Newb Building A New Rig. Thoughts? Input?

So finally in a position to finally enjoy and spend some money on a quality rig. Will mostly be use for gaming (ultra or very high settings), some light work, possible video editing and room for the unknown. Was originally looking to spend 1500 but current build has it at 2k. Not a huge deal but looking for some input/critiques please. Ideally would like to have this for a very long time and will look to upgrade and maybe add SLI later down the road? Appreciate the help!

Also looking for suggestions for a Dual Monitor Set up?

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/KqJKvK


CPU
Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor
$269.99 $3.99 $273.98 Newegg
Combo discount automatically applied. ( View details.)
CPU Cooler
CRYORIG R1 Ultimate 76.0 CFM CPU Cooler
$79.99 FREE $79.99 Newegg Buy
Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming GT ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
$299.99 FREE $299.99 Newegg Buy Combo
Combo discount automatically applied. ( View details.)
Memory
Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory
$108.99 FREE $108.99 B&H Buy
Add Additional Memory
Storage
Samsung 840 Pro Series 512GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
$274.98 $274.98 OutletPC Buy

Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
$49.98 $49.98 OutletPC Buy
Add Additional Storage
Video Card
MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Video Card
$649.99 FREE $649.99 B&H Buy
Add Another Video Card For 2-Way SLI
Case
Fractal Design Define R4 w/Window (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case
$78.99 $78.99 NCIX US Buy
Power Supply
EVGA 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
$139.99 -$60.00 FREE $79.99 Newegg Buy
+ USD $20 off w/ promo code EMCKNAN22, ends 12/3
$40.00 mail-in rebate
Optical Drive Choose An Optical Drive
Operating System
Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit)
$99.88 -$10.00 $89.88 OutletPC Buy

 

http://www.bonanza.com/listings/Win...=&goog_pla=1&gclid=CPjX-JrcwskCFQkxaQodKV0NUg I used this for a recent brothers build.
Savings $37.00

Lose the pro SSD not worth at all. Also that drive is slower.

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-2-5-I...id=1449249881&sr=8-1&keywords=samsung+850+500

Free Assasins Creed Syndicate and savings of $126.99

Great power supply and memory, have both of those.

I have the Asus 980 Ti Strix, love it and it runs cool. The MSI should also be a great choice. However, after a recent RMA experience with EVGA with my G2 PSU, I would honestly look into getting the EVGA card. I couldn't believe they sent me a replacement PSU and let me use mine while it was shipped to me. Also a prepaid label to send the old PSU back. EVGA made me a believer. Companies with that level of service need to be supported. I've heard Gigabyte is also great in these regards. Either way it should be a good card.

I personally would get myself a cheaper motherboard. That is hugely over priced and you won't notice its benefits. Look at something around the $150-$200 range at most.

Why not get a All In One liquid cooler for that price? IMO AIO is the way to go these days over those huge/bulky air cooler heatsinks. I find its easier to mount and work in the case with a liquid cooler.

 

Thanks for the info! Do you have a motherboard recommendation? And I was trying to stay away from liquid coolers; have seen a few and heard of a few other horror stories with them...

On a personal note who do you fly for?

 

Liquid cooling has its merits, but imo it's more of a PITA than anything else. With air-cooling, the most complicated thing you have to worry about is which thermal paste you wish to use, and it's fairly hard to screw up. Whereas if you screw up with liquid cooling, the worst thing that could happen is you flood out your computer.

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Do agree with the motherboard comment. $300 is way too much to spend on a motherboard imo, especially when you can get great overclocker motherboards for a lot less.

 

I bought my motherboard for 145e with 2x4GB Crucial ram bundled with it. Granted, it was a year ago, z97 and ddr3 but finding a similar bundle offer would be nice.

I have now Gigabyte MB and GPU, would have gone EVGA but the price difference was a bit too much. And there was that retailers bundled discount thing with ram I have had a great rma experience with evga, so I would recommend it also.

Running Corsair H100i AIO cooler, I'm really happy with it. Much easier to install than a huge Noctua I had before, more room inside to fiddle with stuff afterwards and during actual use not much difference when compared to air cooling. At least mine hasn't broken yet

 

I find my Corsair H55 with a Noctua fan to be a beast cooler. I have my 5820k @ 4.2ghz and 1.14v under gaming load less than 60C. Generally mid to high 50s on CPU heavy games. I found it to be a breeze to install and highly doubt it will spring a leak any time soon. That said I do tend to check it every month or so when dusting out the rig. I just look for hose cracks as the H55 doesn't tend to have the best quality hosing IMO. I just installed a EVO 212 on a family member machine and I found that to be a lot more confusing as far as installation was concerned. I guess I just dislike the overall bulkiness of those huge air coolers. As KLF said, I doubt there is much if any difference in their ability to cool a chip properly.

