[Seeking Build Advice] Watercooled Black/Green Gaming PC

[Faelarie]

I'm looking for some advice finishing up this build, and possible modifying this build.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($328.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 12g Thermal Paste ($16.85 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus SABERTOOTH Z97 MARK2 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($162.99 @ NCIX US)
Memory: Kingston Beast 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($126.74 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($177.89 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($70.99 @ Newegg)
Case: BitFenix Colossus Venom Window (Black) ATX Full Tower Case ($128.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: Corsair 750W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($144.49 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: LG UH12NS29 Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer ($59.98 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 OEM (64-bit) ($85.75 @ OutletPC)
Monitor: BenQ XL2730Z 144Hz 27.0" Monitor ($599.00 @ Amazon)
Keyboard: Corsair Vengeance K70 RGB Wired Gaming Keyboard ($168.99 @ Amazon)
Mouse: ROCCAT KONE XTD Wired Optical Mouse ($62.19 @ Amazon)
Headphones: Audio-Technica ATH-A700X Headset ($139.98 @ Newegg)
Other: AMD Fury X ($649.99)
Other: FrozenQ Reservoir ($109.99)
Other: BitFenix Mobo Wires ($50.00)
Other: FrozenQ Reservoir 2 ($134.99)
Other: Swiftech Dual Extreme Black ($199.99)
Other: EK Supremacy EVO Universal ($74.99)
Other: Bitspower Galaxy Universal RAM ($99.99)
Other: Aquacomputer Aquaero 6 XT USB Fan Controller ($249.99)
Other: 6 XT Aluminum Faceplate - Black ($13.99)
Total: $3857.74
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-06-22 15:57 EDT-0400

 

 

 

I've already gotten some really good info from a couple other forums, but I feel like I might get some good ideas from this forum as well.

 

I have two main reasons for going with this current build, I'm looking to play skyrim/fallout 4 with a vast amount of high detailed texture mods, and I'm going for an enthusiast style black/green water cooling theme.

 

 

Some help I could use would be finding other cases that match the theme better, and some help flushing out parts that I still need including these.

 

Radiator
Mouse Pad
Speakers
Chair
Table

 

I value performance in many of these parts as well, but I also really would like them to match the Black/Green theme.

 

Also thinking about switching to a 980ti rather than the furyx, but I like the idea of having one of the first cards to come out with HBM. I'm kind of worried that 4gb of vram won't be enough though.

 

 

 

[obobski]

Some questions:

 

- Why go with 4x4GB as opposed to 2x8GB? It will limit expansion in the future (e.g. you couldn't step up to 32GB with another 2x8GB kit), and it will run at 2T which will decrease memory performance somewhat. Since you're going from a ground-up new build, it makes more sense imho to go with a 2x8 kit.

 

- I'd consider a PSU maker other than Corsair - some of their recent offerings have been less than spectacular (AX series aside).

 

- Why a Blu-ray drive? No software is distributed on BD-ROM, and playback of Blu-ray movies will require additional (relatively expensive) software (e.g. from Corel).

 

- Why not Windows 7/8.1 Pro?

 

- What are you planning to plug the headphones into, and any specific reason you've picked that model? You do also realize that A700X is not a headset - it's a pair of stereo headphones. You would need an additional microphone if you need voice communication abilities.

 

As far as "4GB of VRAM isn't enough" - the amount of hype nVidia has created in the last few months about how much everyone and their grandmother needs 96GB of VRAM just to run Doom 95 at 320x240 all minimum at 15 fps is seriously getting out of hand. 4GB is more than enough for anything that exists today (Skyrim shouldn't even be a discussion; Fallout 4 is a complete unknown until it releases and is benchmarked).

 

Overall, this looks like a significantly overpriced machine relative to its performance - for $4000 it should offer much more performance than it does, and I think big chunks of that "bloat" are into accessories that do nothing for performance (like a nearly $200 keyboard, completely unncessary memory waterblocks, etc). At that price point you should be able to be talking high-end multi-GPU, 2011-v3 with DDR4, and a PCIe SSD to be entirely honest.

[Faelarie]

Some questions:

 

- Why go with 4x4GB as opposed to 2x8GB? It will limit expansion in the future (e.g. you couldn't step up to 32GB with another 2x8GB kit), and it will run at 2T which will decrease memory performance somewhat. Since you're going from a ground-up new build, it makes more sense imho to go with a 2x8 kit.

 

- I'd consider a PSU maker other than Corsair - some of their recent offerings have been less than spectacular (AX series aside).

