Gaming PC Rig

[Sacred]

I'm in the process of trying to put together a build for the MDs son at work, budget is around the £3k mark and in his words it needs to be the dogs bollox as a desktop machine for a university digital media course and for gaming.

SilverStone SST-FP58B, Bay Device 5.25" 1x slot loading slim optical drive £13.18

LG GS40N Internal Optical Drive, 9.5mm, Slot Loading, SATA, Black £28.78 

760W Corsair AX760i Digital, Full Modular, 80 PLUS Platinum PSU £154.32 

Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 - £115.50 

16GB (4x4GB) Corsair DDR4 Dominator Platinum Kit, PC4-25600 (3200), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 16-18-18-36, XMP 2.0, DHX £217.13

500GB Samsung 850 EVO, 2.5" SSD, SATA III 6Gb/s, MGX, 3D V-NAND, 512MB Cache, Read 540MB/s, Write 520MB/s, 98k/90k IOPS £145.02

400GB Intel 750 Series AIC SSD, HHHL PCIe 3.0 (x4), Intel 20nm MLC NAND, 2200MB/s Read, 900MB/s Write, 430k/230k IOPS £308.88 	

Intel Core i7 6700K, S 1151, Skylake, Quad Core, 4.0GHz, 4.2GHz Turbo, 8 GT/s DMI, 1150MHz GPU, 40x Ratio, 91W, CPU £335.00 

Corsair Hydro Series H110i GTX High Performance CPU Cooler with 280mm Radiator, 1150/1/5/6/1366/2011/-3 + FM1/2/AM2/3 £109.99 

6GB Asus GTX 980 Ti STRIX DirectCU III OC, PCIe 3.0, 7200MHz GDDR5, GPU 1216MHz, Boost 1317MHz, Cores 2816, DP/HDMI/DVI £611.98 

Microsoft Windows 10 Professional, 64-bit ONLY, English, DVD Disc, 1 License/s, OEM, Operating System Software £115.32 	

Asus ROG Maximus VIII Hero, Intel Z170, S 1151, DDR4, SATAe/SATA3 6Gb/s, PCIe 3.0, SLi/CrossFire, HDMI, ATX Motherboard £173.00

TOTAL = £2400 (Delivered)

Not really sure what could do with a few tweaks, I'm guessing some savings could be made on the RAM with perhaps some G-Skill DDR4s? (which type?) Other than that I'm a bit lost as its such a high budget!

The £3,000 must also include a decent monitor for which I've not got the faintest idea, I was looking at the ROG Swift but noticed its a TN panel, alternatively theirs the Acer Predator range?


Could do with some quality advice here! PC must be ready to go for the first week of September, keyboard/mouse are already sorted.

[Professor Frink]

There might be some useful information on this thread. I am spec-ing a similar build and was asking for advise.

Can you not buy a cheaper Windows 7 and you will get the free upgrade to Windows 10? Can anyone confirm, is it existing users already installed by xx date?

What about getting Intel 750 Series NVMe PCIe SSD or this one? Great video here and here, that will surely add the wow effect.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Honestly,get a Core i7 5820K over the Core i7 6700K.

[Bonebreaker777]

Honestly,get a Core i7 5820K over the Core i7 6700K.

Seconded! Plenty of threads is always better
Monitor? Try ASUS MG279Q - 1440p, 144Hz IPS with FreeSync. Make it dual for good measure!
Be a bad ass and install a Linux, say your budget wasn't enough

[Sacred]

Honestly,get a Core i7 5820K over the Core i7 6700K.

Any reasons why or just from a cost perspective? Last thing I wants him to feel like I've invested in old tech and not taken advantage of the budget offered.


What's your thoughts on the SSDs? Is it worth the hefty price tag for the incredibly fast speeds gained from the PCIe ones?


Monitor looks great but freesync wont work with an nvidia card >_<

[kalniel]

Any reasons why or just from a cost perspective? Last thing I wants him to feel like I've invested in old tech and not taken advantage of the budget offered.

Actually it'll probably cost more to go 5820, certainly once the early adopter premium wears off. But the 5820 has more cores, so if task can take advantage of more cores then it's a better upgrade than skylake.

What's your thoughts on the SSDs? Is it worth the hefty price tag for the incredibly fast speeds gained from the PCIe ones?

