34 replies to this topic

[PsychedelicGrass]

I'm building a new pc. Currently I'm planning this:


i7 4790k, will either liquid cool or get a better heatsink than stock as I intend to overclock

Gtx 980, probably liquid cooled because why not (what are some good gpu coolers? My case will fit anything.)

16gb ram, not sure what brand/speed to get. Suggestions?

Samsung 250gb ssd

Asus z97-a motherboard (already bought this, it's the only thing I won't change)

750w psu.. should be enough, right?



I don't much care about the cost as long as it's under $1500 or so. What ram should I get, and is there anything I should consider changing?

[PoopSlinger]

More storage.  A 480-500 SSD can be found for $130 or less now and 1TB hdds are like $55-80.  I use one of each.

[Silverfire]

RAM brand isn't entirely important to me, but names like Crucial, Kingston, Corsair, GSkill, can't go wrong with any of those.  

 

I'd opt for a 250GB SSD minimum, bump it up to a 500GB if you want really.  I've never needed more than 500GB of storage for any of my computers.  adding in extra regular HDD storage is a breeze too, and it's quite cheap these days as well.

 

In terms of watercooling a GPU, it's not needed. At all. But if you want to, look into EK, they're a well-known brand for watercooling graphics cards. High quality stuff.  Watercooling a GPU can get expensive imo.  Might need a separate reservoir for it, haven't looked into EK waterblocks for GPUs much at all.

 

Watercoolers for CPU, Corsair, NZXT brands to go by.  But air coolers are easier maintenance and lesser points of failure (water cooler leaking vs a fan on an aircooler breaking, much less expensive to fix).  Noctua. It's an ugly brown but it's some of the best air coolers out there.  Or Be Quiet! has underrated good black coolers.  Really really quiet too.  And there's always the $20-30 Cooler Master 212 Evo as a solid option.

Edited by Silverfire, 18 December 2015 - 01:08 PM.

[HK-47D]

I have a similar build.
4790K with a corsair water cooler
GTX 980 Ti
32GB GSkill DDR3 (because it was cheap and pissed my cousin off that I had more)
500GB Samsung 850 Evo
750watt antec
Acer h257hu @90hz

[HK-47D]

Also, doesn't hurt to punch your build into pcpartpicker.com to check for any incompatibilities.

[n3onfx]

Phanteks and Thermalright (not Thermaltake) have great fans and cpu coolers that are way less expensive than Noctua. If you want to go the watercooler way, the single best AIO watercooler is the Swiftech H240-x (and the smaller H220-x). You'll see it at the very top of tests in both performance and noise levels AND it's a hybrid AIO/expandable kit so you can expand it to add your GPU. I really don't get the hype brands like Corsair get for AIO coolers when they make an (imo) annoying buzzing noise and are not that much better than air coolers.

 

Which leads to the next point, air cooling is really all you need, water cooling is fancy and all the rage right now but doesn't bring that much better cooling than air for a lot more money and less reliability. Good airflow in your case (solid 140mm fan x2 in the front and a single one in the back) coupled with a non-reference 980 (EVGA and Asus both make well-cooled variants of the 980) will be enough even to overclock. The only downside of Air Coolers is that some of the really good ones are massive, always check if they don't go over your ram and obstruct the first expansion ports on your motherboard.

 

For fans, something like the Phanteks PH-F140 series or the Thermalright TY-147 cost less than 15�/$ and have great performance, look up some recent comparisons. You can get them in PWM variants or use a PWM splitter/hub to have the RPMs match your system's needs and keep noise down.

Edited by neon, 18 December 2015 - 03:03 PM.

[HK-47D]

I love my Corsair H100i and you can't make me use an air cpu cooler ever again!

[Silverfire]

 

Phanteks and Thermalright (not Thermaltake) have great fans and cpu coolers that are way less expensive than Noctua. If you want to go the watercooler way, the single best AIO watercooler is the Swiftech H240-x (and the smaller H220-x). You'll see it at the very top of tests in both performance and noise levels AND it's a hybrid AIO/expandable kit so you can expand it to add your GPU. I really don't get the hype brands like Corsair get for AIO coolers when they make an (imo) annoying buzzing noise and are not that much better than air coolers.

