Do I need a 5930k or a 5820k?

[Jake458]

Lets say I have a gen 3 m.2 that runs at x4 and I have three 980 ti's and a sound card. thats 32 lanes for three cards, 4 lanes for the m.2 and 1 lane for the sound card. All that adds up to 29 lanes with the sound card. Now does that mean I will be needing a 5930k because its takes 29 lanes on a 40 lane processor and 29 lanes is more than a 5820k. So to have three graphics cards and a m.2 run a x4 and have a sound card I need 40 lanes right?

 

[jmsellars1]

Usually if you're running in SLI all of the cards will run in x8, that means your GPU's will use 24 lanes. Your M.2. card will use 4 and your sound card x1 so yes you're right that's 29 lanes. If you get the i7-5820K I think one of the GPU's will run at x4 which considering it is a 980Ti it could slow it down quite a lot. The 5930K would give slightly better CPU performance and possibly much better graphics performance.

Do you already have the sound card? Even if you don't it might just be cheaper to buy a USB or firewire one and go for the 5820k.

 

[RCFProd]

Firstly, If It's for gaming you are robbing yourself with 3-way graphics cards. It is useless.

 

[jmsellars1]

I wouldn't go as far as to say useless, it's the only way to get performance that high. It is just ridiculously expensive. 2 way SLI only tends to give a ~60-70% boost in performance over a single card and 3 way SLI only tends to give a 90-100% performance boost over 1 card.

It is really the only way to get performance equivalent to double that of a GTX 980Ti but it is going to end up costing 3 times as much as a GTX 980Ti.

From a price/performance perspective you'd be better off buying a well cooled single GTX 980Ti and give it a 20-30% overclock. Then rather than having 190-200% of the performance of a single card for 300% of the price (plus the price of the 2011 socket and high end PSU etc.) you could pay ~100% of the cost of a GTX 980Ti for ~120-130% of the performance of a single card.