High End Build. Any suggestions?

[Komirai]

I do have a build I quickly smashed together and looked around to see their performance and their reviews and was satisfied.

This build I would like to keep one particular component as is for now. This computer if I do decide to just get the latest components then obviously it will probably handle anything I throw at it. What I want to know is what kind of build would you suggest with that one component, or what you would change with my one. Preferable if there is anything that is changed would be the reason of that item wasn't necessary and you wouldn't get the most out of it, or there is a reliable component that is cheaper but yet doesn't lower performance that much that it would be noticeable.

Other than that I just thought it would be interesting to see what you the community would come up with from that one particular component.

Anyway here is the component I'm going to be using and the build I came up with (by the way NEVER built an actual computer before would be my first so I'm not too knowledgeable but I know enough, also I love to learn knew stuff so I don't mind complicated stuff either):

Component I'm going to be using is the Intel Core i7-5960X 3.0GHz 8-Core

The build:

CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X 3.0GHz 8-Core - £755.94

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler - £75.78

Motherboard: Asus RAMPAGE V EXTREME EATX LGA2011-3 - £329.99

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 - £192.70

Storage:Samsung 840 EVO 250GB 2.5" SSD - £91.50
Western Digital BLACK SERIES 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM - £89.99

Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB - £449.98

Case: Phanteks Enthoo Luxe ATX Full Tower Case - £117.13

Power Supply: Corsair 860W ATX12V / EPS12V - £136.57

Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer - £13.15

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) - £137.41

Total: £2408.14

 

[PCBuilderMonster]

Switch CPU Cooler to Noctua NH-D15. MUCH Better.
If you want high end, maybe up the ram to 32gb for more futureproofing
Video Card: Gigabyte or ASUS GTX 980. EVGA is having extreme issues on the GTX 900 series with heat dissipation issues and they are not good as for now. MSI is mixed, some people have bad coil whine plus MSI has bad Quality Control. So go with the ASUS or Gigabyte GTX 980(Non Reference)
Case: Since you have such a high end build, a 750D will be OK. it struggles in airflow, which is not good. Try the Phanteks Enthoo Primo (I have the Luxe) because Phanteks has gone SO far into their computer case making.
Power Supply. Go with EVGA or XFX/Seasonic. They are just better, way too many reasons why.
Optical Drive: Get an ASUS for around the same price, more reliable and Lite On is not a reputable brand.
Operating System: Windows 8 Pro, much more user friendly IMO, and offers more stability and security.
You will have to spend a little more money, but it will be worth it in the long run.
Hope this helped!

 

[Komirai]

Switch CPU Cooler to Noctua NH-D15. MUCH Better.
If you want high end, maybe up the ram to 32gb for more futureproofing
Video Card: Gigabyte or ASUS GTX 980. EVGA is having extreme issues on the GTX 900 series with heat dissipation issues and they are not good as for now. MSI is mixed, some people have bad coil whine plus MSI has bad Quality Control. So go with the ASUS or Gigabyte GTX 980(Non Reference)
Case: Since you have such a high end build, a 750D will be OK. it struggles in airflow, which is not good. Try the Phanteks Enthoo Primo (I have the Luxe) because Phanteks has gone SO far into their computer case making.
Power Supply. Go with EVGA or XFX/Seasonic. They are just better, way too many reasons why.
Optical Drive: Get an ASUS for around the same price, more reliable and Lite On is not a reputable brand.
Operating System: Windows 8 Pro, much more user friendly IMO, and offers more stability and security.
You will have to spend a little more money, but it will be worth it in the long run.
Hope this helped!

I heard the casing had amazing air flow, and it always got consistently good reviews, plus it looked nice. As for the CPU fan that was a very nice suggestion, never heard of them but I glad you brought it up because it sounds and looks amazing.

As for the optical drives I really don't understand why getting Asus makes any difference because of the fact as long as it does it's purpose then what's the point.

And NO to Windnows 8, I refuse to use that OS, it's just awful. I would rather get my security from proper sources that will do the protection for me anyway, but still thank you for your suggestions the CPU Fan was a good one.