 

Which leads to the next point, air cooling is really all you need, water cooling is fancy and all the rage right now but doesn't bring that much better cooling than air for a lot more money and less reliability. Good airflow in your case (solid 140mm fan x2 in the front and a single one in the back) coupled with a non-reference 980 (EVGA and Asus both make well-cooled variants of the 980) will be enough even to overclock. The only downside of Air Coolers is that some of the really good ones are massive, always check if they don't go over your ram and obstruct the first expansion ports on your motherboard.

 

For fans, something like the Phanteks PH-F140 series or the Thermalright TY-147 cost less than 15�/$ and have great performance, look up some recent comparisons. You can get them in PWM variants or use a PWM splitter/hub to have the RPMs match your system's needs and keep noise down.

 

 

Forgot about Swiftech AIO water coolers.

 

A big +1 to Swiftech.

Edited by Silverfire, 18 December 2015 - 02:59 PM.

[n3onfx]

 

 

 

 

Forgot about Swiftech AIO water coolers.

 

A big +1 to Swiftech.

 

 

They are awesome, only issue is that they seem to be victim to their success and out of stock pretty much everywhere when I looked on US websites :/

[Cytor]

i recommend you get an AMD Fury X instead of a 980. it's not good that NVIDIA doesn't have much of a competition. besides, AMD's control panel has become quite refined as of late.

Edited by Cytor, 18 December 2015 - 11:07 PM.

[HK-47D]

Do you have a fury x Cytor?

[Cytor]

whether or not i have a fury x is not the matter at hand here. the point of this thread is to offer suggestions to the OP's post in question. therefore, i shall not answer your question, respectfully.

[HK-47D]

whether or not i have a fury x is not the matter at hand here. the point of this thread is to offer suggestions to the OP's post in question. therefore, i shall not answer your question, respectfully.

.... what?

[Silverfire]

I'd still use nvidia over AMD because better drivers. I have both brands and I will say Nvidia has an edge.

[Hyginos]

 under $1500 or so.

 

Water cooling gets very expensive very fast when you get into full system loops. I think you will be hard pressed to fit a GPU-CPU loop in budget, as then you will need fittings and hoses and water blocks and a pump an a radiator or two and maybe a res. You should still be able to fit a solid AIO cooler in there no problem.

 

There are some GPU AIO solutions, but from what I can tell they all cover only the GPU chip itself, leaving the memory to be cooled passively. I am extremely dubious of this, and unless you thermal paste a little heatsink on each memory IC and pointing a fan at it then I would recommend against it.

 

Honestly though you have to get into some really heavy overclocking before you really need a full water loop, and even then the extra expense and effort may not pay off much in terms of performance. I'd say buy just a GPU that has a decent cooler on it already and run an AIO on the CPU.

[PsychedelicGrass]

I mean if I go over 1500 it's not an issue, I don't really care how much it costs when it's all said and done.. but I'd prefer to not spend more than that.


I just want water cooling cuz it's cool :3 probably won't end up doing it though and just spend the extra money on new perhiphials or more hard drives or something because I can't be bothered with the extra effort building it.


Thanks for your input guys <3

Edited by PsychedelicGrass, 19 December 2015 - 11:40 PM.

[Shoutaxeror]

Why the plebs think water cooling is cool? It's not better than air cooling. It is worse and more expensive. Only needed if you don't have enough space in your case for air cooling.

Man, if you only do gaming stuff, an i7 is prdtty useless. An overcloackable i5 is way enough.

Ah, and the graphic card. A 970 is enough for a 1080p screen. Especially for hawken. If you got tri-screen or a higher definition then go for a r9 290x. Sapphire tri-x are the best. Way cheaper than nvidia stuff. Watch out, they are very long card. But that's probably good for your ego. Hm, massive stuff...
And people complaining about amd drivers, that' completely irrelevant.

Just save your money ffs. You could buy a very decent machine and be very happy with it. And give me the money I just made you save, so that will cost you 1500$. You won't notice the difference anyway.

Voila!

[Hyginos]

Man, if you only do gaming stuff, an i7 is prdtty useless. An overcloackable i5 is way enough.

 

I7 user here. I do lots of things at the same time. Worth every penny.

 

 

Ah, and the graphic card. A 970 is enough for a 1080p screen.

 

Bro do you even 144hz? With an 4760K and a 970, both with moderate overclocking, I still sometimes get dips below 144 fps even when running high plastic config.

