Need expert advice on building a rig better than the Alienware area 51 threadripper edition.

You do realise that you can collate these items to your heart's content and then, after spending ££££££s on what you believe to be the best parts, you find that another person has a faster PC but has spent a fraction of what you have?

It can all come down to the silicon lottery. You can buy a £1000 monitor and it ship with dead pixels and it will perform absolutely no better than a £600 monitor.

You can buy the i7 8700k and it just won't go near 5GHz because that is the limitations of your particular chip.

Ryzen owners know all about the hassle trying to get RAM running at 3200MHz or higher. Sometimes your parts just don't want to play together.

The performance difference between a Samsung Evo and Samsung Pro SSD is so negligible that it is a fools errand to worry about it.

What I'm getting at is that you should have a think about how much you want to spend and if you can really justify it. EVERYONE has a budget. Decide upon it and then spec your PC. I guarantee that if you can shave off a few £s here and there then you can sink them into another aspect of your build.

I highly recommend you contact the OCUK sales team and have them knock up a PC for you with the brief that you want the best parts available. Otherwise we will all be here until hell freezes over because there is ALWAYS a new parts coming out, prices going up and down etc.
 
TallPaul1878 said:
You do realise that you can collate these items to your heart's content and then, after spending ££££££s on what you believe to be the best parts, you find that another person has a faster PC but has spent a fraction of what you have?

It can all come down to the silicon lottery. You can buy a £1000 monitor and it ship with dead pixels and it will perform absolutely no better than a £600 monitor.

You can buy the i7 8700k and it just won't go near 5GHz because that is the limitations of your particular chip.

Ryzen owners know all about the hassle trying to get RAM running at 3200MHz or higher. Sometimes your parts just don't want to play together.

The performance difference between a Samsung Evo and Samsung Pro SSD is so negligible that it is a fools errand to worry about it.

What I'm getting at is that you should have a think about how much you want to spend and if you can really justify it. EVERYONE has a budget. Decide upon it and then spec your PC. I guarantee that if you can shave off a few £s here and there then you can sink them into another aspect of your build.

I highly recommend you contact the OCUK sales team and have them knock up a PC for you with the brief that you want the best parts available. Otherwise we will all be here until hell freezes over because there is ALWAYS a new parts coming out, prices going up and down etc.
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I picked the best monitors to give me an idea of what Im looking for, I most likely will change that choice.

the i7 8700k not reaching 5GHz is just something im going to have to deal with unless anyone knows something better than that CPU which im not hearing.

Evo and Pro SSD negligible thing is something ive been looking into and took into consideration purely to see the £ digits I'll be dealing with.

Everyone likes to talk budget so I'll just say that I was originally going to spend over £4k on my rig since i have said i wanted a machine better than the Alienware area 51 threadripper edition and no, I don't mean the low end version/specs of that model. Anyways the only things really bugging me is...

Latest release for GPU, Motherboard, Processor, Best Air cooler for the overall rig (not going water solely because dealing with maintanance)....and the ideal case for it all. Thats my real gripe. Not dosh! I don't want to hear about dosh nor Titan V.
 
Now that you have said that your budget is circa £4k then that makes it a lot easier for people to spec you a system.

"Best" is a subjective term. Especially with thing like the case. If your desire is to have a super powerful but tiny mini-itx build then the case suggestions are going to be completely different to if you have absolutely no requirements for your case. Do you want tempered glass? Do you prioritize function over form?

Eventually you are going to have to just make these decisions on your own. This particular thread has gone on for some time and I've yet to see any forum members put together a shopping basket of parts for you.
 
Phixsator said:
If i was building the "ultimate" gaming machine i certainly would not pick the intel Z platform aka 8700k and alike but instead opt for some proper PCIe bandwidth for expansion and good healthy amount of cores minimum 8 but preferably 12 or 16. The intel z platform is starved enough right now. Im not saying its a bad chip cause it isnt but it does not fall into the "ultimate" bracket in my book. I'd rather have the hardware for some heavy lifting down the road should my interested ever change or the software im using.
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Would you say the performance between a threadripper 1950x and 8700k is negligible? I should know the answer to that one because Im sure I've seen a benchmark on Ytube somewhere.
 
TallPaul1878 said:
Now that you have said that your budget is circa £4k then that makes it a lot easier for people to spec you a system.

"Best" is a subjective term. Especially with thing like the case. If your desire is to have a super powerful but tiny mini-itx build then the case suggestions are going to be completely different to if you have absolutely no requirements for your case. Do you want tempered glass? Do you prioritize function over form?