 

[capt_taco]

Well, what I think is (and take this as you will because I'm notoriously cheap), is that there's a lot of overkill in there. Not as in paying a lot for a relatively small performance increase at the high end, but paying a lot for no performance increase.

You don't need a $500 motherboard unless serious overclocking is in the cards, and right now there's really almost no reason to overclock that CPU. You don't need four PCIe 3.0 slots for one video card, either.

If money is not an issue, for storage, I think you'd be better off adding a second HDD to make a RAID1 array for your data drive; that way you are protected if anything goes wrong with one of the hard drives (it does happen).

Would also agree that a CPU cooler upgrade is in order. The one you have is hands down the best value for the money, but there are better coolers out there if you up your budget.

I know the CPU is the one thing you said you didn't want to change, but to me it looks like drastic overkill unless you have very specific purposes in mind. Most games don't even take full advantage of 4 or 6 cores, let alone 8, so if you're like 99% of people, it's paying a lot extra just to say you have it.

 

[Komirai]

Well, what I think is (and take this as you will because I'm notoriously cheap), is that there's a lot of overkill in there. Not as in paying a lot for a relatively small performance increase at the high end, but paying a lot for no performance increase.

You don't need a $500 motherboard unless serious overclocking is in the cards, and right now there's really almost no reason to overclock that CPU. You don't need four PCIe 3.0 slots for one video card, either.

If money is not an issue, for storage, I think you'd be better off adding a second HDD to make a RAID1 array for your data drive; that way you are protected if anything goes wrong with one of the hard drives (it does happen).

Would also agree that a CPU cooler upgrade is in order. The one you have is hands down the best value for the money, but there are better coolers out there if you up your budget.

I know the CPU is the one thing you said you didn't want to change, but to me it looks like drastic overkill unless you have very specific purposes in mind. Most games don't even take full advantage of 4 or 6 cores, let alone 8, so if you're like 99% of people, it's paying a lot extra just to say you have it.

I have changed my mind for the CPU cooler with one of the suggestions above for the Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler. I looked in to it and it looked amazing and by far looked like it performed wonderfully. What do you think of the choice?

Yeah, I must admit that things go wrong anywhere but then with that thinking it almost like saying but 2 for everything, because they do fail and it does happen. However, what sort of size drive for the 2nd one though?

To be honest, I'm young so I will be lying through my bottom if I didn't say it was true when you said, "it's awesome to have to latest and to just say that I have it". However! It will be going through a lot of tasks. Now there is no point in me saying that it will be doing Graphic Designing, then some time in the future real intense designing as well and also Gaming, because obviously it will hands down do the job perfectly. However, it will be hugely multi-tasking and not only that but it will be doing Game Programming and all sorts of technical stuff. So, it will be having a nice workout, plus it's nice to have for super future proof sake.

 

[Astralv]

It really does not make computer that much better to spend that much more. 2 months later it will cost half of it. Just get reasonable computer. G.Skill Ripjaws Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 not good idea. Use Corsair. G-Skill did not overclock for me- computer did not boot unless I ran it at 16000 Mhz. 2666 makes no sense. And what are you going to do with 8 cores? get yourself larger SSD if you have excessive money. And Windows 7? Seriously?

 

[capt_taco]

OK, well the graphic design and video is really the main reason why you'd have a CPU like that. So if that's indeed going to be part of it, that will serve you well.

For a second hard drive in a RAID1 array, ideally it will be identical to the first one. If you use two different hard drives, it will probably work, but the system will downgrade everything to match the specs of the worse drive (e.g. if you had a 2TB drive and a 500GB drive, it would treat them both as 500GB drives, and would use the speed of the slower one).

Hard drives are the one component where it's really really really good to have redundancy, much more so than other parts. If a video card or RAM fails, you put in a new part and the machine should work like before. If your hard drive goes out, you not only have to replace the drive; you've also lost all your data that was on it. That's the real reason you use RAID1. I suppose if you were regularly backing up your files to an external drive, that would do the trick also, but it's hard to beat the convenience of a built-in automatic mirror.