 

Speaking of displays, consider investing in 144hz if you haven't already. Especially on a 1k+ rig it is SUPER FUZZY BUNNYING WORTH.

Edited by Hyginos, 21 December 2015 - 08:22 AM.

[Shoutaxeror]

Ah, yeah, my thoughts were just about a regular 60Hz screen in FHD.

[Magnolia1038]

Thought I would add my opinion on cooling here:

 

Air cooling is indeed a good solution for most builds presuming there is adequate airflow for all of your components and is also relatively inexpensive. However, while liquid cooling has a higher up-front cost it does offer some fairly large benefits. If you have a great case with lots of room the only thing you really ever need to upgrade/swap out would be the water blocks whenever you upgrade your cpu, gpu, etc. Your radiators, fittings, tubing, and pumps would remain.

 

All of this depends on how hard you want to push your overclock as water cooling offers better temps but is also more expensive. I've used both  air and water cooling setups extensively and each has its merits and drawbacks, so its really up to you.

[PsychedelicGrass]

Most of the parts are here or on the way. Waiting a bit so I can buy the GPU and the cooling for it, damn thing accounts for about a third of the entire cost of everything hehe

 

 

Final build:

 

i7 4790k with hyper 212 evo cooler

Liquid cooled GTX 980Ti 

16GB ram @1866 mhz

Asus z97-A

750W PSU

NZXT phantom full tower case

Asus 144hz monitor 

Two SSD's, one is 1TB the other is 256GB, plus a 1TB HDD

 

 

 

Eventually another 980ti will be added for 12gb of total vram :D

[Hyginos]

Eventually another 980ti will be added for 12gb of total vram :D

It doesn't work that way, I'm afraid. Multi card configurations do not simply add the effective VRAM (yet). My understanding is that the technology as it exists now required each card to have a complete image saved in its memory, as the PCIE bus is not fast enough to disseminate that information between them.

[PsychedelicGrass]

Awh that's lame

 

ah well, one 980ti will likely be more than enough for quite a long time

[Rainbow_Sheep]

Looks like a killer build, what resolution are you playing at with that sweet 144hz?

[PsychedelicGrass]

Looks like a killer build, what resolution are you playing at with that sweet 144hz?

 

1920x1080

[n3onfx]

1920x1080

 

One 980ti at 1920x1080 will be plenty for quite a while yeah, you can throw all current titles at ultra and keep a nice 60+ constant fps without a hitch!

[Rainbow_Sheep]

Yeah what neon said, currently a 980 is about enough for 1080p 144hz on Max settings, so a 980 ti will keep you happy for quite a while

Edited by Rainbow Sheep, 26 January 2016 - 11:54 PM.

[PoopSlinger]

One 980ti at 1920x1080 will be plenty for quite a while yeah, you can throw all current titles at ultra and keep a nice 60+ constant fps without a hitch!

Constant 120+ fps is where its at

[Bergwein]

Man, if you only do gaming stuff, an i7 is prdtty useless. An overcloackable i5 is way enough.

 

I'd like an i5. I guess.

What actual reason is there, though, for me to get an i5 instead of an fx-6300?

I mean except for the amd being 100� and the intel being over 250�.

 

@PsychedelicGrass: Nice PC build. I'll treat myself with a similar one once I've sold one of my kidneys.

[Hyginos]

I'd like an i5. I guess.

What actual reason is there, though, for me to get an i5 instead of an fx-6300?

I mean except for the amd being 100� and the intel being over 250�.

 

Same reason you would buy an expensive respirator instead of a simple surgical face mask. The cheaper one does not adequately meet the minimum spec.

[OpTiC_DeRpY]

Why the plebs think water cooling is cool? It's not better than air cooling. It is worse and more expensive. Only needed if you don't have enough space in your case for air cooling.

Man, if you only do gaming stuff, an i7 is prdtty useless. An overcloackable i5 is way enough.

Ah, and the graphic card. A 970 is enough for a 1080p screen. Especially for hawken. If you got tri-screen or a higher definition then go for a r9 290x. Sapphire tri-x are the best. Way cheaper than nvidia stuff. Watch out, they are very long card. But that's probably good for your ego. Hm, massive stuff...
And people complaining about amd drivers, that' completely irrelevant.

