£3K Multi Use Rig Feedback and thoughts

DreamHarvest

DreamHarvest

DreamHarvest

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Joined
27 Sep 2014
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57
Hi,

I'm looking to get some feedback on a proposed build that I'm planning within the next couple of weeks. I've been a long time Mac user, having gone through 5 Macbook Pros and two iMac's and I'm somewhat out of the loop in terms of PC building. The last build I did was back in the AMD Thunderbird days, so that's going back around 15 years ago. This is a totally fresh build with no parts having been purchased yet.

Anyway, the rig I'm looking to build will end up being used side by side with my iMac but will be used for the following:

Audio Production work using Nuendo and Adobe Audition (mainly sound design)
Games Development using Unity, CryEngine and Unreal Engine
Oculus Rift Use / Dev
Mobile App dev using Xamarin (One of the reasons I'm keeping the Mac)
Gaming

The parts that I have in mind are as follows, though any suggestions for things to be swapped out please let me know. I'm looking to spend around £3000 +/- 10%

Case: Corsair Graphite 760T
Motherboard: Asus X99 - Deluxe
CPU: Intel 5930K 3.50GHz
CPU Cooling: Silverstone Tundra Series TD02 Liquid CPU Cooler
RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB (4x4GB) DDR42666MHz
GPU: 2 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 G1 Gaming 4096MB
PSU: SuperFlower Leadex Platinum 1000W
Storage: Crucial M550 1TB, Crucial M550 256GB
Optical Drive: OcUK Value Blu-ray / DVDRW combi SATA - OEM
Monitor: Acer 4k2k XB280HK 28" G-Sync Gaming Widescreen LED Monitor

Sound wise I'm already running a Motu 828x which is a thunderbolt audio interface but I'll need a thunderbolt card for this new system as well as a switch to swap my keyboard, mouse and screen over to the Mac and back again. so any recommendations of switches that support 4K displays over display port as well as the usual USB ports for the mouse and keyboard would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance guys :)
 
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Hi,
I have just upgraded to an Asus X99 deluxe with a 5930K and its running very well. The Thunderbolt card does not come with it but it has a plug for one so you should be able to buy one. I have a Corsair H105 cooler and temps are very good and people recommend them a lot. I did not go for the Dominator Platinum 16GB as it just too expensive, you could get 32GB of a different brand for a similar price and the performance would be very close but you would have more RAM, The software you are using may benefit more that way. I would also change the Crucial M550 256GB to a Crucial MX100 256GB as they cost less and are just as fast.

To use your mac and pc off one screen you could use some type of RemoteDestop software.
 
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Thanks for the tips Fred, yea, 32Gb would make more sense due to the large sample libraries I use, just not sure which brand to go for. As to Thunderbolt cards I've just read that Asus do a dual one so will probably pick that up.

I don't want to run the mac and pc off one screen as the iMac already has a screen, i just want to share my mouse, keyboard and the 4K display between the two. I guess Remote Desktop is a possible solution, but ideally I need to take control away from one system and hand it over to the other which isn't really possible, when using the mac it would be nice to use both displays indipendantly rather than mirroring
 
I might actually go for two Samsung evo pro drives at 1tb and 256GB instead of the crucial ones, reading through performance specs the crucial's are a bit crap in comparison.
 
New Ideas for extreme performance system:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Acer 4k2k XB280HK 28" G-Sync Gaming Widescreen LED Monitor - Black/Red £499.99
1 x Samsung 1TB SSD 850 PRO SATA 6Gbps 3D NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-7KE1T0BW) £489.98
1 x Intel 5930K 3.50GHz (Haswell-E) Socket LGA2011-V3 Processor - Retail (BX80648I75930K) £419.99
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Quad Channel Kit (BLS4K8G4D240FSA) £359.99
2 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 G1 Gaming 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £299.99 (£599.98)
1 x Asus X99-Deluxe Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 ATX Motherboard £299.99
1 x Corsair Graphite 760T Windowed Full Tower Gaming Case - White (CC-9011045-WW) £161.99
1 x SuperFlower Leadex Platinum 1000W Fully Modular "80 Plus Platinum" Power Supply - White £149.99
1 x Samsung 256GB SSD 850 PRO SATA 6Gbps 3D NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-7KE256BW) £144.95
1 x Silverstone Tundra Series TD02 Liquid CPU Cooler £69.95
1 x OcUK Value Blu-ray / DVDRW combi SATA - OEM £39.95
Total : £3,263.38 (includes shipping : £22.20).