M2 drives shouldn't be a large premium over SATA, but if there is, then no it's not going to make a huge difference, just the usual getting the fastest that you can for the budget.

[Sacred]

Actually it'll probably cost more to go 5820, certainly once the early adopter premium wears off. But the 5820 has more cores, so if task can take advantage of more cores then it's a better upgrade than skylake.

M2 drives shouldn't be a large premium over SATA, but if there is, then no it's not going to make a huge difference, just the usual getting the fastest that you can for the budget.

If I were to go with a Haswell E processor I would need a different mobo correct?

[kalniel]

If I were to go with a Haswell E processor I would need a different mobo correct?

Yes, and 4x RAM sticks to take advantage of quad channel, though I think you have this in your spec already.

[Sacred]

Yes, and 4x RAM sticks to take advantage of quad channel, though I think you have this in your spec already.

Would you say the X99 platform is worth investing in then? Its never been something I've looked into as every machine I've built in the past has been primarily for gaming, this system is a little different but so feeling lost.

[kalniel]

Would you say the X99 platform is worth investing in then? Its never been something I've looked into as every machine I've built in the past has been primarily for gaming, this system is a little different but so feeling lost.

Possibly..

Certainly it's a more expansive platform - IO won't be a limit, lots of room for dedicated add-in cards if he needs to accelerate anything and lots of storage options.

It won't be as efficient as skylake, and will quite possibly be a little bit slower. I think both would be equally viable - my personal preference is slightly towards the workstation style platforms rather than dedicated gaming ones.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Would you say the X99 platform is worth investing in then? Its never been something I've looked into as every machine I've built in the past has been primarily for gaming, this system is a little different but so feeling lost.

Longterm yes I would think so if you don't intend to do another CPU upgrade for a few years. DX12 and Vulkan will promote better multi-threading and X99 is more viable with multiple graphics cards too.

If you want to go Skylake I would get a Core i5 6600K for under £190 and not spend over £100 on a motherboard,otherwise the Core i7 5820k is viable.

[Professor Frink]

There seems a lot of hate for Skylake. The person you are buying for seems like he wants bragging rights more than anything (all options will meet his criteria).

It might be what 'sounds' better to him. 6 cores on a 1 year old CPU or 4 cores on the brand new CPU and DDR4 (must be better than DDR3....). How knowledgeable is he?

[kalniel]

It might be what 'sounds' better to him. 6 cores on a 1 year old CPU or 4 cores on the brand new CPU and DDR4 (must be better than DDR3....). How knowledgeable is he?

X99/5820 is DDR4 as well.

[Sacred]

There seems a lot of hate for Skylake. The person you are buying for seems like he wants bragging rights more than anything (all options will meet his criteria).

It might be what 'sounds' better to him. 6 cores on a 1 year old CPU or 4 cores on the brand new CPU and DDR4 (must be better than DDR3....). How knowledgeable is he?

I don't know never met the guys son, but I can imagine at 18 its deffo bragging rights more than anything as hes requested a decent lighting kit inside too (waste of money IMO)

[EndlessWaves]

Digital Media is a bit vague. How computationally intensive is it likely to be? Have you been given a minimum specification required by the course? The 750 is aimed at heavier disk users so it would be of more potential benefit on the media side of things, something like the SM951 is a better bet for a premium drive for lighter disk use.

A lot of the stuff on there is aimed at keen overclockers and rather overpriced for anyone else. Is he mad about overclocking? Is he willing to attempt it?

I'd probably go for windows 10 retail. This sounds like one of the few situations where OEM would actually be appropriate (you can't use it for a personal machine, but you can for one you're building for someone else) but on that budget the extra value from retail is worth the small extra cost.

I would pick a monitor setup first and the number, megapixel count and features of the screen(s) will determine your graphics card(s) which are a significant cost in the build. For example if you went for the Adaptive Sync (Freesync) monitor mentioned above you'd need an AMD card to get the most out of it as nVidia aren't supporting that part of the DisplayPort spec yet. They're concentrating on their own G-sync version instead.

Is there already a backup system in place? If not then it's well worth spending some of the budget on a hotpluggable drive system.

[Phage]

Surely for a digital course an IPS monitor would be better ?