PC Upgrade Time: Hard choices and cooling

No, I'll be reusing my shiny new GTX 970 that I plunked into my rig last week, thanks =P I'll also be grabbing a motherboard that supports up to triple SLI in PCI-e 3.0 x16 slots when I do build planning. It's a bit more expensive, but it's also a clear upgrade path once I convert to full time and more freedom to spend cash.

 

Ah i see. I overread that you just got a new GPU already. Ok nice. So you can run the games you want already right? Well, in Sept the Skylake CPU+ LGA1151 Mobos will launch. So you might consider the Core i7-6700K, which is a Monster.

 

I've been eyeing the potential warily. Main thing is going to be cost:benefit ratio...and if/how-much of a discount I can achieve using my employer's relationship with Intel giving me access to employee accommodations. Will also depend on mobo cost bundled in...apparently the program USED TO provide options to get Intel mobos and SSDs, but no longer does. Has there been any projected price range on that thing? I've seen specs but no retail pricing information.

 

The 6700K will be priced similar to the 4790K, because performance power is very similar. What i personally am looking forward to is a new Xeon E3-12XX Offspring for the LGA1151 Socket. It is in fact a high class Core i7 but usually only lacks the Onboard GPU. But the price is much lower, usually in the mid-range core i5 price area. So if you want to save money smartly, check up the Xeon E3-12XX vs Core i7 Tests from several sites. From the Benchmarks your jaw will drop off.

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti-images-surface-along-with-specs/

 

How about this config?

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790, 4x 3.60GHz
RAM: 16GB
SSD: 128GB
HDD: 2TB
OPT: Combo BD-ROM/DVD+/-RW DL
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970, 4GB
Connections: 2x HDMI, 2x DVI, 1x DisplayPort, 4x USB 3.0, 4x USB 2.0, 1x Gb LAN, WLAN 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0
OS: Windows 8.1 64bit

Good enough? No?

How about all of it in a case, that doesn't look like an ordinary PC?

How about something more sexy than the Playstation?

... and almost the same mobile Size??!

BAMM!!! (BxHxT) 104x358x340mm

You don't believe it's possible? Well, you have enough Gold to invest? If not, don't even try.. :-D

Spoiler: Attention, it's damn hot!

 

I feel like i7's for gaming are overkill (as I type this from my 3770) Most of the time the difference between i7 and a similar clocked i5 is the hyperthreading, which currently doesn't help many games. I also don't really having SLI as an upgrade path. i use to do it all the time. Grab a second card down the road when they're cheaper and boost performance. Doesn't seem too bad. But times for me have changed, and I find that selling a video card when it starts to show its age and using that towards a newer card has faired better. Especially if we're talking about GTX 970s. That's almost 150w of power from that component alone, meaning dual setup can be pulling near 300w just on the cards alone. I would imagine the GTX 970 solo would last a long time as far as performance. My recommendation would be to get the highest clocked i5 you can find, pair that with a 970, 16GB of ram, and a 240GB SSD. I thought 120GB would be sufficient for me and my OS/games but I found it was juuuuust a bit too small, and the 240GB SSD's currently can be obtained for about 80 bucks, which isn't bad.

Also I only recommend the i5 from a budget standpoint. If the funds are there by all means get an i7. It'll most likely be more future proof than i5. As far as boards go I like ASRock and MSI. I still like ASUS but I've been finding lately that some of their boards have been hit or miss on stability. It's a shame, too, for them being such an awesome company over the years, but I digress. A couple other reasons I don't like to go the SLI way is the noise, and the heat. Too much for me to feel comfy. Not sure how much you care about either of those issues but if noise is ever a problem grab youirself an aftermarket Arctic Cooling gpu cooler and some case fans. I had a GTX 470 with a leaf blower attached to it as a fan. It would get extremely loud and the temps would top out at about 95c. After swapping the cooling, I never heard the card again, and the max temp dropped to 75c. Need a pretty big case for that type of upgrade, though.