 

- Why a Blu-ray drive? No software is distributed on BD-ROM, and playback of Blu-ray movies will require additional (relatively expensive) software (e.g. from Corel).

 

- Why not Windows 7/8.1 Pro?

 

- What are you planning to plug the headphones into, and any specific reason you've picked that model? You do also realize that A700X is not a headset - it's a pair of stereo headphones. You would need an additional microphone if you need voice communication abilities.

 

As far as "4GB of VRAM isn't enough" - the amount of hype nVidia has created in the last few months about how much everyone and their grandmother needs 96GB of VRAM just to run Doom 95 at 320x240 all minimum at 15 fps is seriously getting out of hand. 4GB is more than enough for anything that exists today (Skyrim shouldn't even be a discussion; Fallout 4 is a complete unknown until it releases and is benchmarked).

 

Overall, this looks like a significantly overpriced machine relative to its performance - for $4000 it should offer much more performance than it does, and I think big chunks of that "bloat" are into accessories that do nothing for performance (like a nearly $200 keyboard, completely unncessary memory waterblocks, etc). At that price point you should be able to be talking high-end multi-GPU, 2011-v3 with DDR4, and a PCIe SSD to be entirely honest.

 

4*4 to fit the ram waterblock

 

switched PSU to a evga supernova 1000g2.

 

I've heard that there will be vram stacking in directx12, and switched the PSU to compensate for a potential crossfire fury later on.

 

Just intended to get windows 10 for free from the upgrade path of sp1, might switch to pro to get windows 10 pro instead.

 

ad700's just generally outclass all gaming headsets on the market, I also intend on streaming at some point so I plan on using a noise canceling mic and stereo later on.

 

I've seen several people hitting over 4gb of vram used on the skyrimmodding reddit, I'm not sure if they were using a higher resolution than 1440p, or just a ton of 4k textures but it still is something to consider.

 

I'll probably have to wait for some benchmarks to get some more info on it.

 

It's an enthusiast gaming rig, I'm not looking specifically for the most powerful computer for it's price point. I plan on doing a lot of modding to the tower and peripherals in general. I'm basically looking for solid hardware for around 2800~ matching the green/black theme, and then setting up peripherals and water cooling to match it.

 

In general priorities follow Theme>Performance>PriceperValue atm. There are some exceptions but that's the general one atm.

[obobski]

4*4 to fit the ram waterblock

 

switched PSU to a evga supernova 1000g2.

 

I've heard that there will be vram stacking in directx12, and switched the PSU to compensate for a potential crossfire fury later on.

 

Just intended to get windows 10 for free from the upgrade path of sp1, might switch to pro to get windows 10 pro instead.

 

ad700's just generally outclass all gaming headsets on the market, I also intend on streaming at some point so I plan on using a noise canceling mic and stereo later on.

 

I've seen several people hitting over 4gb of vram used on the skyrimmodding reddit, I'm not sure if they were using a higher resolution than 1440p, or just a ton of 4k textures but it still is something to consider.

 

I'll probably have to wait for some benchmarks to get some more info on it.

 

It's an enthusiast gaming rig, I'm not looking specifically for the most powerful computer for it's price point. I plan on doing a lot of modding to the tower and peripherals in general. I'm basically looking for solid hardware for around 2800~ matching the green/black theme, and then setting up peripherals and water cooling to match it.

 

In general priorities follow Theme>Performance>PriceperValue atm. There are some exceptions but that's the general one atm.

 

 

I don't like the Nexus forums' quote thing (because I can't break your post up and respond to each "chunk") so I'll keep using bullet points - I'm saying this because I don't want my post to come across as incredibly short/terse, I'm just trying to organize it logically:

 

- Performance will be better with 2x8 (any 2 DIMM configuration actually - it will run in 1T), and given the massive budget you have, why not go 4x8 (vs 4x4) if you're set on having this waterblock? (Which, again, is 100% unncessary - DRAM devices do not get anywhere near that hot, but I certainly understand/respect aesthetic choices). 32GB kits are only around $200, and it'd basically end the discussion about "do I have enough RAM" for a good long time.

 

- PSU is nice. EVGA has been doing consistently good things recently.

 

- I've heard that rumor too, but that very very likely won't affect anything that isn't running in DirectX 12 (just like DX11 features aren't available for DX9, or DX9 features aren't available for DX7, etc), and all of that aside, 4GB of VRAM is still more than enough for any game (currently) on the market (and I would be honestly surprised if Fallout 4 is going to be the game that changes that). If you have links to whatever people on reddit are claiming they can actually use >4GB of VRAM/RAM for a Win32 D3D9 application I'd be interested to see them. Basically my point is, don't shy away from the Fury or any other current top-end card because they aren't Titan X with 12GB. The Titan cards, at least historically, had all that extra memory for compute, not DirectX, but with Maxwell its kind of a white elephant because they knee-capped FP performance even on the Titan part (actually even on the Quadro part too).

