Upgrade PC to possibly 1440P gameplayability

[compaqguy]

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/wJGwhq
This is my current build im wanting to upgrade to an Intel build.

I was looking at the I7 6700K or the I5 6600K
IDK which motherboard would be the best
I am definitely overclocking so either the H100i or the Noctua DH-15 for the cooler (sound isnt a big issue)
Not for sure about the ram but i want at least 16 gigs
Looking at either getting the GTX 1070 or getting another R9 380X for crossfire
And if need be ill get a better psu cuz the solid gear is shit

But i have around 900 to spend and i am wanting to future-proof this build for at least a couple years. I'll mostly be gaming but i want to get into video editing in the near future.

What would you guys recommend me doing?

 

[HyperCat]

If you are mainly gaming a i5 6600K is more than enough, but in video and photo editing a i7 is faster so it depends....are you going to make money off video editing it in the future? will time be an important factor? a overclocked i5 6600K performs same as a i7 6700K when OC`d. If you can afford a GTX 1070 go for it, CF and SLI support is poor and a GTX 1070 will slaughter 2x R9 380s anyways. MSI, Asus, GIGABYTE and EVGA are good brands, get the cheapest. Corsair RM750X (750W) or RM650X (650w) PSUs are excellent if you need a new psu. 8GBs of RAM is enough for gaming but 16GBs isnt bad if you have extra money to spend on RAM, Asus Z170 Pro Gaming is an very good Motherboard (be sure to get a Z170 mobo)

 

[Bungle11]

I would say i5 for gaming. I would also ditch the H100i (its shit). Also also tests which give the best results for the H100i are in 'performance' mode. So unless you want your rig to sound like a washing machine i would avoid this cooler. you want a balance between cooling and noise. The new Cooler Master Masterliquid seams to get good reviews. Personally i like the EK Preditor AIO, but its massive (and expensive).

EVGA also do good PSUs at a reasonable price. I have a EVGA G2 and its excellent. Just google it for reviews.

8Gb is enough for gaming at the moment.

 

[10tacle]

As a 970 SLI owner (roughly equal to a single 1070) running a 1440p rig, I would strongly urge against going multiple GPU for the future. You will be much better off getting a single 1070 and selling that 380 as someone below said the 1070 smokes 380XF anyway.

Then there's this issue: game developers are slowly starting to not core code their games for multiple GPUs while at the same time Nvidia and AMD are pushing more multi-GPU support responsibilities in drivers back to the developers in afterthought patches. I've been an SLI owner for four generations of GPUs, and these 970s will be my last. Poor scaling and no SLI support at game launches are increasing. At the current rate of things and unless trends change, in five years multi-GPU gaming support will be a thing of the past.

 

[compaqguy]

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/jg427h
This is what i have put together, any suggestions for bang-for-buckness?

I don't think i need a new psu but it is cheap, would any of you recommend a new one.
and nah i probably wont be making any money and time is not an important factor for video editing.

 

[Bungle11]

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/jg427h
This is what i have put together, any suggestions for bang-for-buckness?

I don't think i need a new psu but it is cheap, would any of you recommend a new one.
and nah i probably wont be making any money and time is not an important factor for video editing.

PSU list - anything in Teir 1 and 2 is a good bet. Probably no more that 600/650w for your rig.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2547993/psu-tier-list.html

I would swap your air cooler for a Cooler Master Masterliquid Pro 240. I think its $20 more than what you have picked.

 

[HyperCat]

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/jg427h
This is what i have put together, any suggestions for bang-for-buckness?

I don't think i need a new psu but it is cheap, would any of you recommend a new one.
and nah i probably wont be making any money and time is not an important factor for video editing.

then a i7 is a waste of money, get the i5 6600K.
If you need a PSU take a look at this: http://pcpartpicker.com/product/9q38TW/corsair-power-supply-cp9020092na the RM750X is 9$ cheaper than RM650X. EVGA G2 power supplies also have good quality.