That cooler is a good choice; much better than the old one.

I still think that motherboard is way overkill, but again, I'm cheap and you have money to spend, so take it as you will.

If you spend that amount of cash on a new rig, you goddamn better get a bunch of lights and trick it out.

 

[Komirai]

It really does not make computer that much better to spend that much more. 2 months later it will cost half of it. Just get reasonable computer. G.Skill Ripjaws Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 not good idea. Use Corsair. G-Skill did not overclock for me- computer did not boot unless I ran it at 16000 Mhz. 2666 makes no sense. And what are you going to do with 8 cores? get yourself larger SSD if you have excessive money. And Windows 7? Seriously?

What would be the point of getting something reasonable to possibly have to change something few more years down the line. I would rather have something that I know will last no matter what happened to technical industry.

Why would I need my RAM to overclock? The system would be perfectly fine and run smoothly without it, there is no need overdoing something that doesn't need it when your getting no benefit out of it.

Also I've already answered that question of what I'm going to be using the 8 cores for, and no to be honest I don't have excessive money at all, nor is there point of getting a bigger SSD when all the main stuff will be going onto much bigger drives anyway, again the concept is pointless. As for the Windows 7, why the hell not? You clearly prefer Windows 8, but I'm going to repeat myself once more is that I HATE Windows 8, it's rubbish and I just personally hate it, there is nothing wrong in using Windows 7. Just because it's old hag doesn't mean it's awful.

OK, well the graphic design and video is really the main reason why you'd have a CPU like that. So if that's indeed going to be part of it, that will serve you well.

For a second hard drive in a RAID1 array, ideally it will be identical to the first one. If you use two different hard drives, it will probably work, but the system will downgrade everything to match the specs of the worse drive (e.g. if you had a 2TB drive and a 500GB drive, it would treat them both as 500GB drives, and would use the speed of the slower one).

Hard drives are the one component where it's really really really good to have redundancy, much more so than other parts. If a video card or RAM fails, you put in a new part and the machine should work like before. If your hard drive goes out, you not only have to replace the drive; you've also lost all your data that was on it. That's the real reason you use RAID1. I suppose if you were regularly backing up your files to an external drive, that would do the trick also, but it's hard to beat the convenience of a built-in automatic mirror.

That cooler is a good choice; much better than the old one.

I still think that motherboard is way overkill, but again, I'm cheap and you have money to spend, so take it as you will.

If you spend that amount of cash on a new rig, you goddamn better get a bunch of lights and trick it out.

Yeah, I hope one day it will be dealing with proper 3D Designing as well, so it will be getting a real work-in once I've gotten that good at it, haha. Also in near future it will be multi-screening if that causes to use any cores up as well.

I didn't know that, I would love a further explanation as to why that is. I mean, why wouldn't be able to read the both of them and have them done at different speeds.

Well seems you keep saying it's way overkill, what would you suggest getting? Really curious.

I'm an 18 going on 19 now, does that answer your question? 😉 lol

 

[Zerk2012]

About anything you buy over this at this point is wasted money. Future proofing is a myth tech changes so fast.
Disc drive is no longer even needed, use a bootable thumb drive to load the operating system, and I still recommend 7 windows 8 was a joke that's why 8.1 came out so quick.
Add a eternal hard drive to back up your work each night.
When and if you need more memory just add another set.
Like most of the others here your building a PC around what you might need in the future at this point you could change the video card to a 970 up the power supply to 850 Watts and add another 970 for SLI if you ever need it in the future.
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/gLL2zy

 

[Komirai]

About anything you buy over this at this point is wasted money. Future proofing is a myth tech changes so fast.
Disc drive is no longer even needed, use a bootable thumb drive to load the operating system, and I still recommend 7 windows 8 was a joke that's why 8.1 came out so quick.
Add a eternal hard drive to back up your work each night.
When and if you need more memory just add another set.
Like most of the others here your building a PC around what you might need in the future at this point you could change the video card to a 970 up the power supply to 850 Watts and add another 970 for SLI if you ever need it in the future.
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/gLL2zy

To be honest, I already have a budget'ish build already set-up if I decide to think that this build here is a waste of my time. However, the temptation of having now I quote "next gen" of chipsets is just really tempting and seems appropriate with all this "Next Gen" stuff are out. Seems Next Gen Consoles have been out for awhile I honestly think it won't be long until something new on the PC side comes out of the water to be honest.