It's still within my budget but if anyone has any thought on how to bring it down a bit I would be grateful, I wouldnt mind being able to get a new keyboard to replace my apple one. Thanks
 
The easiest way to bring down the cost is replace the 5930k with the 5820k. That'san instant £130 saving.

The only thing the 5930k has over the 5820k is the extra PCI-E lanes (40 compared to 28), which (in my experience) is not worth it for 2-way SLI cards. For 3-way SLI i would consider getting the 5930k but with 2 x 970's itll blast 4k away pretty easy.

As a 2 card system goes, there is VERY little difference between x16/x16 and x16/x8,so the extra £130 is wasted, really.

Performance (CPU) wise the chips are VERY similar anyway, even when looking at overclocking.

The RAM takes up a huge chunk of money too, Don't youthink 16GB would be enough; to start with atleast? As DDR4 is new the prices are Sky high, so it may be worth waiting to get an additional 16GB, just a thought, it'll save you more in the long term.

I noticed you went for the deluxe motherboard, i'd look at the 'S' if i were you, all you lose is Wifi (which a £15 adapter will do. The board also comes bundled withthe 5820k, saving £40-£50 instantly.

And Blu-ray.. If you don't have any Blu-rays(or wont use the PC to play any) don't waste your money getting one. If you will use it (you'll need to spend about £50-£60) get one with software (retail)..

Also 2 SSD's. That eats up a lot of money. I think you need to think about the size of them and how much you'll actually use, and what you can use a mech HDD instead.

Here is my idea:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Acer 4k2k XB280HK 28" G-Sync Gaming Widescreen LED Monitor - Black/Red £499.99
1 x Asus X99-S - Intel Core i7 5820K Six Core CPU & Motherboard Bundle ***£30 Saving*** £495.98
2 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780Ti WindForce 3x OC 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (GV-N78TOC-3GD) £359.99 (£719.98)
1 x Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4 PC4-21300C16 2666MHz Quad Channel Kit - Black (CMK16GX4M4A2666C16) £239.99
1 x Samsung 500GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE500BW) £179.99
1 x Corsair Graphite 760T Windowed Full Tower Gaming Case - White (CC-9011045-WW) £161.99
1 x SuperFlower Leadex Platinum 1000W Fully Modular "80 Plus Platinum" Power Supply - White £149.99
1 x Silverstone Tundra Series TD02 Liquid CPU Cooler £69.95
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £60.98
Total : £2,605.48 (includes shipping : £22.20).



You may notice the GPU's are not 970's, as the 780ti's are now replaced, the price have PLUMMETED, making them extremely good value. Theyare better for rendering and gaming than the 970's.. So i think it's a good choice.

The SSD's, i've just gave you one 500GB drive. I think this will be enough, no need for two seperate ones IMO. If you must have two, stick to the EVO range, they are great Value, or you can get a 1TB one for well under £400.

What do you think?
 
Thanks for the reply and advice Doomedspeed.

In regards to the dual 970's, one of my reasons for going for them rather than the r9 295x2 or a pair of GTX 780Ti's is the future VR Direct update that's planned which I believe will only be available on the latest cards - being a developer working with the Oculus Rift this is a major selling point, they're cheaper and pretty much as powerful as the 780Ti as well, especially if I overclock them.

I think your right about maybe going for an Evo series SSDs, at least for my boot drive. The larger 1TB drive was going to be used for a lot of the sound libraries I use for work where I need maximum performance and maximum amounts of space. I'm already using 6TB of Western Digital external drives over USB 3 and I'm finding the performance somewhat lacking when working on large projects, though if the performance is somewhat similar between the EVO and Pro drives I might as well make a saving there.