 

[n0ns3ns3]

Well ...
unlike the guys talking about i5 ...
I have the GTX 1070 and had the HT disabled on my i7 which makes it i5.
in some games, like GTA V, Crysis 3, Whitcher 3 and many more, 30-40% of the GTX 1070 will be wasted on 1080p and 1440p monitors as i5 is not able to feed it enough data.
the 80$ difference between i5 and i7 is about 5-6% of your total budget.
Get i7.

 

[Bungle11]

Well ...
unlike the guys talking about i5 ...
I have the GTX 1070 and had the HT disabled on my i7 which makes it i5.
in some games, like GTA V, Crysis 3, Whitcher 3 and many more, 30-40% of the GTX 1070 will be wasted on 1080p and 1440p monitors as i5 is not able to feed it enough data.
the 80$ difference between i5 and i7 is about 5-6% of your total budget.
Get i7.

What a load of sh*t. what you've basically said is an i7 will improve your 1070GTX performance by 30 - 40%. This is not true. Maybe by 5%-7% max (or 4-7 FPS) @ 1440p res. So not worth the cost in my opinion. It is better to get a better cooler for overclocking if you need it, and a good PSU to stop your parts from exploding.

Why did you disable the HT on your i7? An i7 is basically a i5 with HT. Photo and video editing software utilize HT more than games at the moment. So unless the frequency is significantly more on the i7, the difference is, as i said, 5-7%. Not worth the additional (my opinion).

 

[n0ns3ns3]

30-40 improvement is on 1080p.
1440 is much lower.

 

[Bungle11]

30-40 improvement is on 1080p.
1440 is much lower.

Still BS. An i5 is capable of handling 1080p. Data is data. Data (i.e. programing) from any game will be the same whether its in 1080p or 1440p. The difference is the graphics card data that is added to the CPU load. The higher the resolution the more data the cpu has to handle - which will affect fps. A i7 will handle slightly more load for games given that they are normally clocked slightly higher than i5. the difference between i5 and i7 using a 1070gtx will probably be 3-5 fps max @1440p, or 1-2fps @4k it the frequencies are equal. The 1070gtx can already push wellover 100 fps at 1080p regardless of whether you have an i5 or i7, and will play most current games at 60 - 90 fps @1440p.

What you are saying is that a 6th gen i5 can't handle 1080p gaming but can handle 1440p. What a joke.

 

[n0ns3ns3]

30-40 improvement is on 1080p.
1440 is much lower.

Still BS. An i5 is capable of handling 1080p. Data is data. Data (i.e. programing) from any game will be the same whether its in 1080p or 1440p. The difference is the graphics card data that is added to the CPU load. The higher the resolution the more data the cpu has to handle - which will affect fps. A i7 will handle slightly more load for games given that they are normally clocked slightly higher than i5. the difference between i5 and i7 using a 1070gtx will probably be 3-5 fps max @1440p, or 1-2fps @4k it the frequencies are equal. The 1070gtx can already push wellover 100 fps at 1080p regardless of whether you have an i5 or i7, and will play most current games at 60 - 90 fps @1440p.

What you are saying is that a 6th gen i5 can't handle 1080p gaming but can handle 1440p. What a joke.

Actually there is very small (if at all) performance difference between 2nd and 6th gen i5/i7 on the same clock. Moreover, 4th gen performs better than 6th gen on the same clock in some cases.
Now to the point - You start with correct assumption that the data is data and there is no change between resolutions. And then you getting lost. Here is how it works. the amount of data CPU has to process for games on different resolutions is about the same. Resolution mostly changes GPU load since it has to draw more (or less) pixels. That's why going from 1080p to 1440p on the same settings, will increase GPU load and more powerful GPU required to maintain the FPS on the same level. There is almost no change in CPU load (it mostly calculates the interaction between objects and tells the GPU where and what to draw). Changing resolution is basically very common test to identify what will be the best upgrade - GPU or CPU.
So it is funny, but since GTX 1070 can draw insane amount of frames at 1080p, a more powerful CPU required to keep it fed with data to maintain close to 100%. Going to 1440p will tax the GTX 1070 performance, so a "weaker" CPU will be able to keep it busy.
Now, to most people getting 100 or 150 or 200 FPS is the same, there are few hardcore FPS (shooters) gamers that can actually tell the difference between 100 and 120 (and even 144 and 165) FPS. Person that is buying GTX 1070 for 1080p is either wasting his money (as a 200$ cheaper GPU will do the same) or really needs those 150-170 FPS.
And the point of my post, is to provide OP an info that will allow to make the right (for him) decision.

