Intel i7-5930K/980 Ti Build opinions please

[Nothin]

Hello,

After months of fannying about waiting for the next new technology release I’ve finally come up with a build spec and would be very grateful for some opinions to make sure I’ve not overlooked anything major or if any of the individual parts will create a bottleneck?
I’ve tried to spend more money on the parts I’ll notice the most performance from while making compromises where the gains would only show up in benchmarks.
I’m not a serious gamer and tend to play older games anyway, but I’ve gone for 6 cores over 4 as I’ll be doing a bit of video compression/rendering.
The performance is overkill for me right now however hoping to get a good 4 to 5 years out of it.

CPU - Intel Core i7-5930K 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor
CPU Cooler - Fractal Design Kelvin S24 62.4 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard - MSI X99A GAMING 7 ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard
Memory - Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 14 CAS Memory
Video Card - Palit GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Super JetStream Video Card Base Clock : 1152MHz / 1241MHz
Storage - Samsung 512GB NVMe M.2-2280 Solid State Drive MZVPV512HDGL-00000
Storage - Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Case - Fractal Design Define R5 Blackout Edition ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply - EVGA 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
Optical Drive - Pioneer BDR-209DBK Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer
Monitor - BenQ BL3200PT 60Hz 32.0"
Already Purchased
Keyboard - Corsair Vengeance K70 MX Red Wired Gaming Keyboard
Mouse - Logitech G502 Wired Optical Mouse
Headset - Sennheiser PC 323D 7.1 Channel Headset
Wireless Network Adapter - NETGEAR A6210-100PES AC1200 802.11AC

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/LWqkNG

From the reviews it seems most of the lower end slightly OC’d 980 Ti graphics cards have reasonably similar performance so I chose the Palit because it has low fan noise and I’ve not found many complaints about excessive coil whine.
I am also considering the EVGA card though because I’m more familiar with the brand and I’ve seen it on sale for only a few quid more.

The memory has been a bit of a pain to choose, having read many very conflicting views on ‘higher Mhz vs lower CAS latency’ so I’ve just gone for the good value Corsair 2400/14 sticks.

I started off looking at the Samsung 850 Evo M.2 drive for the OS but was tempted by the benchmark results of the seriously quicker SM951 then when I looked into pricing I saw the NVMe version was only a bit more expensive.
This is the only aspect of the build I’m unsure whether I’ll notice any real world benefits.

Thanks for any help.

Cheers,
Nothin

[EndlessWaves]

Going so extreme won't get you much longevity for your money. Spending it on a system that has sufficient power for you now and keeping the system for a second future system or upgrades will make it last much longer overall. A normal high end system for £1200-1400 instead of £2250 with something like an overclocked 4690k and 390X is probably where I'd aim if you want a bit more power than normal.

Something along these lines: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/B4dthM

If you would rather stick with the extreme system then you can swap the 5930k out for a 5820k as the only benefit when you're overclocking (other than potentially better binning) is the extra 12 PCI-Express lanes and it doesn't sound like you're going to be doing a tri- or quad- SLI setup.

[watercooled]

I agree with the above advice really, especially since you mention prioritising real-world performance over numbers in benchmarks on some of your component choices.

Yeah, video encoding loves more physical cores but unless you're back-to-back encoding or are pressed for time, does it really matter to you if what is essentially a batch process takes a bit longer to complete? It's also important to remember that unless you have many GPUs, socket 2011 CPUs are generally no better or sometimes even worse than 1150 CPUs in gaming performance.

And it's not just on the CPU you're spending a great deal more money, that CPU requires a far more expensive motherboard and you'll probably end up spending more on memory (although DDR4 has dropped a lot in price so the difference isn't what it was).

As video encoding, particularly x264 if that's what you use, tends to prefer real cores over SMT, you might not even see much of a difference going from an i5 to the equivalent i7 aside from clock speed differences.

I also agree that spending more money in no way guarantees a system will be more future proof. To quote EndlessWaves from another thread:

... A £525 card will last longer than a £175 card that's a third of the price, but three £175 cards in succession will last far longer and support the latest technology besides.

Couldn't have put it better myself. That applies to a lot of computer hardware TBH - provided you give yourself a decent base i.e. PSU, case, cooling etc (stuff which you can easily keep between upgrades) then upgrading when necessary is fairly straightforward and generally more economical.

[watercooled]

Oh and with regard to SSD performance, while the drives can perform very differently in synthetic benchmarks, the difference in real-world performance generally isn't so drastic.

