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New PC in the spring

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looking at the GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 and 6700k. Definitely doing an M.2 SSD.

want to spend about $1800, parts as of today come to about $2500, so hopefully should drop by the spring.

suggestions?
 
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In spring? That's so far away in computer world there's no point in looking at specific parts really. Still we can discuss it for fun / education, but we should start from scratch around spring, as the build we come up with will inevitably not be optimal anymore

We can start with what features are you looking for? What will you be using your computer for? Would you like to go for a silent ish build? What parts did you pick that came to 2500$? Will we be re-using any parts? 1200p gaming only or will there be a monitor upgrade too?
 

rtwjunkie

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Honestly? It's too far in the future to get specific. Product lines end quickly, so whatever part you look at now may not be offered later.

EDIT: LOL, @n-ster looks like we ninja'd each other! :laugh:
 
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In spring? That's so far away in computer world there's no point in looking at specific parts really. Still we can discuss it for fun / education, but we should start from scratch around spring, as the build we come up with will inevitably not be optimal anymore

We can start with what features are you looking for? What will you be using your computer for? Would you like to go for a silent ish build? What parts did you pick that came to 2500$? Will we be re-using any parts? 1200p gaming only or will there be a monitor upgrade too?

I do alot of gaming with GTA V and BF4, also will be playing Fallout 4 and battlefront. I also do alot of dev lab work with vmware workstation at home. My old PC will become my dedicated plex server and probably sell off the video card for whatever i can get.

looking for water cooled cpu, not looking for silent, but on the quitER side is always a plus. Probably one of the Corsair sealed systems.

Here's what i spec'ed so far:

CPU Intel 6700k $ 359.00
Motherboard GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 $ 219.00
RAM G. Skill F4-3200C16D-16GTZ $ 228.99
GPU MSI Radeon R9 390X GAMING 8G $ 429.99
HDD 2x2tb WD Black RAID 0 $ 382.00
SSD MZHPV512HDGL-00000 M.2 $ 369.99
PSU Corsair AX860i $ 199.99
Case Corsair Graphite Series 760T CC-9011074-WW White $ 179.00
CD/DVD/BD Pioneer BDC-207DBK $ 76.00
Cooling Corsair H110i GTX $ 139.00
$ 2,582.96

I'll probably get a few parts for xmas this year so maybe suggestions of what i should aim at first. also i'll probably upgrade to a 1440p monitor a few months after the build.
 
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That build isn't really ideal for what you want it to be

HDD wise, 2x2TB RAID-0 WD Black? Would be noisy as hell, if you could get the build SSD only, and keep most of your storage on your Plex Server (can double as file server), would be a much better experience. I'd personally also off-load the BD drive to the Plex Server or to an external drive. Combined with the suggestions below (provided you go with the X61 or D15 as the cooler), your build would we worlds quieter as well, actually close to silent on idle even

CPU: i7 5820K Drive up to MicroCenter, get it for 299$
MB:
USB 3.1 + Type-C + m.2 x4 ~220-250$
RAM:
16GB (4x4GB for quad-channel) @ 2800 C15/16 anything more is a waste, should run you around 120$
PSU:
I'd go with something like the EVGA P2 750W 130-150$, Corsair RM650i/750i are nice as well
GPU: GTX 970, ASUS STRIX or MSI Gaming, IMO at 1440p it's close enough to the 390X. On top of that much more quiet. 320-330$
Case:
760T is definitively a nice case, there are a few other options like Phanteks cases, NZXT cases etc
Cooler: NZXT Kraken X61 is an interesting alternatives to the H110i, air coolers are pretty great too, and much more quiet ex: Noctua D15 or D15S

This already saves you over 300$ and gives you a hexa core chip, great for VMWare, GTA V/BF4 and future DX12 games

To be continued
 
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I do alot of gaming with GTA V and BF4, also will be playing Fallout 4 and battlefront. I also do alot of dev lab work with vmware workstation at home. My old PC will become my dedicated plex server and probably sell off the video card for whatever i can get.

looking for water cooled cpu, not looking for silent, but on the quitER side is always a plus. Probably one of the Corsair sealed systems.

Here's what i spec'ed so far:

CPU Intel 6700k $ 359.00
Motherboard GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 $ 219.00
RAM G. Skill F4-3200C16D-16GTZ $ 228.99
GPU MSI Radeon R9 390X GAMING 8G $ 429.99
HDD 2x2tb WD Black RAID 0 $ 382.00
SSD MZHPV512HDGL-00000 M.2 $ 369.99
PSU Corsair AX860i $ 199.99
Case Corsair Graphite Series 760T CC-9011074-WW White $ 179.00
CD/DVD/BD Pioneer BDC-207DBK $ 76.00
Cooling Corsair H110i GTX $ 139.00
$ 2,582.96

I'll probably get a few parts for xmas this year so maybe suggestions of what i should aim at first. also i'll probably upgrade to a 1440p monitor a few months after the build.