Just save your money ffs. You could buy a very decent machine and be very happy with it. And give me the money I just made you save, so that will cost you 1500$. You won't notice the difference anyway.

Voila!

Are you on crack man?

Awesome review compile of Air/Water, water is most definitely worth the premium.

http://www.tweaktown...iew/index7.html

 

Recommending an i5, when games now are starting to demand i7's is again, crazy. Three up coming highly rated FPS games are all demanding an i7 from one gen or another for recommended requirements.

 

http://www.game-deba...ame=Homefront 2

 

http://gamesystemreq.../game/doom-2016

 

http://www.game-deba...me=The Division

 

As for water-cooling GPU, it's worth it, I've got a EVGA GTX 980 Ti Hybrid and I'm loving it even with it OC'd to 1485 MHz it doesn't break 50c even during long gaming sessions, switched from air cooled 980 with it running nearly at 80c at stock. My hybrids' core stays chilled while it's VRMs stay chilled, my old 980's VRMs used to spike at 105~110 after 6 hour marathons, while the Hybrids' VRMs stay at a frosty 30c.

 

@Psy:Water cool if you can, especially on the CPU, Devil's Canyon is known for being a hot running chip a Corsair H80i GT, Silverstone TD03-E or Cooler Master Nepton 140XL will do the trick, water cooling the GPU can be done one of two ways traditional single loop which can be difficult, or AIO, through the use of either. An NZXT Kraken G10 or the Corsair Hydro HG10 either of which allows for mounting NZXT/Corsair AIO cpu loops onto GPUs these require extra fans to be mounted to the brackets with small heatsinks applied to GDDR chips as well as to the VRMs. Or specially crafted kits from Arctic Cooling and EVGA which come in a complete package.

 

For RAM, get 32 gigs if you can games are creeping ever closer to 16GB for requirements, better to have the extra 16 gigs then to be caught with your pants down without it. As far as speed goes, all depends on what your doing, higher speed > relaxed memory timings. I myself am quite happy with 2800 even with a DDR4 setup. Most DDR3 gamers run 2133~2400.

 

For the SSD, try to get an M.2. based one, you'll love the speed over SATA 3. My 950 Pros' hits around 4340~4350MB/s reads and 2390~2400MB/s writes on a 6600K in RAID. Though I'm running an MSI Z170A XPOWER Titanium.

[Hyginos]

Recommending an i5, when games now are starting to demand i7's is again, crazy. Three up coming highly rated FPS games are all demanding an i7 from one gen or another for recommended requirements.

 

...

 

For RAM, get 32 gigs if you can games are creeping ever closer to 16GB for requirements.

 

I'm not so sure you can go by the recommendations directly, since they are often nonsensical.

 

Rise of the Tomb Raider and The Division, for example, both recommend an I7-3770 or an FX-8350, two CPUs that are absolutely not equivalent. Both of those games are recommending 8gb of ram. Their minimum specs only call for GTX650 and GTX560, respectively.

 

With that in mind, and remembering that most all AAA games will be limited by their need to run on console, I think recommending an i5 and 16gb of ram is completely reasonable at this point. That said, I will not disagree that the extra money for an i7 is totally worth if it fits in budget, and RAM is fairly cheap right now so getting a bunch isn't the burden it was 6 months ago.

Edited by Hyginos, 28 January 2016 - 11:15 AM.

[PoopSlinger]

Are you on crack man?

Water is cool and so am I

The rest of the parts for my wifes build will be in tomorrow so I'll tell you guys how good the skylake i3-6100 is over the fx-6300 (good friend just bought an fx6300 on black friday).   Honestly i'm expecting the OCed i3 and an r9 380 to perform pretty fuzzy bunnyng close to my 4670k and r9 290 in almost all games.  Gotta see what kind of temps the i3 puts out.

[n3onfx]

 

 

 

32 gigs of RAM, NVME SSDs, water-cooled cards are all very nice sure but a lot, LOT more costly than something like 16GB, a regular sata SSD and a well-designed non-reference gpu without bringing gains that will make a big difference in real-world utilization. Out of all these the one that makes the most sense is an AiO solution for the GPU, but for 1080p gaming why would you bother water cooling your videocard for an increase in price and chance of failure?