 

No one has mentioned monitors yet, so I'll just tell you what works for me. I have a LG 25UM64-S (2560 x 1080) paired with a Asus VS247H-P (1920 x 1080). Since they aren't the same size, and by different Mfg's, I have them suspended by dual monitor stands from Monoprice - Part #6421. The reason I am using 2 different sizes, is that some older games look odd on the LG monitor, while the new games look great.

I do have a 43" 4K TV, but it is too large for me to sit anywhere near it.. feels like I'm sitting in another zip code.

 

Go with an i7 and an all-in-one liquid cooler, like a Corsair. Simple to install and best and quietest cooling ever, especially if you're spending $80 on an air cooler, you can get a Corsair H100i for about $100.

 

Thanks for everyone's Input! I really appreciate it!

So

Is an i7 worth the extra costs?

 

Personally, since the main use is for gaming, I don't see much of a point to going for an i7. The i5 is already quad-core and the K versions will let you bump up the performance as needed/wanted.

Unless you find some fantastic sale, I wouldn't bother.

 

Yes but OP also noted video editing. You definitely can get a noticeable improvement in encoding time with hyperthreading. Also mentioned "room for the unknown" and wants it "for a very long time". For that, I'd even recommend an i7-5820k.

If OP lives near a MicroCenter they usually have rock bottom deals on CPU's too. You can get an i7-5820k for $319, i7-6700k for $359, and i5-6600k for $219.

 

Thanks again for all the input! So I have a few weeks before pulling the actual trigger so I will look to see if anything goes back on sale! I will be traveling close to a MircroCenter soon So if they have anything in stock I will look there for CPU's. I have narrowed it down to 2 MOB's. Any good/bad for either one? Or neither and go with something else?

MSI Z170 Krait Gaming ATX LGA1151 Motherboard

Asus Z170-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard

 

I'd go for the Asus it has more Sata slots giving you more expansion options. I use my Express Sata slots just like a Sata and it works fine on my Z97 board. But I would also choose a Good sound card and disable or pick the UEFI bios disable onboard when addon sound card option is installed...

Sound Blaster Z
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102053
I noticed the game play difference with a dedicated sound card you have better sound effect even coming from a 2.1 setup and headsets you hear more then the usually on-board. But this is me but if you want good sound effects from you game don't skimp out on this part.

 

Personally I'd go for an i5 if just gaming, but an i7 if video/photo editing are in the works.

That motherboard is way too expensive. Stick to something like a Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 5 or thereabouts.

I personally prefer a good air cooler (such as the Cooler Master 212 Evo) as its actually quieter than an AIO (the pump motor on AIOs can be quite noisy), but a good AIO isn't bad either. The 212 Evo is about $30, and tests have found it to be, at worst, a couple degrees hotter than a massive AIO solution. So even the experts tell you AIO water cooling will provide marginal benefits while costing a lot more. Up to you though.

The ASUS Strix and MSI GPUs are probably the quietest and coolest (in terms of temps), so I'd stick with those. Pick whichever is cheapest, both have equally stellar reviews.

Your RAM is expensive, dunno why. I can get 16GB of DDR4 2400 for $110 CAD. Find a better deal.

You can cut costs on SSDs by sticking to something like a Crucial MX200, which is still a very good drive.

DO NOT cheap out on the case. I did that, and after spending more on a quality case, I regret having ever bought cheap cases. A good case is much easier to work in, has better air flow and since you can keep your case for a decade, I'd really recommend a good one. That Fractal Design is a solid choice.

For case fans, while the Noctua's are very popular, they're also very expensive. A good Fractal Design case fan is almost as good at moving air and almost as silent, while costing half as much.

PSUs are really up to you, though I'm partial to the quality of a SeaSonic. The Corsair RM series are pretty good. Find a site that will calculate your peak power needs, then just add 100w to that number for good measure. I personally have a 550w PSU, with a GTX 980 and an OCd i5-6600k. Works perfectly.

 

AIO's make barely any noise at all, at least the Corsair ones I've seen. I looked for them before I built my rig, and it is so quiet. It's also better than having that huge mass hanging off the motherboard.

 

I had a Corsair AIO, made more noise than my Evo 212. Not a huge amount, but when idle, I can't hear my Evo, but could definitely hear the motor on the Corsair.

Better in what way?

Of course, once you get into some of those really, really big CPU heatsinks (some of them are truly massive) I can agree that it starts to be a bit ridiculous, and since those cost as much as a decent AIO water-cooler, I'd probably get the AIO.

My Evo 212 cost $30 CAD, while the Corsair I previously had cost twice as much, and that was on sale. They both cool just as well.

 

I can't hear a thing on my Corsair H110i, I had to touch it to make sure it was running. Fans drown out any other noise and even that's not that bad. I have my Corsair settings at standard. If I put it on performance then fan speeds ramp up rather loudly, but pump is and should be more or less silent compared to rest of system. Considering I run my i7-5820k at under 45C at load at 4GHz there is no issue unless I wanted to crank it up to 5GHz. But I tuned my system for best noise/performance.