Ram was a hard one as mentioned above, the sound libraries when loaded use up massive amounts of ram, for instance just a Cello from one of my libraries takes up almost 4GB of RAM. Though I'm still planning on using my Mac for the heavy duty audio work I might offload some of the libraries back onto the mac negating the need to have so much RAM on the PC, so good saving there.

I didn't realize that the Asus X99-s only lost the wifi, that's good to know as I'm wired in so have no use for wifi anyway so thanks for that tip, I'll have to buy an SLI bridge though as I've just realized it doesn't come with one but I'm sure they're pretty cheap.

lastly, I do plan on going for a 3 way SLI eventually which was my reasoning for the choice of the 5930K, I wanted to leave some room for upgradqblility down the road, especially when triple SLI begins to be better catered for by other developer.

Let me put this into the basket and see what it adds up to.

Thanks again for your help :)
 
Ok, here's the new build:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus X99-S - Intel Core i7 5930K Six Core CPU & Motherboard Bundle ***£30 Saving*** £625.98
1 x Acer 4k2k XB280HK 28" G-Sync Gaming Widescreen LED Monitor - Black/Red £499.99
1 x Samsung 1TB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE1T0BW) £319.48
2 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 G1 Gaming 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £299.99 (£599.98)
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Quad Channel Kit (BLS4K4G4D240FSA) £179.99
1 x Corsair Graphite 760T Windowed Full Tower Gaming Case - White (CC-9011045-WW) £161.99
1 x SuperFlower Leadex Platinum 1000W Fully Modular "80 Plus Platinum" Power Supply - White £149.99
1 x Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Laptop Kit - (MZ-7TE250LW) £109.99
1 x Silverstone Tundra Series TD02 Liquid CPU Cooler £69.95
1 x OcUK Value Blu-ray / DVDRW combi SATA - OEM £39.95
Total : £2,783.92 (includes shipping : £22.20).



I decided to replace the pro drives with the standard evo basic drives, I think I'll still see enough of a performance increase over the current external USB drives that the additional cost of the pro drives is unwarranted.
I could potentially bring it down further with the use of the Crucial 500 drives instead of the Samsung drives, has anyone got any thoughts on them?

Anyway, almost a £400 saving which is great. Any more tips would be great. Thanks
 
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I know it offers extra PCI-E lanes but I'm not really convinced by the 5930k. To me it makes more sense to either save the cash and go for a 5820k (given it can be clocked to the same speed as the 5930k) or splash some extra cash and go all out on the 5960X. You could definitely afford the extreme edition with your budget.

Also I'd suggest going for a 34" 21:9 3440x1440 monitor like the LG rather than a 28" 4k one. If you don't want 21:9 the Asus ROG 27" 1440p 144hz is probably a better bet. Windows 4k support (and font scaling genera) is flat out broken IMO and 4k wont be usable at it's native res in most of the audio/dev apps you'll be using.
 
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The deluxe has one extra GB Nic + 3x3 Wi-Fi AC + two extra USB 3 ports and a 4x pcie M.2 card and the extra fan control card. I got it as I need fast WIFI with good range and a 3x3 WI-FI AC card is about £60 so it was the best option.
 
silvagti said:
I know it offers extra PCI-E lanes but I'm not really convinced by the 5930k. To me it makes more sense to either save the cash and go for a 5820k (given it can be clocked to the same speed as the 5930k) or splash some extra cash and go all out on the 5960X. You could definitely afford the extreme edition with your budget.

Also I'd suggest going for a 34" 21:9 3440x1440 monitor like the LG rather than a 28" 4k one. If you don't want 21:9 the Asus ROG 27" 1440p 144hz is probably a better bet. Windows 4k support (and font scaling genera) is flat out broken IMO and 4k wont be usable at it's native res in most of the audio/dev apps you'll be using.
Click to expand...

It's just such a massive jump in price from the 5930K to the 5960K I can't really justify it, but I need the upgradability that the 5930K affords me in terms of tripple SLI support - its a tough one. I'll really need to have a sit down and think about it.

In terms of the display, I've really been trying to decide on whether to take the jump to 4K, not necessarily for gaming but just for the additional screen real estate I would get with it. Though if your saying things are a bit buggered at the moment in windows Your probably right and I should hold out a little while. I do like the look of that LG display though, price is a bit daunting though. Will have a think about it.

