motherboard selection help

[Jim Salemi]

Hello. I'm in the planning stages of my first build and hit a wall. I am likely going with this i5 CPU
http://m.newegg.com/Product/index?itemnumber=19-116-504

I then went to Intel's compatability tool, and it lists 122 motherboards that will work with this chip!
http://processormatch.intel.com/MotherBoards/CompatibleBoards?componentName=i5-3570K

I'm way overwhelmed, so I'm asking for suggestions. I'm not looking for anything micro or compact, just something with ample bus so there are no bottlenecks as well as plenty of room for future expansion for starters. Thanks in advance.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Your CPU link just takes you to the main Newegg page.

What is your budget for a CPU and motherboard, just those two items.

 

[Jim Salemi]

Thanks dark. Most likely going w/ this chip :
Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge Quad-Core 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I53570K

I don't mind spending $ for quality and performance that will last 4-5 years. I would go up to $500 for both. Planning on 8g memory to start and expand later.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Do you already have the memory? Other components? Is this an entirely new build or an upgrade? You don't want to go with an Ivy bridge cpu when you can do so much better for that price with a Haswell refresh that has better instructions per cycle, better thermals (TDP) and somewhat of an upgrade path, with LGA 1155 really doesn't have unless you upgrade to an LGA 1155 i7, which makes no sense.

There are MUCH better ways to go, unless you're in a country, like India, Australia or some European nations where hardware is outrageous.

Is this build mostly for gaming or is it to be used in some professional capacity?

 

[Jim Salemi]

This is a new build. It will be used for some gaming (I'm up there in age, and tend to like things like Second Life vs the fast shoot em up stuff) as well as prof capacity. I do use AutoCAD for things like stage lighting plots --no 3d rendering of any heavy processing. So what would you suggest for a mid-level (i5) 4core CPU? Ugh. I'm going to have to put this off a little longer until I get up to speed. I stopped paying attention around the M series CPUs.

 

[Jim Salemi]

OK...poking around on the threads here I came across i5 4670, 4460 4690 and 4690K. Am I in the ballpark? Though the 4690k is "devils canyon."

 

[Darkbreeze]

In order to really help you get the best configuration, can you tell me what your budget is for the entire build and exactly what components you will need to purchase? Have you already purchased anything that might affect the configuration? Do you also need an OS or do you have that covered already?

 

[Jim Salemi]

Thanks again for the reply dark. Its appreciated. I'm basically estimating $2,000-$2,500 for the tower and everything in it, maybe more if I spluge on a higher end graphics/video card and audio card. I figured $500 for a middle of the spectrum chip and mobo. Add 8 gigs ddr3 ram, aftermkt heat sink and fan, power supply, 1t solid state HD, , 1 DVD/CD rw to start and the case. I'll add 2nd CD drive down the road, add ram and h2o cooling if I ever over clock, again down the road. I'll use my existing monitor and speakers for now. Probably go w/ MS win 8.1 OS ( though I'd prefer XP pro!). Oh- I also want to go w/ a 64 bit compatible chip. Thanks!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Are you in the US or another country? Sorry, I guess I should have asked all these questions from the start.

I was also wondering what your main intended uses were? Will you be gaming, rendering and editing video or audio, running high end graphics, 3D or CAD applications? Virtual machines?

 

[Jim Salemi]

Yes I'm in the U.S. I'm a reporter by trade, and do stage lighting design on occasion, so aside from MS office I do use AutoCAD though it is for drawing lighting plots and other single dimension drawings--no rendering or heavy processing. The biggest concern w/acad is storage, not processing. Like I said I like second life, if you're familiar with it, which is graphics intensive but hardly fast. Though, i would d like something in the 3-4 ghtz range w/ over clocking in case another game interests me or sys requirements increase down the road. So, I think gaming would be the most demanding thing I'd be doing with it, bearing in mind I'd like to be able to steam/listen to music while playing, and be able to leave tabs open etc and resources left over for OS background tasks. Thanks again dark

 

[Darkbreeze]

Well, I think with this build you'll be able to run just any game you want at just about any settings, so long as it's not a 4K monitor or three monitors with higher than 1080 resolutions. Of course, if you ever upgrade your displays it's a simple matter of adding an additional GPU and you'll pretty much be set for anything.

I don't think you'll need to upgrade anything, anytime soon with this build unless you decide at some point you need to drive higher resolution displays in which case an additional GPU for SLI would be fine. Might even be able to add one now if you really wanted and still be around your budget.

To the nitty gritty.

CPU has four cores and eight threads. Higher single core performance than any other CPU on Passmark. Since it has eight of them, you do the math.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

16GB of fast 2133mhz RAM. You can add another 16GB down the road if you should ever decide you need to but unless you're running virtual machines or some very high end applications simultaneously, I doubt you'll need to.

