need some general help with specs for a system

[Karsten75]

Planning to build a new development workstation.

Primarily game development in Unity 3D. but of course, that involves some graphics work and some video processing as well.

I'm looking to replace this (now 5 year-old) machine.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Core i7-4820K 3.7 GHz Quad-Core Processor
Motherboard: ASRock - X79 Extreme6 ATX LGA2011 Motherboard
Memory: Crucial - Ballistix Tactical 8 GB (1 x 8 GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Memory: Crucial - Ballistix Tactical 8 GB (1 x 8 GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Memory: Crucial - Ballistix Tactical 8 GB (1 x 8 GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Memory: Crucial - Ballistix Tactical 8 GB (1 x 8 GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Storage: Samsung - 840 EVO 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($320.31 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 770 4 GB TWIN FROZR Video Card
Case: Fractal Design - Define R4 (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: XFX - PRO Black Edition 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($139.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Optical Drive: Lite-On - iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($29.89 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 8.1 Pro OEM 64-bit ($109.45 @ My Choice Software)
Other: Intel BXTS13X Liquid Cooling Thermal Solution for Socket LGA1150/ LGA2011 / LGA1366 / LGA1156 / LGA1155 ($81.99)
Total: $681.63
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-11-17 18:12 EST-0500

At build time, that came in at about $1,800. Now I'm willing to spend up to $2,500.

Right now I"m not as of yet looking for configurations, I'm mostly wanting to clarify issues in my mind.

Mainly:

1. Is is a good time to buy an Nvidia RTX 2070 or should I plan to buy the GTX 1070 Ti?

2. NVMe SSDs- many of them seem to mount directly under the graphics card. How good is that for cooling? Is the only alternative to look for an SSD that mounts in a PCI-e slot?

3. I've heard that some of the "newer" Intel processors can vastly exceed their TDP in power consumption, especially if they're highly utilized in turbo mode and the cooler can keep up. The processor I'm looking at (more on that later) seems to have a TDP of 165W, but I can't find many coolers that state exactly how much they can cool.

I've been using AIO liquid coolers exclusively for a number of years now (maybe back to 2011) and I'm not about to change - I like the silence around me. I'm wondering if a 140 mm AIO cooler will do the job or if I should be looking at getting a case that can accommodate a dual fan (280 mm) cooler.

4. Given that I'm going to use NVMe storage that uses PCI-e lanes, should I be looking at a processor with > 16 PCI-e lanes? seems most of Intel's processors are "stuck" with 16 lanes at best.

5. Finally, based on what I suspect are fairly uninformed opinions, I'm leaning toward the newly announced Intel i7-9800X. Only thing, it's a Skylake architecture, and that seems old. But it does have a nice, shiny 44 PCI-e lanes.

Any general observations and "setting-straight" opinions are welcome.

 

[Karsten75]

nothing?

 

[qyvnncgr]

X299 and i7-9800X Skylake-X platform Basin Falls refresh: Pro: More PCI lanes, bigger package may allow better cooling and thus overclocking than Z390 Intel Core i9-9900K. Quad-channel memory. Con: Lower clock rate on-paper before you overclock. No hardware-based mitigation for the Meltdown and L1TF (Foreshadow) vulnerabilities.

Bottom Line: We need to wait and see how well overclocking works on the X299 and i7-9800X Skylake-X platform Basin Falls refresh platform. My old Intel Core i7-5820K Haswell-E 6-Core 3.3GHz LGA 2011-v3 was a great overclocker, with +0.7 GHz to 4 GHz overclock being pretty easy and stable for long term use, and I could push it to +0.9 GHz to 4.2 GHz with long term stability, but just backed off a little for margin. If the X299 and i7-9800X Skylake-X platform Basin Falls refresh can overclock to 5 GHz with long term stability, it will tie the i9-9900K on speed, with much more PCI lanes.