 

Blech. So, some of the failures I had originally attributed to age of the CPU I'm officially shuffling blame for to the HDD's age instead (or at least, as well) considering this past week has had occasional boot failure and crashes. It's served me well, but I've been a bit hard on the poor guy, so I'm not too surprised. But seeing as the current challenge became impossible (problems have escalated in MWO despite everything else being in better shape, bad sign!) despite doing fine last week...yeah, I went ahead and got a good solid state drive for ~$75 so we'll see if it makes certain games playable again even before I get the temporary mobo/CPU off co-worker. I need the thing anyway, so why wait? Well, except for shipping, I mean.

 

So turns out after more hiccups, the main culprit was the power supply, which also explains why the HDD was starting to go bad. Now finally sitting on a modular Corsair 750W. But, of course, while installing it my CPU fan popped off the CPU. So I had to remove and reapply some thermal compound (that is incidentally way better than what the rig came with). Now that all those shenanigans are over and there's a clan clean install of windows on the new SSD, I am very, very happy I made the change to SSD and fiddled with all the internals. It runs noticeably cooler and quieter (since it only needs the basic CPU fan and not the loud case fans most of the time), I have the space to put my games on the boot drive and a solid-state instead of compromising with some on the storage drive.

Been able to run games that have recommended settings via geForce experience AT said settings with a very nice play experience, and run MWO at very-high (I may play with AA and motion blur later, but they're currently off)! Thanks for all the help and input, when I do finally do a true rebuild I'll definitely run it by here =) I still need to wait to try and run the Witcher or Batman until the temporary CPU/mobo from coworker comes through...at which point I'm sure there will be more complications (because why not?), but we'll burn those bridges when we come to them.

 

When Star Citizen will be released you will find many many guys here or in the shipspecs forum, who will upgrade their rigs too, with the upcoming cpus/gpus, e.g. for 4K Gaming and/or Oculus Rift. So might start a Gaming Rig Contest next yr.

 

Honestly I've looked at this thread thoroughly and some suggestions made me wince (6700k really? Before specs or anything are released?).

A 5820k may be an option but in the interest of the rig you already have - and actual value for money - I do believe that you should go for a 3/4930k 6-core and a Socket 2011v1/2 board. It will allow you to keep hold of the DDR3 you already have, tear apart a 4970k at anything that will use the threads and a 3930k on CLC will overclock itself to within 200mhz of the same performance of a 4970k PER CORE without breaking a sweat due to the bigger process size being able to dissipate heat much more efficiently. Add to the fact that the 40 Lanes of PCI-E is the only way to run 3 x 16xPCI 3.0, a reasonable amount of peripherals and not bottleneck on available CPU lanes horribly (without going 2011v3) and the fact that you can get a 3930k deceptively cheaply considering it's quite an early gen 6 core and it should be fairly clear to see why it's better.

Remember, three sets of 16xPCI3.0 lanes is already 48 lanes, so when all 3 cards are using 85% of their available bandwidth they alone are using all available PCI lanes, which have to be shared between basically all components in your machine.... but that number is reduced to around 60% for the 28 lanes of the 4970k.

The final consideration is that the next 3 years of gaming will not be more demanding in Single Thread performance, because there simply isn't any more major improvement that can be accurately predicted. and is actually being transitioned to by the largest percentile of gamers. In the past, game devs could pretty safely predict that gamer's average CPUs would be X more powerful in 3 years, and design their game accordingly. The original Crysis is testament the last year that worked, simply because the Core 2 Duo was that revolutionary and came out the year before. The i7 was another leap but nobody really sees another one coming, and if not then you have little to fear from not moving towards DDR4 right now. The next 3 years will about about more cores, and it's easy to see in the fact that both Consoles are 8 core machines now. The 3930k will completely slay a 4970k in any game that supports the needed cores, and give the GPU a chance to slay the same GPU on a 4970k in any games that wont.

 

Not sure if it's reasonable to recommend a 600$ CPU from 2011/13, with lower Power Efficiency than recent ones.

Spoiler: Power Consumption Comparison

Source: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2014/09/03/intel-core-i7-5930k-and-core-i7-5820k-revie/8

As Long as i've understood, the OP's Intention is to keep his Gear powerful enough for Casual Gaming for the next few yrs. Better invest the money into a powerful GPU instead for more ROI.

Btw there are already leaked specs for the 6700K.

I recommend this review: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106.html