 

I have both the H110 and the H60. Both are pretty quiet though their pumps get louder after 12 months.
It's not too bad. Sure Fan is quieter than AIO but it ain't that much perceptional wise.

Sadly, it becomes the next "most annoying thing louder than jet engine" once you start forget how quiet it really is.

 

I'm assuming that as you increase in price, those AIO get better in terms of not just performance, but construction quality and noise levels.

I had the Corsair H60, and while its radiator fan was silent, the CPU pump fan wasn't. In a noisy system it may not have been noticeable, but given I'm using a silent setup (no HDDs, quiet PSU, all 140mm fans < 20dBa), that small pump would definitely have been noticeable. I could always hear the whirring.

I'd probably get better results using the H110i, but then the price point is 3-4 times as much as my $30 CAD Evo 212.

I guess my point is that unless you're into heavy overclocking (or your case is too small), there is no logical/rational reason to spend more than $30 on a CPU cooler. The $100 price difference would yield better results if spent on upgrading the GPU/RAM.

A quick link: https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Corsair/H90/6.html

 

Yeah, once you increase the price of liquid coolers, their price/performance ratio is pretty much the same as air coolers.
But when cheaper liquid coolers are considered, €30 212 has better price/performance ratio than €50 liquid cooler.

 

Again I cannot thank you guys enough for all your input. I just stumbled across a friend of mine that gets really good discounts.
How does this compare to the ASUS?

EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 06G-P4-4995-KR 6GB 384-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 SLI Support SC+ w/ACX Backplate Video Card
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-06gp44995kr

and

EVGA Z170 FTW ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-motherboard-140sse177kr


I can get 10-15% off the GTX 980TI and probably 40% on the MOBO

Would both of them be better deals/worth it?

 

When it comes to GPUs, I'd just get the cheapest you can, as all the top brands are similar. Only real difference is that ASUS and MSI tend to be quieter and run a bit cooler.

 

Based on most of the reviews I've seen, the only instance where those mid-range AIOs (such as the Corsair H80) perform significantly better is under extreme circumstances (basically Prime95 + heavy OC). Under all other scenarios, the 212 Evo is only a few degrees warmer, while costing 1/4 as much.

Don't get me wrong, I like watercooling, and those AIOs are pretty neat and look nice. I just can't justify spending over $100 when my $35 212 Evo gets the job done almost as well, while being quieter under most circumstances.

 

This. I run my 5820k at 4.2ghz with a Corsair H55 (hardly the best AIO) and as stated before I don't see it break 60C even under the most demanding CPU games. I don't think I've ever heard my pump running.

Sorry but the EVO 212 is freaking massive. Once connected the thing blocks everything underneath it.

 

It is indeed massive. It also costs half as much as the H55 while providing similar/better cooling and noise results. The main advantage of entry-level (and mid-range) AIOs is the size (or lack thereof) around the CPU socket.

I run my i5-6600K at around 4.4GHz, temps are around the 52-55C range under stress tests, while demanding games stay under 50C.

 

Top air is comparable to top CLCs true, but aesthetics aside, it also blocks off access to almost half of the mobo, and you have to carefully choose your ram to make sure the heatspreader doesn't touch the heatsink, and you could even run into issues with GPUs if the first PCIe slot is too close to the socket and the tower is too massive. But of course air cooling is also safer because there's no liquid to destroy your system.

 

Yup, pros and cons for each method.

 

Even trivial things like replacing a power supply may require medic afterwards
I sliced my knuckles pretty well on large Noctua when I changed ps on my previous desktop.

 

I always found Zalman coolers turned my fingers into Swiss cheese. Thank god I never bought one for myself. I think the BIGGEST pain in the rear cooler I've installed was on my old 970 hexacore i7, I bought the Prolimatech Megahalems rev B. I had to slightly bend my X58A-UD5 Gigabyte mobo to get the backplate and cooler to mount properly. Never again.

 

Yeah, after using this AIO with my latest build, and it's been a while since I built a new gaming desktop, I will never again go air cooled. I was even considering one of the smaller AIO for my home server. It's an I3, but still same issue even a small heatsink blocks a lot of the motherboard and makes accessing components difficult.

 

While some of the bigger air coolers are truly massive, the Hyper 212 Evo doesn't block anything. I have full access to all RAM slots, PCIe slots, power connectors...

What, exactly, would be blocked off? Is it an issue with smaller builds/motherboards?

 

Yeah it was maybe like a tiny bit, but no other way to mount the cooler. The Intel stock cooler for the Westmere i7's was crap. I eventually went to the Corsair Hydro series for my high end builds, but I haven't needed it personally for awhile. Who knows, I might upgrade my current AMG rig to Skylake or Haswell and rebuild my fiance's PC.