The ram you selected are too expensive man .. you can find about the same performance for 80less or so.
This is way down the line but still , why you need 2x2tb in raid if you go for 500gb ssd ? save some and get a deskstar nas 4tb drive.
 
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The ram you selected are too expensive man .. you can find about the same performance for 80less or so.
This is way down the line but still , why you need 2x2tb in raid if you go for 500gb ssd ? save some and get a deskstar nas 4tb drive.

I like to install large games to the RAID as well as VMs i'm working on as to not eat up too much of the SSD, windows and only a select few games will be on the SSD.

That build isn't really ideal for what you want it to be

HDD wise, 2x2TB RAID-0 WD Black? Would be noisy as hell, if you could get the build SSD only, and keep most of your storage on your Plex Server (can double as file server), would be a much better experience. I'd personally also off-load the BD drive to the Plex Server or to an external drive. Combined with the suggestions below (provided you go with the X61 or D15 as the cooler), your build would we worlds quieter as well, actually close to silent on idle even

CPU: i7 5820K Drive up to MicroCenter, get it for 299$
MB:
USB 3.1 + Type-C + m.2 x4 ~220-250$
RAM:
16GB (4x4GB for quad-channel) @ 2800 C15/16 anything more is a waste, should run you around 120$
PSU:
I'd go with something like the EVGA P2 750W 130-150$, Corsair RM650i/750i are nice as well
GPU: GTX 970, ASUS STRIX or MSI Gaming, IMO at 1440p it's close enough to the 390X. On top of that much more quiet. 320-330$
Case:
760T is definitively a nice case, there are a few other options like Phanteks cases, NZXT cases etc
Cooler: NZXT Kraken X61 is an interesting alternatives to the H110i, air coolers are pretty great too, and much more quiet ex: Noctua D15 or D15S

This already saves you over 300$ and gives you a hexa core chip, great for VMWare, GTA V/BF4 and future DX12 games

To be continued

Thanks! I'll look into these as alternatives and re-spec accordingly, most of what i picked at the core of the build was my over-enthusiasm for skylake lol
 
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rtwjunkie

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:eek: :eek: I'm using about 2.5TB out of 4TB among 2 HDD's. It's not hard to fill up with games.

You must have a bunch of high quality movie archives... or never uninstall games? With Steam nowadays, and cheap big HDDs, I tend to either uninstall or "Archive" (cut and paste) the main portion (aka program files) to my File Server. Granted it can take 10 minutes for a 50GB game to transfer back, it would be well worth the quietness of my system. By far the biggest space hogs are backups, images (RAW) and movies for me, which all go to the File Server directly anyways. I say file server but it's just an old 1366 Xeon workstation I got for dirt cheap :p
 
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:eek: :eek: I'm using about 2.5TB out of 4TB among 2 HDD's. It's not hard to fill up with games.
:confused:
have you ever heard about delete/uninstall?
i have installed atm 23 steam games (119gb) homm6 and m&m X (~20gb) starcraft 2 (14gb) sacred 2 (20.9gb) eso (42gb) wot (12.9gb) mass effect 1-3 (49.5gb) dragonage origin (23.5gb) neverwinter (16.5gb) and some other random stuff for 381gb size on disk. on same drive is windows, page file, users and 1.2 gb downloaded drivers and other small stuff and i have 18.6gb free out of my 447gb.
 

rtwjunkie

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:confused:
have you ever heard about delete/uninstall?
i have installed atm 23 steam games (119gb) homm6 and m&m X (~20gb) starcraft 2 (14gb) sacred 2 (20.9gb) eso (42gb) wot (12.9gb) mass effect 1-3 (49.5gb) dragonage origin (23.5gb) neverwinter (16.5gb) and some other random stuff for 381gb size on disk. on same drive is windows, page file, users and 1.2 gb downloaded drivers and other small stuff and i have 18.6gb free out of my 447gb.