 

- Windows 10 Pro will require 7 Pro or 8.1 Pro for the upgrade; Home Premium/whatever will upgrade to Windows 10 Home. If your goal is 10 Pro, I'd probably get 8.1 Pro (afaik its cheaper than 7 Pro currently, and can still be bought Retail); it'll give you DX11.x/12 support in the interim (Win7 doesn't get 11.x and 12), and then you can upgrade to 10 in July/August when its out, and having Win8 will mean comparable DX support in the event you want to hold off the upgrade for a month or two due to whatever - just gives you more wiggle room if DX12 matters for you.

 

- Headphone geek here :D ; AD700 (and their replacement, AD700X) are a fine entry/mid-level open-back headphone, they have very little bass though, and are quite different from "A700X" (what you said in the original post), which are a closed-back model. Neither is a terrible choice, but there are ofc better or other options (at all manner of price points). As far as a mic and all that - the included beam-forming noise-cancelling mics with the Sound Blaster Z series are great for what they are, and the headphone amplifiers in those cards are also fine (especially for an Audio-Technica). Honestly imho this is an entirely separate, and equally large, topic, but the short version is that you should consider auditioning a variety of pairs of headphones, and narrowing it down to what kind of sound and performance you actually want. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the Ax700 series are head-and-shoulders beyond *any* gaming-oriented headphone/headset on the market these days though; years ago when AD700 was the de facto suggestion for any gaming build that was true, but a lot has changed in the last ten-fifteen years.

 

- Within your budget, I'd say you should answer a question regarding: is the machine solely/primarily about gaming, or is it also heavily about multimedia content (e.g. are you going to be doing a ton of h264 encoding or whatever). For pure gaming, the i5-4690 will perform comparably to the 47xx chips (because HyperThreading doesn't do much of anything), and it costs less (K variants are available, if you're wanting to overclock; otherwise I'd get the low-power S variant, as it will run cooler). For gaming + lots of multimedia/rendering/whatever the i7 1150 chips have some advantages due to HyperThreading, but the six-eight core 2011-3 chips will do a nicer job still. Either way, the CPU, motherboard, 32GB of RAM, and hard-drives should be under $2000 (I'm estimating around $100-$300 for the MB, $200 for the RAM, $200-$400 for the CPU, and $200-$400 for storage), which should leave enough for an SLI/CrossFire configuration of your choosing, and still get you in at around that $3k ballpark.

 

- I wanted to add on the storage thing: the whole "Boot SSD + mechanical storage" thing is utterly pointless imho - I know, I know, it's trendy and everyone and their grandmother does it, even HP and Dell do it, but the SSD will only benefit data stored upon it (and then, only read/write times - it will not help computationally constrained tasks one iota), so having a puny SSD just so you can see Windows boot really fast (and I really don't get why this itself is such a big deal to anyone) is just a waste imho. This isn't to say SSDs (or more broadly, fast disks) are bad - they're great, and in gaming improve things like save/load times, level load times, game start-up times, etc which is absolutely awesome. So basically what I'm saying is, go for a large enough fast drive (or RAID array, or whatever) for all of your applications, Windows, etc. For me, 500GB is not generally large enough for that (my Steam folder alone is nearly that big), but for you it might be (you know your own storage needs better than anyone else ofc). Given such a large budget, you may be able to swing a PCIe SSD, especially if your storage needs aren't that big in terms of installed applications, which would improve performance even further (and, let's be honest, they're just downright cool). For the mechanical side, I'd probably go with WD Greens if they're just going to store back-ups, music, etc - the new ones are more than fast enough for that, and will run cooler and quieter than Blacks or other higher-performance models (and really, just for holding a bunch of mp3s or pictures or ripped movies or whatever, that extra performance won't matter).

 

Overall, if you aren't up against any kind of deadline on building this system right now, it may be a good idea to wait for Fallout 4 (or at least more information about Fallout 4), as well as the Fury to launch (and ideally come down in price some). Also remember that Intel Skylake is coming out *very* soon, and that may be worth considering over Haswell/Devil's Canyon, assuming it offers improved performance (Broadwell was largely a snoozer for desktops, but Skylake is supposed to bring some more improvements).

