New build advice

[sht00]

Hi all,

I'm considering the following build but as it's been 12 years since I built a rig from scratch I'd love a bit of advice on some of the choices.

The thinking is: as quiet as possible on air only but pack some power for when it's needed. General PC use, some software dev, some gaming, and hopefully a foray into VR.

• Core i7-7700K 4.2GHz Quad-Core Processor
• be quiet! - Dark Rock Pro 3 67.8 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler
• Gigabyte - GA-Z270X-Gaming 7 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
• Memory G.Skill - Trident Z 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-3000 Memory
• Samsung - 960 EVO 1TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
• Zotac - GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB AMP Extreme Video Card
• be quiet! - Silent Base 600 w/Window (Black/Silver) ATX Mid Tower Case
• be quiet! - Dark Power Pro 11 650W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
• Optical Drive LG - UH12NS30 Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer
• Wireless Network Adapter TP-Link - TL-WDN4800 PCI-Express x1 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi Adapter

CPU

• If I'm never going to overclock is it a waste of money getting the 7700K? Or is it still the best CPU anyway?

Memory

• What's the current thinking on 2 x 16GB (dual channel) vs 4 x 8GB (quad channel)? As I understand it the perf improvement from quad channel is barely noticeable. So perhaps it's better to go 2 x 16GB and be able to add another 32GB down the line?
• Should I go highest MHz (e.g. DDR 4 4133MHz) or is there some kind of mobo speed compat or stability issues I should be considering? (I also need to consider dimensions as I only have about 40mm clearance due to the CPU cooler)

Sound

• This Z270X Gaming 7 mobo has Creative Sound Core3D. Is that good enough these days for gaming, or are discrete cards still the way forward? Was hoping to free up the PCI-e slot so as to maximise bandwidth for more M.2/U.2 drives.

Case

• The AMP Extreme is a behemoth of a card. I realise I'm going to have to remove some drive bays to fit it in. Just wondering if anyone else has done this combo of case and graphics card and if you have any tips or advice (e.g. don't do it!!!)

Thanks in advance for any help!

Stu

 

[Danny75]

The PSU is costly and comes with ugly cables. You can find silence with other brand's models which have an ECO mode switch for more silence, as well as more than 5 year warranty, and don't cost as much. Have a look at SuperFlower Leadex II Gold/Plat (7 years), Corsair RM650x Gold (10 years), EVGA G3 650 (7 years), EVGA G2 750 (10 years), EVGA P2 650 (10 years), Seasonic Prime Gold 650 (12 years).

For gaming a wired ethernet solution or Powerline Adapter kit would be preferable to WiFi.

RAM = I'd go with two sticks as well. 3000/3200 is the sweet spot in terms of price/performance/stability. Wouldn't go higher than that unless price was the same.

Sound I would try the onboard first. Better these days. Only really top-notch audio equipment seems to require a discrete solution (DAC/amp/card) for the best performance.

 

[Danny75]

The PSU is costly and comes with ugly cables. You can find silence with other brand's models which have an ECO mode switch for more silence, as well as more than 5 year warranty, and don't cost as much. Have a look at SuperFlower Leadex II Gold/Plat (7 years), Corsair RM650x Gold (10 years), EVGA G3 650 (7 years), EVGA G2 750 (10 years), EVGA P2 650 (10 years), Seasonic Prime Gold 650 (12 years).

For gaming a wired ethernet solution or Powerline Adapter kit would be preferable to WiFi.

RAM = I'd go with two sticks as well. 3000/3200 is the sweet spot in terms of price/performance/stability. Wouldn't go higher than that unless price was the same.

Sound I would try the onboard first. Better these days. Only really top-notch audio equipment seems to require a discrete solution (DAC/amp/card) for the best performance.

CPU you'd have an argument for a Ryzen 7 1700 or better if you aren't going to overclock. Core IPC has come in close to Intel Haswell-like performance, and obviously more cores/threads. Your CPU cooler would need AM4 brackets if you switch to Ryzen and AM4 board.

 

[lee32uk]

What Monitor are you going to be using ?

 

[EsaT]

Unless you're intending to upgrade in couple years I would recommend AMD Ryzen.
Sure 7700K is the fastest CPU for majority of todays games, but in longer scale than one or two years multithreading is going to become more important for games.
And that CPU still has same amount of cores what Intel reached decade ago so lots of background stuff is going to clog it faster.
Really in most of things perfromance difference between AMD and Intel are small to one way or another, but with Ryzen being better in everything well multithreaded.

Only Intel's high end/workstation platform has four memory channels so in everything else four DIMMs won't give any kind performance advantage over two DIMMs.

For just some gaming Nvidia tax of very expensive graphics cards likely isn't sensible.
Graphics card is so easy to upgrade later when major performance jumps happen that it's waste of money to try to think it as long term investment.
Unlike high quality PSU which could be kept over one major hardware upgrade of mobo/CPU.

Was hoping to free up the PCI-e slot so as to maximise bandwidth for more M.2/U.2 drives.

High benchmarketing nubmers of super expensive SSds don't translate to much anything in real world:
http://techreport.com/review/31177/patriot-hellfire-480gb-nvme-ssd-reviewed/5
Though for sound Gigabyte's high end mobos are actually one of the better ones with Creative's software bundled with good binaural-simulation if using headphones.