I have actually! :laugh: I prefer to play games exactly when I want to play them, not wait for a download and install. Besides, I hop around on games. To each his own. There are alot like you, and also alot like me. It's all good! :)
 
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I have actually! :laugh: I prefer to play games exactly when I want to play them, not wait for a download and install. Besides, I hop around on games. To each his own. There are alot like you, and also alot like me. It's all good! :)

You hop between more than 33 games? :p Point is that most people do just fine with 480-512GB, with 1TB most have wayyyyyy more than needed
 
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I have actually! :laugh: I prefer to play games exactly when I want to play them, not wait for a download and install. Besides, I hop around on games. To each his own. There are alot like you, and also alot like me. It's all good! :)
me too but i rarely jump between more then 3-6 games. till i finish those that are sp. then i swap them with another games.
 

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You hop between more than 33 games? :p Point is that most people do just fine with 480-512GB, with 1TB most have wayyyyyy more than needed

Hell just my GOG games takes 750GB. Like I said, I don't want to wait for download and install. My playing time is limited.
 
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Hell just my GOG games takes 750GB. Like I said, I don't want to wait for download and install. My playing time is limited.

Fair enough, but it's usually a fair assessment for most to say that 500GB should suffice, 1TB at most for games.

I like to install large games to the RAID as well as VMs i'm working on as to not eat up too much of the SSD, windows and only a select few games will be on the SSD.

In the case of OP there is also VMs to worry about, though those usually don't take too much space, it may be better in his case to go with large SSD + 1 HDD for his archival needs.

One thing to note is that VMs will benefit greatly from SSDs (though NVMe vs SATA won't make a difference), and so will large games with long loading times, so using the SSD for those instead may be worth spending a bit more for that big SSD instead of going NVMe. A Sandisk Extreme Pro 960GB or Samsung 850 EVO 1TB or PRO if you want to splurge are great alternatives. You could also split it in two, having a 500GB m.2 drive and a 500GB SATA drive. By the time you want to buy this the m.2 950 Pro will be out etc so in reality we'll have to wait for that part, probably one of the last thing you should buy is the storage, so don't spend too much time on that when doing your list right now
 
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Hell just my GOG games takes 750GB. Like I said, I don't want to wait for download and install. My playing time is limited.
for me dl isn't problem. my speed is 4.5-5mb/s (caped at server side) and i am also multitasking (you should try it yourself ;)) - downloading till i am occupied with other tasks at home.
Fair enough, but it's usually a fair assessment for most to say that 500GB should suffice, 1TB at most for games.



In the case of OP there is also VMs to worry about, though those usually don't take too much space, it may be better in his case to go with large SSD + 1 HDD for his archival needs.

One thing to note is that VMs will benefit greatly from SSDs (though NVMe vs SATA won't make a difference), and so will large games with long loading times, so using the SSD for those instead may be worth spending a bit more for that big SSD instead of going NVMe. A Sandisk Extreme Pro 960GB or Samsung 850 EVO 1TB or PRO if you want to splurge are great alternatives. You could also split it in two, having a 500GB m.2 drive and a 500GB SATA drive. By the time you want to buy this the m.2 950 Pro will be out etc so in reality we'll have to wait for that part, probably one of the last thing you should buy is the storage, so don't spend too much time on that when doing your list right now

ya that 1tb crucial mx200, i've put in the list, should be enough. if not 2hhds can be changed with 1 512gb ssd for about same price for total of 1.5tb ssd space.
 

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Keyboard Tt eSports KNUCKER
Software windows 10x64Pro
Benchmark Scores well I've fried a 775' P4 12 years ago, that counts?
pointless rig build,

Raid is an old thing, you don’t really need it, 128GB SSD or 64 [I'm pretty fine with 64GB SSD] and 2TB hdd will be fine, extra 1TB hdd for games is OK, then, Blue drive, DVD/CD drives are not completely necessary, don’t get the point of them neither…

take a look:

a list made reusing your parts, whell some of them,

Processor: intel core I7 6700K
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z170 ud5 board,
Cooling: thermaltake Water 3.0 pro
Memory: 2x8Gb kingston fury
Video Card(s): Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 Gaming
Hard Disk(s): crucial m4 128 GB & Seagate 2TB Hdd
Optical Drive: Plextor 880SA ** reuse this one,
Case: Corsair 600T White ** Reuse this one,
Sound Card: Auzentech X-Fi Bravura PCI-Express (Gaming) / iBasso D6 (Audio) [reuse this one too]
Power Supply: Antec 850w TPQ-850 // as far as I know is a variant of this model that is 80+ bronze certified, if this one keep it,


there is no need to spend $2500 on several thing that you wont use, or arent the ideal ones, not because some parts are expensive means that you must have them or the ones you need,


if you don’t want to reuse parts, take a look to this list, you said you will have like $1800 for a new rig:
skylake build....
 
