workstation/gaming

[expaddy]

Hi,

I'm putting together some options for a PC that will be used for VM/Cloud work and some gaming on the side and would like your opinion on what I should change-downgrade-upgrade please. It will be about 80% work and 20% gaming so I may be going over the top with the GPU but would still like my games to play pretty well. I usually play fps and some car racing games. My intention with this is to build and test Openstack-KVM whilst still having the capacity to take a break and shoot some aliens.

Asus Maximus VII Ranger - Devils Canyon Core i7 4790K CPU & Motherboard Bundle **£15 Saving** £390.94 inc VAT
Corsair Carbide 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case - Black (CC-9011030-WW £114.95 inc VAT
Corsair Hydro H100i High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060009-WW) £89.99 inc VAT
Kingston HyperX Savage Red 32GB (4x8GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit (HX324C11SRK4/32) £199.99 inc VAT
OcUK GeForce GTX 970 "NVIDIA 970 Cooler Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £299.99 inc VAT
EVGA SuperNova G2 750W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £94.99 inc VAT
Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £66.98 inc VAT x2
Crucial MX100 512GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter CT512MX100SSD1) £162.95 inc VAT

Recommendations for fan set up.
Recommendations of where to get the cable extensions for the case cables.

Any and all suggestions will be welcome,

Cheers
David

 

[expaddy]

Actually I've just seen this and it looks much better bang for buck:
Sapphire Radeon R9 280 Dual-X 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics

 

[Danny75]

This is your spec (without the 280 you added later):

YOUR BASKET
1 x Asus Maximus VII Ranger - Devils Canyon Core i7 4790K CPU & Motherboard Bundle **£15 Saving** £390.94
1 x OcUK GeForce GTX 970 "NVIDIA 970 Cooler Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £299.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Savage Red 32GB (4x8GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual/Quad Channel Kit (HX324C11SRK4/32) £199.99
1 x Crucial MX100 512GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter CT512MX100SSD1) £162.95
1 x Corsair Carbide 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case - Black (CC-9011030-WW) £114.95
1 x EVGA SuperNova G2 750W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £94.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H100i High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CW-9060009-WW) £89.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £66.98
Total : £1,435.78 (includes shipping : £12.50).





A 6-core rig is an option for that budget.


YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel 5820K 3.30GHz (Haswell-E) Socket LGA2011-V3 Processor - Retail (BX80648I75820K) £329.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Quad Channel Kit - Black (TPKD432GM2400HC16QC01) £269.99
1 x Gigabyte X99-UD4 Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 ATX Motherboard £167.99
1 x Crucial MX100 512GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter CT512MX100SSD1) £162.95
1 x MSI Radeon R9 280 Gaming 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £149.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case - Black (CC-9011030-WW) £114.95
1 x Cooler Master Nepton 240M AIO Cooling Solution £79.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £66.98
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £59.99
Total : £1,417.81 (includes shipping : £12.50).




I found the case fans noisy. Not extremely so but noisy enough to want to do something about it if the rig was for me (it was for a friend). And he did swap the case fans out for others. But not everyone finds them noisy so you could give them a try first. Sometimes the motherboard lets you play a bit with fan voltages too. The CPU cooler PWM fans no problem, you can fine tune those to pretty much any RPM range you like.

Water cooler on the top, with fans under it, pushing air through rad and exhausting out the top.

As for PSU cable extensions, the only ones visible in the Air 540 case (given the PSU goes in the back chamber out of sight) are the 24-pin ATX, the 8-pin EPS and then the GPU's cables, which for that MSI 280 are 1 x 8-pin PCI-E and 1 x 6-pin PCI-E.

You can get Silverstone or BitFenix bundles from here: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=1428&subid=2664

A more expensive option are the CableMod cables, containing all the cables for certain PSUs: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/search_results.php?keywords=cablemod&_=1426368073603