X99 Build. Help me fill the gaps

[CJonny]

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel 5820K 3.30GHz (Haswell-E) Socket LGA2011-V3 Processor - OEM (CM8064801548435) £289.99
1 x Gigabyte X99 SOC Champion Intel X99 (Socket 2011) DDR4 ATX Motherboard £204.95
1 x EVGA SuperNova G2 1000W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £134.99
1 x Fractal Design Define S Midi Tower Case - Black Window £69.95
1 x CableMod E-Series G2 & P2 Cable Kit - Orange £69.95
Total : £784.82 (includes shipping : £12.50 Ex.VAT).

So I am looking to build a new x99 build moving my 980Ti's over and putting a cutom wc loop in, which is the reason for the 1000w power supply.
Just need your insight into what ram to put in there and also looking at buying a pci-e SSD but unsure on what to get. Also Is this mobo ok or would it be worth going for the slightly more expensive gaming 5p board? Any help is appreciated.

 

[Joe!]

Hi there,

The SOC Champion is the best overclocking board out there, but it does have its downsides for a regular user.

For memory, since the SOC Champion only has 4 DIMMs, I advise getting 32gb straight off the bat.

And as for PCI-E SSDs, the SM951 is the best SSD available at the moment, comes in 128gb, 256gb, and 512gb variants... However, all of the Gigabyte boards run the M.2 slot at half the speed of pretty much any other X99 board, resulting in "only" 16Gb/s of transfer, compared to 32Gb/s for other X99 boards and 6Gb/s for SATA III. That being said, you will not notice a difference for day to day use.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Samsung SM951 256GB M.2 PCI-e Gen3 8Gbps x 4 Solid State Drive (MZHPV256HDGL-00000) £139.99
2 x Kingston Fury Black 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C15 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (HX424C15FBK2/16) £89.99 (£179.98)
Total : £329.57 (includes shipping : £8.00 Ex.VAT).

 

[CJonny]

Thanks for the reply. What downsides does the mobo have for regular users?

 

[Joe!]

Less DIMMs, as from my experience a lot of people tend to fill half the slots to save money in the short term, however with the SOC you have to fill them out straight away. - But I guess this isn't really a downside to the board, more with how the average user tends to do things.

And with the M.2 SSD as I listed, but that's a problem with all Gigabyte boards, and in reality you aren't going to notice much of a difference, if at all.

I made it sound worse than it is

 

[Quartz]

If you're going X99 to better use your GPUs then you should go for the Intel 5930 for the extra PCI Express lanes. Otherwise the X99 is wasted.

 

[andybird123]

If you're going X99 to better use your GPUs then you should go for the Intel 5930 for the extra PCI Express lanes. Otherwise the X99 is wasted.

a Z97/Z170 chip has 20 lanes, meaning for 2 cards you end up with x8/x8
a 5820K has 28 lanes, so x16/x8 (and 4 left for SSD etc.)
a 5930k has 40 so can do x16/x16 yes, but that is a fair chunk of extra cost for next to nothing in real performance terms in games

at least going from a quad core to a hex core you get an extra two cores (and for the same price as a 6700k), but the justification for the extra PCIe lanes is slim if you are only looking at using 2 GPU's

 

[Phemo]

And as for PCI-E SSDs, the SM951 is the best SSD available at the moment, comes in 128gb, 256gb, and 512gb variants... However, all of the Gigabyte boards run the M.2 slot at half the speed of pretty much any other X99 board, resulting in "only" 16Gb/s of transfer, compared to 32Gb/s for other X99 boards and 6Gb/s for SATA III. That being said, you will not notice a difference for day to day use.

Agreed, however also be warned that the SM951 comes in both AHCI and NVMe variants. Ideally you'll want the NVMe version as the price is very similar and NVMe provides performance benefits.

However Samsung for some genius reason gave both devices the SM951 model. The only way to tell them apart is the part number - MZHPV for AHCI and MZVPV for NVMe. For example, the part numbers on the 128GB version are MZHPV128HDGM for AHCI and MZVPV128HDGM for NVMe. If you do go this route and you get an SM951, I'd definitely suggest getting the NVMe one if you can find one.

a Z97/Z170 chip has 20 lanes, meaning for 2 cards you end up with x8/x8
a 5820K has 28 lanes, so x16/x8 (and 4 left for SSD etc.)
a 5930k has 40 so can do x16/x16 yes, but that is a fair chunk of extra cost for next to nothing in real performance terms in games

at least going from a quad core to a hex core you get an extra two cores (and for the same price as a 6700k), but the justification for the extra PCIe lanes is slim if you are only looking at using 2 GPU's

A minor point here - the Z97/Z170 chipsets have 20 lanes yes but this is for things like storage, Ethernet etc. The 1150/1151 CPUs themselves have 16 lanes but that still means in SLI you'll end up in x8/x8 mode anyway. The rest of your point still remains - the difference between x16 and x8 is minimal at best.

 

[Joe!]

Agreed, however also be warned that the SM951 comes in both AHCI and NVMe variants. Ideally you'll want the NVMe version as the price is very similar and NVMe provides performance benefits. [...] I'd definitely suggest getting the NVMe one if you can find one.

Are the NVMe variants available in the UK yet? I've seen one site selling them from the 30th of August, yet to see them elsewhere.

 

[Quartz]

at least going from a quad core to a hex core you get an extra two cores (and for the same price as a 6700k), but the justification for the extra PCIe lanes is slim if you are only looking at using 2 GPU's

Indeed, about 3.5% if memory serves, but the OP wants PCI Express SSDs too.

 

[CJonny]

Thanks for the info guys not to fussed about the DIMM slots as the max I will probably need an how. I'll wait until the revised ssd's come out before buying one then

 

[andybird123]

Are the NVMe variants available in the UK yet? I've seen one site selling them from the 30th of August, yet to see them elsewhere.

I'm guessing soon as a few places have deals on the ahci one - if the 512GB nvme comes in at £300 like the ahci one was then I'm grabbing one of the cheap ahci ones