 

[sht00]

The PSU is costly and comes with ugly cables. You can find silence with other brand's models which have an ECO mode switch for more silence, as well as more than 5 year warranty.

Thanks, will have a look.

For gaming a wired ethernet solution or Powerline Adapter kit would be preferable to WiFi.

Agreed. Wired ethernet is onboard and I when I recently rewired my house I got them to run cat5 to the study as my wi-fi reception is a bit meh. I still want the wi-fi as a back up though - like if I want to move the PC elsewhere temporarily.

RAM = I'd go with two sticks as well. 3000/3200 is the sweet spot in terms of price/performance/stability. Wouldn't go higher than that unless price was the same.
Sound I would try the onboard first. Better these days. Only really top-notch audio equipment seems to require a discrete solution (DAC/amp/card) for the best performance.

Only Intel's high end/workstation platform has four memory channels so in everything else four DIMMs won't give any kind performance advantage over two DIMMs.

Makes sense.

What Monitor are you going to be using ?

I'm currently using a Dell U2715H (2560 x 1440) but would like to get a nice 4K monitor.

CPU you'd have an argument for a Ryzen 7 1700 or better if you aren't going to overclock. Core IPC has come in close to Intel Haswell-like performance, and obviously more cores/threads. Your CPU cooler would need AM4 brackets if you switch to Ryzen and AM4 board.

Unless you're intending to upgrade in couple years I would recommend AMD Ryzen.
Sure 7700K is the fastest CPU for majority of todays games, but in longer scale than one or two years multithreading is going to become more important for games.

I hadn't even considered Ryzen. I think you're right that over time more and more software will take advantage of the extra cores. I just did a bit of research and for the software I use right now (Photoshop, Lightroom, Visual Studio, Ableton Live, Excel, etc) I'll be worse off with Ryzen until they are modified to use all those cores. I guess I'm too chicken to gamble on the software changing soon, so I think I'll stick with i7 for this build. If it falls way behind in a couple of years I'm sure one of my kids will be more than grateful for the hand-me-down.

For just some gaming Nvidia tax of very expensive graphics cards likely isn't sensible.
Graphics card is so easy to upgrade later when major performance jumps happen that it's waste of money to try to think it as long term investment.

Ah don't spoil my splurge . I've never had a high-end graphics card and I can finally afford one (at least I've convinced myself I can). If you challenge me I'll start doubting myself lol.
I was really hoping to try out some VR stuff - maybe get a Rift or Vive. My understanding is that VR us quite demanding so I thought I should go high-end.

High benchmarketing nubmers of super expensive SSds don't translate to much anything in real world:
http://techreport.com/review/31177/patriot-hellfire-480gb-nvme-ssd-reviewed/5

Hmm. Thanks for the link. I'll give the SSD choice a bit more thought.

 

[sht00]

High benchmarketing nubmers of super expensive SSds don't translate to much anything in real world:
http://techreport.com/review/31177/patriot-hellfire-480gb-nvme-ssd-reviewed/5

On the final page of that review, the Samsung 960 EVO 1TB looks pretty good in the performance stakes.
http://techreport.com/review/31177/patriot-hellfire-480gb-nvme-ssd-reviewed/7

But I see what you mean about Windows load times etc. I wish they also did some tests that tested the write performance.

 

[AORUS]

On the final page of that review, the Samsung 960 EVO 1TB looks pretty good in the performance stakes.
But I see what you mean about Windows load times etc. I wish they also did some tests that tested the write performance.

Maybe look here on write test M.2 is 5x faster then a SSD
https://photographylife.com/nvme-vs-ssd-vs-hdd-performance/

 

[Tommyyv]

If you wanted to keep the costs down a bit, consider a 500GB SSD and a 1TB hard drive.

 

[Quartz]

Don't bother with an internal optical drive; get an external USB one.

I just did a bit of research and for the software I use right now (Photoshop, Lightroom, Visual Studio, Ableton Live, Excel, etc) I'll be worse off with Ryzen until they are modified to use all those cores.

I don't know about the others but Excel will automatically use as many cores as it can. One core per tab / sheet. Apart from VBA, which is single-threaded. My brother runs hugely complex spreadsheets with some data sets over 100 GB on disk and has seen improvements going from 24 cores to 36 cores.

 

[sht00]

Maybe look here on write test M.2 is 5x faster then a SSD
https://photographylife.com/nvme-vs-ssd-vs-hdd-performance/

Nice. I'm sure in normal usage you won't see a consistent 5x perf increase, but I'll take even a 2x increase.

BTW, looking at your sig, your rig looks very similar to the one I'm planning to build. I've been wanting to find good RAM that will fit under the Dark Rock Pro 3, so I might just use the same as yours.

Don't bother with an internal optical drive; get an external USB one.

What's the thinking here? Looks of the case? Airflow? I don't use optical often, but quite like the thought of tucking it away in the case and not having to store it somewhere. Come to think of it, I want to build two PCs for my kids...maybe we should all just share an external USB optical? Not a bad idea. Thanks.

I don't know about the others but Excel will automatically use as many cores as it can. One core per tab / sheet. Apart from VBA, which is single-threaded. My brother runs hugely complex spreadsheets with some data sets over 100 GB on disk and has seen improvements going from 24 cores to 36 cores.

Yep point taken. But apart from faster Excel, better sanitation, medicine, better roads and public health, what have the Ryzen cores ever done for us?!