Techpowerup are one site to run some real-world benchmarks, for instance here's some numbers from one of their latest reviews:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/O..._480_GB/8.html

[EndlessWaves]

Oh and with regard to SSD performance, while the drives can perform very differently in synthetic benchmarks, the difference in real-world performance generally isn't so drastic.

Techpowerup are one site to run some real-world benchmarks, for instance here's some numbers from one of their latest reviews:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/O..._480_GB/8.html

That test was done with a modest Pentium G3240 and DDR3-1333 so it may (or may not) look a little different on a 5820k with quad channel memory. It also doesn't feature any single user focused PCI-E drives, although the 750 on some of the tests would be similar.

There are definitely benefits, for example Tech Report found the SM951 was over twice as fast when transferring a lot of media files and three times as fast when duplicating them:
http://techreport.com/review/29221/s...ssd-reviewed/3

Of course, unless you've got a high end external thunderbolt storage device or you're regularly working with large files the benefits may not be very visible but they're pretty appealing for the right workload.

[watercooled]

Yeah it will depend on what you're doing and of course the greatly increased bandwidth available for native PCIe drives will improve file transfer speed if that's what you'll be doing a lot. I was just pointing out that for things like application load time, synthetic benchmark performance isn't necessarily indicative of the performance you'll see on those applications. Check the next page of that techreport review for the sort of thing I'm referring to.

[crossy]

I'm looking seriously at Haswell-E myself to replace my 5 year old Thuban hexacore - but in my case media transcoding is a small item compared with acting as a virtualisation host.

When you spec'd the 5930k did you check the Hexus review? There's a comment in there that I've seen time and time again.

Cheaper and almost as fast, the Core i7-5820K puts the proverbial spanner in the works, while the regular Haswell Core i7 range is very competent in any scenario that doesn't require 12 threads to be running in tandem.

We feel the Core i7-5930K is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Priced a little too high in the context of the Core i7-5820K and not having the sheer horsepower of the eight-core Core i7-5960X on tap, it's a case of a processor without a defineable cause.

And the current price difference between 5820k and 5930k is £150, which'd let you double the memory. I'm also looking at Seagate SSHD's - mainly because I've had a darned good experience with the one I've got as a "user" drive at the moment.

The Fractal AIO is interesting choice too - a large majority I've seen of similar builds have either gone Noctua NH-D15 (quieter) or Corsair. Looking at the Hexus review for the FD Kelvin S24 showed an interesting comment/reply from Fractal - namely that you could reduce pump noise by reducing pump voltage from 12V to 9V.

One the boards I was skimming had an interesting suggestion - guy had a windowed case and decided to go with the Swiftech H220-X, because the reservoir is a "feature" - check here. What's attracting me is that the specs seem to say that this is VERY quiet, on the other hand the idea of having to refill after 3 years isn't a positive.

Then again, I'm a complete watercooling n00b, so I'll probably chicken out and take the cheaper Corsair option, (the Swiftech is £145, a comparable Corsair H100i GTX is only £95)

[Nothin]

Damn, my sincere apologies for not thanking you for your replies sooner.
I only noticed there were some when I checked my email junk folder for something else.
Thank you so much for all the information.

I realise there’s no such thing as future proofing but my requirements will change in the future and I find it always best to build in some growing room.
As you can probably see by the fact that I've still not bought all the parts I’m a bloody nightmare when it comes to buying anything as I spend way too much time researching it so the thought of having to buy new parts every year or so, even just a graphics card, is something I’m trying to avoid.

I had indeed decided on the 5930 due to the extra lanes as well as the cores but was starting to lean to the 5820 until I picked up a 5930 for £348.
Couldn’t talk myself out of a 980 Ti but did save myself £60 getting the lesser specced MSI X99A SLI Plus on sale (came with a free copy of Rainbow Six Siege and a set of MSI Steel Series V2s which I may sell to make it an even bigger bargain).
Had ruled out the SM951 NVMe partly from reading the information you guys posted but also there seemed to be a bit of a heat throttling issue.

Crossy
Yeah agree with you on the Swiftech, looks to be the best of the bunch, but the price is just a little more than I’m comfortable with given the price of the well proven Corsair units as you stated.
I’m not 100% set on the Fractal S24 but the expandable, all copper design and the reasonable price (for AIOs) does appeal.
My thinking was that the S24 allows me to add GPU cooling to the loop for not much more money in the short term and when I do go SLI I’d have to go all custom so the all copper construction/no corrosion would help with resale value.

Thanks again for everyone’s help.