 

[compaqguy]

I will definitely be going 1440p in the near future and then multi monitor next year so I'm doing some future proofing.
I was set on the I5 but then these people come in throwing some interesting points
I'll probably wait til Black Friday to get a graphics card and a monitor, the R9 380X i have now will suffice.

And another reason for the 1070 is for future SLI

 

[n0ns3ns3]

It's kinda pointless to to SLI
By the time you will want/need to add another one, there will be a single card at the same 350-450 price that will do the job.
I had this idea of SLI more few times in the past, and realized that "adding another card later" never worked. There was a new card with new features that could do what i want.
It just does not worth it to deal with games that do not support it, heat, power consumption ... some strange performance issues.
If you want to run something on 3 4K monitors, well ... you have no option but to go multi GPU.
but for normal setups, seems like the benefit is not worth it.

 

[10tacle]

It's kinda pointless to to SLI By the time you will want/need to add another one, there will be a single card at the same 350-450 price that will do the job.

Well if you wait long enough in getting that second GPU, then it's inevitable. However, most SLI owners I know, myself included, only have a delay for a few months between saving up for the second GPU. If you have to wait six months to a year or more for a second card, then yes, it's not worth it.

On the other hand, once that second GPU is obtained, it can last for several years. Hence why I still have my 970s for 1440p in my primary gaming rig (two years old) and 680s for 1080p in my backup gaming rig (four years old).

With that said, the issue now is that Nvidia appears to be slowly backing away from SLI support and punting that development support back to the game developers. As an SLI owner since 2009 and GTX 275s, I've never seen such a fail on initial SLI support in games out of the gate as I have the past two years.

 

[n0ns3ns3]

^ What you say is true.
SLI it's just another way to solve the problem/have some fun.
Let's take your example. 2x970 = 650-750$, that's kinda more than 980ti. I'm not sure how much more FPS you get and if it's worth it without seeing FPS counter.
Let's add more expensive PSU, more cooling, larger case, issue here , issue there ...
I'm slimming down my builds over last decade from full tower, to small mid tower now and the next build is definitely going to be mini ITX or even smaller.

 

[compaqguy]

One final question, will the 6600K in any way bottleneck the 1070 any time in the future if i get three 144 hz 1080p monitors, or 3 1440p 60 hz monitors?

 

[n0ns3ns3]

In case of 1080p@144Hz - Yes it will.
instead of 3x1440p monitors, get one 3440x1440p at 75-100Hz.
Anyway don't get less than 75Hz monitor for gaming.
And on higher resolutions (like 1440p) the bottleneck will be much smaller.

 

[10tacle]

One final question, will the 6600K in any way bottleneck the 1070 any time in the future if i get three 144 hz 1080p monitors, or 3 1440p 60 hz monitors?

Nobody can really answer that as we don't know what demands future games will be on the GPU and CPU. However, the trend over the past 10 years for PC games has been to push more of the graphics on the GPU as they've gotten more powerful, rendering the speed/power of the CPU less important.

This is one reason I do not overclock much anymore for gaming even though my 4690K runs perfect at 4.7GHz with little effort. At higher resolution (1440p) and AA/quality settings, I notice little FPS improvement in most games vs. running it stock at 3.5GHz (on all four cores since turbo at 3.9GHz only runs on one core). I do however overclock for video rendering as it speeds up the processing time considerably (Sony Vegas Studio).

Oh and regarding 3x 1440p, that's about 20% more pixels to push than a single 4K, so you would need SLI 1070s to run that setup at 60FPS in most games, and in DX12 games that probably won't even happen (Ashes specifically).

 

[compaqguy]

OK sorry, this is definitely the last question.
Will the Noctua D-15 Cooler Fit inside of a RaidMax Agusta Case