the right level to go for? My ego goes 7; 7; 7, but my mind hasn't quite been getting it's voice in.

Historically I've sort-of plotted the processor range against their price. Prices gradually increased to a point, and then made a jump. Buying just below the jump seemed a good point. When I got the Q6600 the graph had two jumps, and it sat just below the second, and I'm still quite impressed with that choice. This was before the i3; i5; i7 split however, so it may not be so straightforward anymore.

 

[Darkbreeze]

No, the Ryzen line up does NOT match up in core to core performance with the Intel lineup, and has not for a GREAT many years, as is well known and is STILL true. They HAVE greatly reduced the distance between the two though. The primary advantages of going with any AMD configuration at this point are much as they have historically been.

More cores per dollar. Cheaper overall investment, CPU, motherboard, for a given number of cores. Plus the current crop of Ryzen hardware is likely to have a longer upgrade and backward compatible path than anything currently relevant from Intel since the AM4 socket is being supported by both CPUs and motherboards through at least 2020. Already, this past ~1.5 years or so seen Intel release Kaby Lake which is not forwards compatible with Coffee Lake and Coffee Lake which is neither backwards compatible with Kaby Lake, nor likely to be forwards compatible with Cannon Lake (If there are even desktop SKUs from this family) or Ice Lake. Maybe, but I've not seen any evidence YET that it will be, so who knows.


Regardless though, even today MOST applications and games perform better with strong cores, and Intel has that advantage without any doubts whatsoever. If you use applications though, that you KNOW respond very well to more cores, then AMD might have some advantages there as obviously you can get more cores per buck with an AMD build.

Considering what you have NOW, my belief is that ANYTHING you get is going to seem like going from an Edsel to the Star ship Enterprise when it comes to performance, and will be very unlikely to suffer in any meaningful way when it comes to performing the tasks that you currently are apparently still able to do, albeit poorly, with what you have. If you don't mind the price, the 8700k with it's 6/12 strong cores is as likely, or more, to last you through the next ten years than any other product currently on the market and should be way more than even what you necessarily need plus will definitely keep your system relevant for any future versions of the software you'd care to upgrade to or any new software you might need to implement going forward.

I'd say the same thing, although perhaps to a slightly lesser degree, with any of the 6/12 or 8/16 AMD SKUs as well.