Eventually you are going to have to just make these decisions on your own. This particular thread has gone on for some time and I've yet to see any forum members put together a shopping basket of parts for you.
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I'm joting down the parts myself, no need to shop for me, didnt want anyone to do so. I just need the data. Im not looking for silly, mini performance crippling asthetic stuff, thats a bonus, if it comes with it, it comes with it. I prioritize function/performance. Now i've heard nothing from anyone about cases, is design technology for cases still lacking? I thought it would be as clear as night and day like picking a gpu or cpu on ideal casses for OP rigs.
 
Vergil said:
I'm joting down the parts myself, no need to shop for me, didnt want anyone to do so. I just need the data. Im not looking for silly, mini performance crippling asthetic stuff, thats a bonus, if it comes with it, it comes with it. I prioritize function/performance. Now i've heard nothing from anyone about cases, is design technology for cases still lacking? I thought it would be as clear as night and day like picking a gpu or cpu on ideal casses for OP rigs.
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Personally I'd be looking at cases with good airflow. That means a mesh front rather than a solid monolith style front panel. Tempered glass is very popular so you will probably find you get that anyway, these days you actively have to go out of your way to avoid it.

My personal PC is housed in a Fractal Design Meshify. I picked it because it has a mesh front that had a unique pattern. The glass is quite tinted, maybe slightly too dark for some, but overall I liked it's improved airflow and it's compact mid tower form.

The BeQuiet cases get good reviews and I see them recommended a lot on here. They seem to tick a lot of boxes for people, whether that be good airflow, quiet operation, modularity etc. Actually a modular case might be a good selling point for you. Get something that allows you to modify your PC over time. Perhaps you will buy a large graphics card at first and so take out a hard drive caddy. Maybe in future cards get smaller and you end up with an array of SSDs and so put the caddy back in.

My best advice to you is to pick a shortlist of parts and check some reviews on YouTube. It will give you an idea of what it looks like, whether something is likely to get scratched or fingerprints all over it. I find those kind of videos quite valuable. Nothing worse than buying something new and in a month it is all scragged and battered.
 
TallPaul1878 said:
Personally I'd be looking at cases with good airflow. That means a mesh front rather than a solid monolith style front panel. Tempered glass is very popular so you will probably find you get that anyway, these days you actively have to go out of your way to avoid it.

My personal PC is housed in a Fractal Design Meshify. I picked it because it has a mesh front that had a unique pattern. The glass is quite tinted, maybe slightly too dark for some, but overall I liked it's improved airflow and it's compact mid tower form.

The BeQuiet cases get good reviews and I see them recommended a lot on here. They seem to tick a lot of boxes for people, whether that be good airflow, quiet operation, modularity etc. Actually a modular case might be a good selling point for you. Get something that allows you to modify your PC over time. Perhaps you will buy a large graphics card at first and so take out a hard drive caddy. Maybe in future cards get smaller and you end up with an array of SSDs and so put the caddy back in.

My best advice to you is to pick a shortlist of parts and check some reviews on YouTube. It will give you an idea of what it looks like, whether something is likely to get scratched or fingerprints all over it. I find those kind of videos quite valuable. Nothing worse than buying something new and in a month it is all scragged and battered.
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yeah, everything im recommended I tripple research, thats why im constantly asking for names instead of broad/general ideas of what I should be looking for to cut down reseacrh time. Its also why Im mostly just looking for best money can buy, its better that way and working down with comparisons rather than starting from the lowest budget and endlessly comparing upwards.
 
For mid tower cases look at:

Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX Glass, Flow Edition
Coolermaster Mastercase Maker 5T
Corsair Crystal 570X RGB
BeQuiet Dark Base 700

For full tower cases consider:

Inwin 909
Coolermaster Cosmos II
BeQuiet Dark Base Pro 900
Phanteks Enthoo Primo

That's a few top class cases to take a look at and see how you feel about them.
 
TallPaul1878 said:
For mid tower cases look at:

Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX Glass, Flow Edition
Coolermaster Mastercase Maker 5T
Corsair Crystal 570X RGB
BeQuiet Dark Base 700

For full tower cases consider:

Inwin 909
Coolermaster Cosmos II
BeQuiet Dark Base Pro 900
Phanteks Enthoo Primo

That's a few top class cases to take a look at and see how you feel about them.
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Full tower case are for best air flow right? whats the purpose of Mid and Full tower cases?
 
Vergil said:
Full tower case are for best air flow right? whats the purpose of Mid and Full tower cases?
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Full tower just gives you more room to add components. Now that we are in the days of NVME SSDs then having a huge cases that can house dozens of HDDs and DVD drives are over. They aren't necessary for a top of the range PC but they are still very popular with people who want to water cool. It allows for huge radiators and reservoirs etc.