Very good ASUS motherboard without all the fancy colors and unnecessary markings of the gaming boards, but still has great features like 12 phase power which will allow for an optimal overclocking experience should you choose to do so, an M.2 slot if you should decide to add an M.2 SSD or M.2 Wi-Fi card. It also has pretty good onboard sound with audio shielding to reduce interference and electrical noise. You may not need a separate sound card unless you're into enthusiast or professional grade sound editing or recording.

http://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/Z97PRO/overview/


Very decent Noctua cooler. You should have no problem taking that CPU to 4.5Ghz with this cooler and case cooling combination, if you choose to. If not, it's still about ten times better than the stock cooler.

Very reliable and fast Samsung 256GB SSD for the OS and applications. 2TB HDD for storage.

Gigabyte G1 gaming GTX 970 GPU. This speaks for itself.

Phanteks Enthoo Luxe full tower case. This is arguably the best case available under 150.00 by any manufacturer. There are better full towers and bigger ones too, but this will accommodate pretty much any cooling solution you want to install for the CPU and has plenty of fan locations and an optimized internal arrangement that facilitates cooling and has good cable management features.

I also added two additional case fans since the case only comes with three. These are for the two top locations that don't come with fans pre-installed. I'd recommend connecting the front 200mm preinstalled fan and all three top fans to the four PWM motherboard case fan headers on the board and the rear exhaust fan to the CPU OPT (Secondary cpu fan header on the motherboard) header as it only comes with four chassis fan headers. This will also allow the rear fan to run at a speed that is proportional to the cpu temp and thusly, the cpu fan. When the cpu fan is running slow there is less need for this fan to be running all out but when the cpu fan ramps up the rear exhaust fan will increase along with it.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($318.99 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U14S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($69.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus Z97-PRO ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($168.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2133 Memory ($159.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($169.99 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($124.00 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card ($359.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Luxe ATX Full Tower Case ($149.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($108.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B3ST/BLK/G/AS DVD/CD Writer ($22.29 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 - 64-bit (OEM) (64-bit) ($92.00 @ B&H)
Case Fan: Noctua NF-P14r redux-1500 PWM 78.7 CFM 140mm Fan ($18.89 @ Amazon)
Case Fan: Noctua NF-P14r redux-1500 PWM 78.7 CFM 140mm Fan ($18.89 @ Amazon)
Total: $1782.96
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-07 01:57 EST-0500


The actual cost of this unit may likely be a bit less when all is said and done, if you follow up on any mail in rebates, as I did not include those in the price.

 

[Jim Salemi]

Wow. I can't thank you enough darkbdeeze! You set this project ahead at least a month, saving me extensive research and numerous queries. I will, however, continue researching current chip architecture, latest chipsets, etc. Might be a good idea to be up to speed when tackling something like a build. Again, thank you!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Anytime. If you have any questions I can answer, don't hesitate to ask here or PM me. Good luck with the build.

As far as the chip architecture, there's really nothing out there that can beat the i7-4790k single core performance, pretty much period. The X99 platform has been indicated in SOME testing to have better synthetic benchmarks, but they don't come cheap. Here is a sample of an X99 build I did for another guy living in Japan who runs SERIOUS applications, plus games competitively, just so you can see some numbers and get idea what that entails. I'll even tweak it a bit, and downgrade some things as his rig ended up being about 2900.00. You might want to go this way if the extra cost doesn't bother you and you really think you might have a need for something this high end. It does have six cores with hyperthreading, so basically it can run 12 threads versus the 8 threads on the 4790k, but I haven't seen much evidence of a need for that many threads with the optimization schemes on most current applications, even high end ones.

A lot of 3D and CAD programs use linear computing so dynamic architectures might not benefit them as much, however a lot of applications currently being reworked or are in development may very soon. You might also do a little investigation into using an M.2 drive with this build as it's supposedly a faster medium for data transfer. Basically M.2 storage is a PCI slot card SSD that is supposed to be faster than SATA somewhat, actually, theoretically, a lot, but reviews on this are mixed.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5930K 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($549.95 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H105 73.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($104.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus X99-A ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($244.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($250.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($169.88 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($123.88 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card ($359.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Luxe ATX Full Tower Case ($149.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($119.99 @ NCIX US)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer ($17.85 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.98 @ OutletPC)
Case Fan: Noctua NF-P14r redux-1500 PWM 78.7 CFM 140mm Fan ($18.89 @ Amazon)
Case Fan: Noctua NF-P14r redux-1500 PWM 78.7 CFM 140mm Fan ($18.89 @ Amazon)
Total: $2220.25
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-07 23:52 EST-0500


I also included an 850w EVGA G2 PSU in case you decide down the road to add a second GPU. If you don't think you'll be likely to do that you can drop it down to the one I included in the other build, or even a lesser model, but for that build I'd like to see some form of G2 or P2 PSU, or one of Seasonic's better units in there.