 

[capt_taco]

Well, any LGA2011-v3 motherboard is going to be expensive, but they make perfectly good ones for half the price:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157543
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188161

I really can't comment from experience on any of them, but they all have the same chipset, and really the only other place where a motherboard is directly related to the performance of the system is with heavy overclocking or multi-GPU support. Both those other boards offer what you'd need unless you went to an extreme 3- or 4-card setup, which again is not really what I would recommend as an efficient way to improve performance.

If 3D rendering is in the offing, the right move there is not to add more high-end gaming GPUs - much better to get a real pro card designed specifically for the task. (AMD's FirePro and NVIDIA'S Quadro series are the main products there, though my knowledge of workstation graphics cards is pretty limited).

As for the hard drive RAID1 question ... the performance matching is set up that way because there isn't any advantage to doing it otherwise. Think of it this way: If you had two mirrored drives, and one was 30% faster than the other, and then you tried to write a 1GB file to both ... if the first one got done a minute faster, what would it do while the slower one was still working? Sit there, that's all. If you started some other task with it, then you'd still be waiting for the slower drive to catch up to THAT. So to keep things much simpler, they just operate at the same rate. And if you had two hard drives of different sizes, what happens when the smaller one fills all the way up? Then you can't write anything to to it, and you no longer have a mirror.

Anyway ... Zerk has a good point above about "future-proofing." There is no such thing. You can spend $1,500 and have a machine that's going to be real top-of-the-line technology for three years, or you can spend triple that to have a machine that's going to be real top-of-the-line technology for three years and six months.

When I was building a machine back in 2008, I used the best parts that were within normal price ranges - $300 CPU, $150 motherboard, $250 graphics card, etc. Now, I could've gotten the $900 CPU and the $600 graphics card - but fast forward to today, and those parts are virtually indistinguishable from one another; they're all old technology that has been surpassed by components that you can buy for $100 today. Upgrading it wouldn't help much, because with every big leap forward they change the sockets. It still makes a decent mid-high gaming machine, but the best thing I did was to recently spend $100 on the top-of-the-line video card from about 2011, which was a huge upgrade over the original one. And in the meantime, I ended up just building another machine a year or two ago using similar high-end parts but newer, and the total cost of both machines was maybe half the cost of the top-top tier machine from 2008. The bleeding edge is expensive and it doesn't last; personally, I've found it much more cost-effective to rebuild from new components once you notice you're starting to drag behind, which with a machine one step back from cutting-edge ought to be every 3-4 years or so.

 

[Zerk2012]

About anything you buy over this at this point is wasted money. Future proofing is a myth tech changes so fast.
Disc drive is no longer even needed, use a bootable thumb drive to load the operating system, and I still recommend 7 windows 8 was a joke that's why 8.1 came out so quick.
Add a eternal hard drive to back up your work each night.
When and if you need more memory just add another set.
Like most of the others here your building a PC around what you might need in the future at this point you could change the video card to a 970 up the power supply to 850 Watts and add another 970 for SLI if you ever need it in the future.
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/gLL2zy

To be honest, I already have a budget'ish build already set-up if I decide to think that this build here is a waste of my time. However, the temptation of having now I quote "next gen" of chipsets is just really tempting and seems appropriate with all this "Next Gen" stuff are out. Seems Next Gen Consoles have been out for awhile I honestly think it won't be long until something new on the PC side comes out of the water to be honest.

This already is the next gen chipset so I don't see your point? I hope your not thinking you can game, record game time and be rendering large files at the same time.