A full tower case with a solid front panel will not be as efficient as a mid tower with a mesh panel. You probably won't even be installing a DVD drive so airflow through the front is a moot point now.

Coolermaster launched the HAF H500, it got good reviews for it's large 200mm fans except for one thing. They strangely decided to put a clear plastic front panel on that choked the fans. Not exactly High Air Flow.

Fortunately they listened to those complaints and replaced it with a much more effective mesh panel.

That's the state of PC cases right now. On YouTube you should sub to Hardware Canucks, they seem to focus on cases and audio equipment mostly.
 
TallPaul1878 said:
Full tower just gives you more room to add components. Now that we are in the days of NVME SSDs then having a huge cases that can house dozens of HDDs and DVD drives are over. They aren't necessary for a top of the range PC but they are still very popular with people who want to water cool. It allows for huge radiators and reservoirs etc.

A full tower case with a solid front panel will not be as efficient as a mid tower with a mesh panel. You probably won't even be installing a DVD drive so airflow through the front is a moot point now.

Coolermaster launched the HAF H500, it got good reviews for it's large 200mm fans except for one thing. They strangely decided to put a clear plastic front panel on that choked the fans. Not exactly High Air Flow.

Fortunately they listened to those complaints and replaced it with a much more effective mesh panel.

That's the state of PC cases right now. On YouTube you should sub to Hardware Canucks, they seem to focus on cases and audio equipment mostly.
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Thanks will look into that.
 
Vergil said:
Would you say the performance between a threadripper 1950x and 8700k is negligible? I should know the answer to that one because Im sure I've seen a benchmark on Ytube somewhere.
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In depends entirely on your perspective. I have no doubt that the 8700k will right now and for some time going forward give a higher max fps in games but i personally do not care about that. My priorities is minimums and averages couples with a smooth frametime and ryzen or the extreme i9 chips will give that just fine. on top of this one would be able to do other things while playing games without having to manage resources the same way. The mainstream intel platform is just to resource starved for my liking and its always a stupid puzzle if you want several pcie devices to fit and play nice.
 
Phixsator said:
In depends entirely on your perspective. I have no doubt that the 8700k will right now and for some time going forward give a higher max fps in games but i personally do not care about that. My priorities is minimums and averages couples with a smooth frametime and ryzen or the extreme i9 chips will give that just fine. on top of this one would be able to do other things while playing games without having to manage resources the same way. The mainstream intel platform is just to resource starved for my liking and its always a stupid puzzle if you want several pcie devices to fit and play nice.
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If I was to get an I9 chip with the 10-18 cores etc can I get the same performance and even better in my games as the I7 8700k?
 
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Probably worth mentioning OP - the reason the best PCs (E.G i9/TR) don't top the gaming benchmarks is largely because today's games and game engines were built before we had these newer higher core count chips. So though the i9/TR chips are in some cases many times more powerful in terms of total computing power - only a relatively small number of games can exploit this.

If you wanted a PC for more than gaming alone then it would be worth considering the higher end stuff E.G on a HEDT system you could add 10G networking, higher numbers of PCIE devices, more storage etc - but you don't need this for playing games.

Personally I went HEDT as I can be running a lot of other stuff in the background when playing games on my PC - so while I'm waiting for something to compile or tests to complete - I can still play PUBG and it's very playable despite the fact that a Linux VM has grabbed 32gb of memory and 8 cores of my machine.

I suppose one thing worth considering is longevity - today's i9 will be playing games much better in 3 years time than today's i7 for example
 
BongoHunter said:
Probably worth mentioning OP - the reason the best PCs (E.G i9/TR) don't top the gaming benchmarks is largely because today's games and game engines were built before we had these newer higher core count chips. So though the i9/TR chips are in some cases many times more powerful in terms of total computing power - only a relatively small number of games can exploit this.

If you wanted a PC for more than gaming alone then it would be worth considering the higher end stuff E.G on a HEDT system you could add 10G networking, higher numbers of PCIE devices, more storage etc - but you don't need this for playing games.

Personally I went HEDT as I can be running a lot of other stuff in the background when playing games on my PC - so while I'm waiting for something to compile or tests to complete - I can still play PUBG and it's very playable despite the fact that a Linux VM has grabbed 32gb of memory and 8 cores of my machine.

I suppose one thing worth considering is longevity - today's i9 will be playing games much better in 3 years time than today's i7 for example
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Dang man, I don't know if i can wait 3 years for it to be decent like the I7 8700k but man.....I really want the latest stuff. I feel like Im gonna get buyers remorse getting an I7 8700k with something like a ASROCK Z370 TAICHI or MSI Z370 GODLIKE GAMING mobo in the year 2018. like roughly how many years can i get with the 8700k?
 
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