 

Sure if we all had a lot of money to dump into the best possible setup it would make sense, but when you have a fixed budget the money you don't spend on getting an extra 16GB of mostly useless RAM can be put instead into a better card.

Edited by neon, 29 January 2016 - 04:24 AM.

[OpTiC_DeRpY]

I'm not so sure you can go by the recommendations directly, since they are often nonsensical.

 

Rise of the Tomb Raider and The Division, for example, both recommend an I7-3770 or an FX-8350, two CPUs that are absolutely not equivalent. Both of those games are recommending 8gb of ram. Their minimum specs only call for GTX650 and GTX560, respectively.

 

With that in mind, and remembering that most all AAA games will be limited by their need to run on console, I think recommending an i5 and 16gb of ram is completely reasonable at this point. That said, I will not disagree that the extra money for an i7 is totally worth if it fits in budget, and RAM is fairly cheap right now so getting a bunch isn't the burden it was 6 months ago.

 

I myself tried the Division on 4GB of memory, it litterally gave me a pop up for the beta telling me.

 

 

Moment I dropped another stick in to make 8GB it ran but had some pop-in issues here and there, at 16GB it was fine, task manager showed it running fine at 14.2GB used. Far Cry Primal after awhile begins to break the 12GB level.

 

 

32 gigs of RAM, NVME SSDs, water-cooled cards are all very nice sure but a lot, LOT more costly than something like 16GB, a regular sata SSD and a well-designed non-reference gpu without bringing gains that will make a big difference in real-world utilization. Out of all these the one that makes the most sense is an AiO solution for the GPU, but for 1080p gaming why would you bother water cooling your videocard for an increase in price and chance of failure?

 

Sure if we all had a lot of money to dump into the best possible setup it would make sense, but when you have a fixed budget the money you don't spend on getting an extra 16GB of mostly useless RAM can be put instead into a better card.

 

I picked my 32GB kit up for $174. Granted it's 1600 MHz, but it's from G.Skill and can probably easily overclock to 2133 with the right timing adjustments.

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820231490

 

$125 for 32 gigs isn't bad, as replied to by Hyg, some games literally won't start with anything less than minimum requirements. Granted there's a command line Ubisoft has given to override the warning I showed, but the game runs like a choppy mess.

 

As far as the NVMe SSDs go, here's a link for the Samsung 840 Pro, at $500+

http://www.newegg.co...=9SIA1K634P5210

 

Vs the price of my 850 Pro in M.2 format.

 

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16820147467

 

More and more Intel boards and some AMD boards are coming equipped with one or two M.2. ports

 

He stated he has a GTX 980, he has 4 options, a 980 Ti, Titan X, Fury and Fury X, if he did good with the ASCII lotto. He could drop this onto the card https://www.arctic.a...id-iii-140.html, and overclock that 980 to make it perform just as good as a 980 Ti, that right there is saving him $660+ while spending only $130, saving $1000+ if you consider the Titan X.

 

Why stick to 1080p? Both Nvidia and AMD offer downscaling options, in his case Nvidia has Dynamic Super Resolution http://www.geforce.c.../technology/dsrthat can turn that 1080p imagine into a 4K one with moderate performance impact, a 980 on hawken the impact would be minimal at best. He might loose 5 or 6 fps while already pushing 140 or better.

 

Water cooling your GPU makes tons of sense, as long as you go AIO, there's minimal chance of leakage, as well as if you put everything you need to put on the card as I outlined with the AIO brackets, your card is no longer sharing a heatsink plate, for the VRMs/RAM. Cooler the card runs, the longer life span it'll have. Look at some of the first gen R9 290x's with the blower style OEM fans. Most of those are dying right now, I got one in a secondary machine I gotta replace, why? Because the card ran to hot and shortened it's lifespan immensely. Granted this is from a german review site and with a R9 290X as a test subject but these numbers simply don't lie. It's well worth it to water cool GPUs,if it weren't cards like the Asus GTX Poseidon and the EVGA GTX Hybrid wouldn't exist, these custom kits from Arctic Cooling wouldn't exist, heck these AIO adapters from NZXT and Corsair wouldn't exist. From 95c on the core down to 69c VRM 1 from 63 to 50, and VRM 2 83 to 67, those changes are giving that cards extra years on it's life, compared to it being forced to use the stock cooler.