[FMod]

RAM waterblocks are useless. That said, if you just want it for the looks, I'm pretty sure it will still fit fine with 2 DRAM modules. 2*8 is better than 4*4. The advantage of running DDR3-2400 (which most 2*8 offer or can do) over DDR3-1866 is tiny, but the latter is comparatively quite uncool.

 

Hard drive and SSD hybrid setups are so 2010. The cool thing to do, and you clearly care for the cool factor, is to go all solid state. HDD are for long-term storage and if you needed a lot of it, you wouldn't be looking at 1TB models.

 

But I have to disagree with the previous poster about PCI-E - there is no significant benefit to actual PC behavior from PCIE SSD over SATA SSD. It goes like this: if we consider a RAMDRIVE to be 100% performance, then a cheap hard drive is 9%, a good hard drive 10%, a cheap SATA SSD is 70% and the best PCI-E SSD is 75%.

[obobski]

But I have to disagree with the previous poster about PCI-E - there is no significant benefit to actual PC behavior from PCIE SSD over SATA SSD. It goes like this: if we consider a RAMDRIVE to be 100% performance, then a cheap hard drive is 9%, a good hard drive 10%, a cheap SATA SSD is 70% and the best PCI-E SSD is 75%.

 

PCIe SSDs can offer higher bandwidth, lower latency, and have no reliance on SATA controllers. A lot of newer motherboards will also take them as m2 card add-ons, which will save space and wiring. That isn't to say SATA implementions are bad or anything, and I'd probably agree with your 70/75% dichotmy overall - but we're talking about a budget of $4000+ here, so why not go for the last 5%?

[FMod]

PCIe SSDs can offer higher bandwidth, lower latency, and have no reliance on SATA controllers. A lot of newer motherboards will also take them as m2 card add-ons, which will save space and wiring. That isn't to say SATA implementions are bad or anything, and I'd probably agree with your 70/75% dichotmy overall - but we're talking about a budget of $4000+ here, so why not go for the last 5%?

Because it's competing with a much better upgrade - going from hybrid HDD-SSD to all solid state.

I've been a big proponent of hybrid configurations with symlinks and caching, but enough is enough, the time for all-flash storage has come, in the performance segment if not quite in the mainstream.

 

Speaking of M2 SSD, a few M2 models are slower under sustained load than their SATA counterparts, due to the need to fit into a tighter space, so using fewer flash channels; most are about the same. True PCI-E models with PCI-E speeds are uncommon and expensive.

 

Going all-flash isn't even expensive anymore, for $300 you can have http://pcpartpicker.com/part/crucial-internal-hard-drive-ct960m500ssd1 if you're willing to live with an older drive - but still fast, and with MLC ensuring longevity.

 

The boost in performance and responsiveness that SSD bring doesn't come from high linear speeds, but from eliminating the fragmented small data bottleneck. It's not pumping movies at 450 MB/s instead of 150 MB/s that helps, it's pulling small pieces of data from libraries and databases at 150 MB/s instead of 1.5 MB/s.

[obobski]

Who's talking about a "hybrid drive" here? I never suggested one, and I don't think Tehmedic101 was looking at one either. The original spec-out had an SSD and a mechanical HDD, and I'm assuming that's due to large storage needs more than anything else. I'm suggesting all PCIe storage given the budget, or at least all PCIe storage for all applications + Windows if there's a huge music/movie/picture library (multi-TB) that can go on a Green or whatever else. That makes no nevermind, and is cheaper (there's really no need/benefit to having your music library or movie library (even if they're HD files) on an SSD or anything else that fast if you're only serving to a single user - it's just pouring money at something that isn't a problem). SATA would be perfectly fine too; I don't think anybody is contesting that either. But I got the impression that "budget is not an issue" for this kind of build, so again, why not go for that last 5% of performance?

[FMod]

Who's talking about a "hybrid drive" here?

"Hybrid" here referred to any mixing of flash and disk storage in one PC.

 

Buying a 1TB HDD doesn't hint at large storage needs. If you need space, you buy 4TB drives, that's the market HDD have to themselves nowadays. 1TB is merely on the larger side of consumer SSD territory and at $300-ish a no-brainer if you need around that much space and aren't on a tight budget.

 

 

 

But I got the impression that "budget is not an issue" for this kind of build, so again, why not go for that last 5% of performance?

Practical reasons aside, because it's not the last 5%.

 

There's 5% beyond that and another 5% beyond that and about a dozen more steps to the cap. It's not buy that and you've got the ultimate build, just upgrading one of the less important bits from 'OK' to 'all right'.