Thanks for the help :)
 
FredFlint said:
The deluxe has one extra GB Nic + 3x3 Wi-Fi AC + two extra USB 3 ports and a 4x pcie M.2 card and the extra fan control card. I got it as I need fast WIFI with good range and a 3x3 WI-FI AC card is about £60 so it was the best option.
Click to expand...

Yea, I noticed the missing usb ports as well as the Wi-Fi, though didnt realize it was missing the M2 card and extra fan control card. Another thing to think about.

Thanks for the heads up
 
I didn't know that about the 9** series, well worth going for the 970's then. .

I think tri-SLI is starting to become a more viable option, though it may vary from progam/game. I personally think you'd get better results (when you ready to add the third) by upgrading your two current GPUs rather than throwing another in. Though this is obviously more costly.

To be honest I can't see 970 SLI struggling with 4K. I think it'll take a long while for games to get the best out of 4k so performance will vary wildly. Though for you line of work/play I think 4k may be justified, over the swift anyway.

CPU wise i disagree that the 5930k has no place, while its not as eaay an option as 4930k (over the 4820k) used to be its still the go-to CPU for a high end gaming rig (super high end)
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x LG Flatron 34UC97-P 34" WideScreen Super-Wide Curved LED Monitor £989.99
1 x Asus X99-S - Intel Core i7 5930K Six Core CPU & Motherboard Bundle ***£30 Saving*** £645.98
1 x Samsung 1TB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE1T0BW) £319.48
2 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 970 G1 Gaming 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £299.99 (£599.98)
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (4x4GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Quad Channel Kit (BLS4K4G4D240FSA) £179.99
1 x Corsair Graphite 760T Windowed Full Tower Gaming Case - White (CC-9011045-WW) £161.99
1 x SuperFlower Leadex Platinum 1000W Fully Modular "80 Plus Platinum" Power Supply - White £149.99
1 x Corsair Gaming CGK70 RGB Backlight Keyboard Black Cherry MX Red Switches (CH-9000068-UK) £139.99
1 x Corsair Gaming CG-H2100 Dolby 7.1 Wireless Headset (CA-9011127-EU) £99.95
1 x Silverstone Tundra Series TD02 Liquid CPU Cooler £69.95
1 x OcUK Value Blu-ray / DVDRW combi SATA - OEM £39.95
1 x 34 Piece PC Tool Kit £24.98
Total : £3,448.85 (includes shipping : £22.20).



I think this might be the final setup, though I'm going to have to shop around to bring the price back down to closer to my budget - overclockers seems to be a tad more expensive in regards to all of the components except the PSU at the moment when I checked via ************, I wonder if they'll match prices
 
A quick check: is your budget ex VAT or inc VAT?

I dislike the curved monitors: they don't work so well in portrait mode, and they aren't good from angles. Get yourself a pair of 4K monitors instead - you'll be much more productive with two monitors. You'll need 2x GTX 980 for good performance at 4K.

Consider if you need an internal optical drive; if you'll rarely use one, get yourself an external USB one instead.

And you're going to need a Windows license.

Displayport 1.2 KVMs that actually work at 4K have qualities reminiscent of hens' teeth.
 
Including VAT, I'm not VAT registered, though i do write off the cost against my tax.

I wont be using the display in portrait, I have a little 22" screen i use in portrait off to the side of my desk.

The LG can be used as a sort of KVM switch which seems to knock a bit off an addition cost, i also like the additional screen real estate i would get with the super widescreen with none of the issues that are currently associated with working with a 4K display in terms of productivity apps. the curved display seems to be much more immersive for gaming too, though i really need to go and look at one in person before plopping a grand on it and see how it effects working with productivity apps.

I still burn CD's and DVD's for certain clients (I have no idea why they don't want to move over to using services like dropbox, perhaps they're a bit old fashioned) and the OCUK one is pretty good value and has the added benefit of having blue ray support which I'll probably use on occasion.

Windows license isn't an issue, i get them free from my part time freelancing job as a teacher.

Thanks for the input and help :)
 
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