System Rebuild - Parts breakdown - Thoughts?

[melenie]

What started off as a simple idea to upgrade to Pascal 10 series has now developed into a whole system overhaul. Basically, the only things I will be keeping are my optical, case and ssd/hdd drives.

I currently only use my PC for gaming at 1440p and web browsing. Considering going 4k very soon. Also, with VR making huge ground so fast, that is also an option I'm considering.

Please take a look at the components I've selected and where possible, any suggestions would be appreciated. That is, components you believe to be of a better price/performance and compatibility issues etc etc.

Just a bit of info.....

I'm planning to go sli in future (pending more bench marking and newer drivers).
I'm also planning on going with an EK open water cooling setup. Atm, planning to only cool the cpu/gpu. Do you think it's worthwhile to cool the ram/mobo or are these just aesthetic decision's people make with absolutely no benefit to performance and instead just a hit to the pocket?

Yes i will be overclocking the cpu, gpu and ram. I've never oc'd a mobo. But I'll look into that too.

Power supply. 1Kw enough juice to run this setup also baring in mind that I may consider sli 1080's and also, I will need to run my cooling system. Due to power efficiency of the skylake and pascal architectures, I'm going to say I'm more than safe with a 1000w supply. Perhaps I could dial it back to a 750w? Thoughts?

RAM. This is my weakest spot with builds. I hate having to choose ram. Basically I spend about 10mins google searching "Best gaming ram" and then choosing one that's priced in between lol.

That is all I can think of at the moment but I'm sure more questions will come up

Basically don't exactly have a budget in mind but more looking for top end performance leaning towards the bang for buck scale as opposed to forking out cash for 1fps increases. If there is a better option for slightly higher price, I'm prepared to spend the cash. If there is cheaper option with similar performance, again I'm all ears. Everyone loves to save where they can ofcourse.

Build list below


CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($314.99 @ Newegg)

Motherboard: Asus MAXIMUS VIII HERO ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($203.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Memory: G.Skill TridentZ Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3600 Memory ($139.99 @ Newegg)

Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($87.69 @ Amazon)

Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1080 8GB Video Card (sli pending on further developments in drivers and a better idea in bench marking)

Case: NZXT Phantom 530 (White) ATX Full Tower Case ($113.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Power Supply: Silverstone Strider Gold Evolution 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($194.99 @ Directron)
Total: $1055.64

 

[Blas]

As for liquid cooling: RAM and mobo, considering you don't want to over-spend, are basically aesthetic options, as you rightly point out. It won't really bring any gaming performance/noise reduction benefits. I have a custom liquid cooling loop. Two actually, one for my 2 GPUs, another for the CPU, it's fun to build, nice to watch, but expensive. Considering the recent progress in performance per watt (i.e. efficiency) in all pc parts, you might want to buy a pre-built liquid cooling kit for the CPU, and wait for one of the liquid cooled custom 1080 from the AIB, which will be available in the coming weeks. Custom loops are more expensive, they require some maintenance, and are also expensive to upgrade: if you buy a second GPU down the rad, you will need an extra water block, fittings, more tubing, etc. For me it was a fun thing to do, but i won't repeat with my next build, i will go with some pre-built kit.

PSU: again, considering the hardware is becoming more efficient each year, and even if you went SLI down the road, i would pick the 750W PSU. Pascal needs little juice, and so does Skylake. Future hardware will require even less.

Storage: the mobo you've picked (good mobo indeed) accepts M.2 PCIe drives. These M.2 drives are to SATA SSDs what SATA SSDs are to HDDs: they are way faster! So while keeping your HDDs and SSDs, instead of picking the SATA Samsung EVO, i would pick a Samsung SM951 PCIe drive.

The CPU is the best available for gaming. RAM is well chosen, in that it's fast (apparently nowadays there's performance to gain from fast RAM, even if in the past it wasn't at all clear: http://www.techspot.com/article/1171-ddr4-4000-mhz-performance/page4.html) and dual-channel, while leaving two ram slots available for future upgrades. The case is nice, but for me the case is a matter of personal preference on aesthetics, so a personal choice, nothing to say about it.

Back to watercooling: for some reason i never quite understood, when people build custom watercooling loops for both CPU and GPU, they tend to give a beefier radiator to the CPU than to the GPU(s): i have a 3x120 radiator for the GPUs and 2x120 for the CPU, i think it makes way more sense, as the GPUs (any performace GPU) needs more wattage than any CPU. So, if you do separate loops, i would prioritize the GPU over the CPU. If you do a single loop, i would cool the CPU before the GPU (the loop being something like reservoir-pump-cpu-gpu-radiator-back to reservoir).


In any case, you have picked very nice parts, i wouldn't really change anything. There might be better options for the RAM, but i'm no RAM expert. You can check here for the recommendations of Tom's Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-ram,4057.html

Enjoy your build and subsequent gaming

 

[Blas]

Forgot commenting about SLI: i have been using Crossfire (2x6970), and it's been kind of a disappointment: when everything works fine, it's perfect, it scales well (you get up to 80%-90% more FPS from the second GPU), performs well. But not all games work with dual GPUs, and then the second GPU is just a dead part. Some don't scale well. Some have issues scaling, and the second GPU only adds a small % of frames. And sometimes it gets nasty and you have worse performance than with a single card. I would recommend picking the most powerful GPU you are wiling to pay for (and right now that's the 1080, no doubt). If later on you need more performance, sell it and buy whatever is best. SLI/CF is kind of a pain in the ass... Then there's the drivers issue, maybe Nvidia does a better job with SLI than AMD does with CF, but again, i think it's not really worth it. I'd go with a single card...

That's it. Again: enjoy it!