 

[Amencerment]

You have a nice setup, this is how I would do a high-end rig. And this is based off what I already have.
I’ll explain why.

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/F7v3sY
Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/F7v3sY/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X 3.0GHz 8-Core Processor (£755.94 @ Aria PC)  Because you picked it, but unless you are doing workstation tasks, go with the 6 core… See below.

CPU Cooler: Swiftech H240-X CPU Liquid Cooling KiT  Best CPU cooler on the market… here’s where to get it in the UK, it is $145 USD, with exchange maybe around £90.2. Here’s where to get it.
http://www.bacata.net, sales@chillblast.com, Info@Overclock.co.uk, PIXmania.com, www.specialtech.co.uk

Motherboard: Asus RAMPAGE V EXTREME EATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard (£329.99 @ Amazon UK)  Can’t beat it…

Memory: Corsair Dominator Platinum 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory (£599.18 @ Scan.co.uk)  I have been using this RAM for around 10 years flawlessly… OC’s like a beast.

Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£87.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£87.99 @ Amazon UK)  I RAID all my systems so the 2 128’s are for OS, drivers, monitoring software ONLY.
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£134.70 @ Scan.co.uk)  For all programs not considered gaming.
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£134.70 @ Scan.co.uk)  For all gaming related programs.

With my drives, I separate my programs one disk gaming, one disk production, and one disk All other programs. This makes the system run very fast and efficient. In this case I have Gaming and all other programs separated to keep costs down. BUT with this setup it will be very fast… Very fast.

Storage: Western Digital VelociRaptor 500GB 3.5" 10000RPM Internal Hard Drive (£94.20 @ Scan.co.uk)  Gaming storage only.
Storage: Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB 3.5" 10000RPM Internal Hard Drive (£157.16 @ Scan.co.uk)  All other storage Media, Work, and MS Office programs.

Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 980 4GB Video Card (£458.57 @ CCL Computers)  Latest and greatest, I am an Asus person for the last 15 years, but good cards come from many other companies, I just prefer Asus.

Case: Cooler Master Cosmos II (Black) ATX Full Tower Case (£274.94 @ Scan.co.uk)  Great case with fantastic cooling ability and expanding options.

Power Supply: SeaSonic Platinum 1000W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£146.52 @ Scan.co.uk)  Rock solid and highly rated.

Optical Drive: LG WH16NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer £36.09

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 Professional (32/64-bit) <- I prefer pro versions but many people like home, your choice.

Total: £3261.88
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-08 03:05 BST+0100


And here is the scaled down version of how I would build it. (BUT still very powerful)

Now this version is the same bad boy/girl, with A LOT of power just a bit scaled back and far more user friendly with setup and many GBP less.

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/ht9rwP
Price breakdown by merchant: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/ht9rwP/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i7-5930K 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor (£409.98 @ Amazon UK)  Better by then the 5960x as it is more tuned to the Enthusiast build, and not working with heavy and I mean heavy animation type work…

CPU Cooler: Swiftech H320 55.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler

Motherboard: Asus RAMPAGE V EXTREME EATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard (£329.99 @ Amazon UK)

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory (£358.80 @ Amazon UK)  Great Ram just not the tweakability of Dominator.

Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£87.99 @ Amazon UK)  No raid.. Still fast.

Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£134.70 @ Scan.co.uk)
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£134.70 @ Scan.co.uk)

Storage: Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB 3.5" 10000RPM Internal Hard Drive (£157.16 @ Scan.co.uk)  1 drive for all saves, can expand at a later date.

Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 980 4GB Video Card (£458.57 @ CCL Computers)
Case: Cooler Master Cosmos II (Black) ATX Full Tower Case (£274.94 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: Corsair 860W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£136.18 @ CCL Computers)  Great power supply with room to build.
Optical Drive: LG WH16NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 Professional (32/64-bit)

Total: £2483.01

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-08 03:24 BST+0100

That is my take on how to move with an ULTRA type of system