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pointless rig build,

Raid is an old thing, you don’t really need it, 128GB SSD or 64 [I'm pretty fine with 64GB SSD] and 2TB hdd will be fine, extra 1TB hdd for games is OK, then, Blue drive, DVD/CD drives are not completely necessary, don’t get the point of them neither…

take a look:

a list made reusing your parts, whell some of them,

Processor: intel core I7 6700K
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z170 ud5 board,
Cooling: thermaltake Water 3.0 pro
Memory: 2x8Gb kingston fury
Video Card(s): Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 Gaming
Hard Disk(s): crucial m4 128 GB & Seagate 2TB Hdd
Optical Drive: Plextor 880SA ** reuse this one,
Case: Corsair 600T White ** Reuse this one,
Sound Card: Auzentech X-Fi Bravura PCI-Express (Gaming) / iBasso D6 (Audio) [reuse this one too]
Power Supply: Antec 850w TPQ-850 // as far as I know is a variant of this model that is 80+ bronze certified, if this one keep it,


there is no need to spend $2500 on several thing that you wont use, or arent the ideal ones, not because some parts are expensive means that you must have them or the ones you need,


if you don’t want to reuse parts, take a look to this list, you said you will have like $1800 for a new rig:
skylake build....

Personally i use raid for the little extra IO you get with VMs.

Right now i use a 120GB SSD with 2x1tb RAID 0 for my games and VMs. so i went with 2x2tb since they're pretty cheap now and to future proof myself a bit with space as most AAA games are soon to be 60+ GB. I have a somewhat short attention span with games so i typically have a bunch installed at once, i like to play a round of two of Battlefield, then some GTA online, then maybe some Diablo. My current PC runs Plex too and i have an 8tb external with 5tb of movies and shows on it, so my old PC will be reused for that exclusively.
 
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Personally i use raid for the little extra IO you get with VMs.

Right now i use a 120GB SSD with 2x1tb RAID 0 for my games and VMs. so i went with 2x2tb since they're pretty cheap now and to future proof myself a bit with space as most AAA games are soon to be 60+ GB. I have a somewhat short attention span with games so i typically have a bunch installed at once, i like to play a round of two of Battlefield, then some GTA online, then maybe some Diablo. My current PC runs Plex too and i have an 8tb external with 5tb of movies and shows on it, so my old PC will be reused for that exclusively.
ok now serous lets detail trd and then make listings for parts.
you are going to use new rig for games and ...? do you really cant off load vms to your (soon to be) old pc with some ssd upgrade for it and just build gaming pc. this way you will be able to build very high end gaming pc for 1.8k or make descent one for much less
 
Last edited:
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That's probably not practical to have a seperate rig for VMs. On top of that you want your better CPU and RAM to be used for VMs. I literally bought Terabytes of SSD when I saw the difference it made for VMs, it's just that much nicer
 

peche

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Benchmark Scores well I've fried a 775' P4 12 years ago, that counts?
Personally i use raid for the little extra IO you get with VMs.

Right now i use a 120GB SSD with 2x1tb RAID 0 for my games and VMs. so i went with 2x2tb since they're pretty cheap now and to future proof myself a bit with space as most AAA games are soon to be 60+ GB. I have a somewhat short attention span with games so i typically have a bunch installed at once, i like to play a round of two of Battlefield, then some GTA online, then maybe some Diablo. My current PC runs Plex too and i have an 8tb external with 5tb of movies and shows on it, so my old PC will be reused for that exclusively.
about the rig?
 
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Mouse roccat burst pro
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That's probably not practical to have a seperate rig for VMs. On top of that you want your better CPU and RAM to be used for VMs. I literally bought Terabytes of SSD when I saw the difference it made for VMs, it's just that much nicer
it want be saparate. he already have the rig, current one that will become server after he buy new rig. with moving vms to the server he can leave em running 24/7 w/o messing with gaming. his 930 should be enough for vms and daily plex server tasks.
this way he can save money from cpu&ram for gaming rig and put em for 980ti and ssd+ram+gold psu upgrade for server

edit: this could be gaming rig http://pcpartpicker.com/p/bdLLQ7 and this http://pcpartpicker.com/p/FvrsGX for server upgrade about 2k total.
 
Last edited:
Joined
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Mouse Razer Viper Ultimate (still has buttons on the right side, crucial as I'm a southpaw)
Keyboard Razer Huntsman Elite, Pro Type | Logitech G915 TKL
it want be saparate. he already have the rig, current one that will become server after he buy new rig. with moving vms to the server he can leave em running 24/7 w/o messing with gaming. his 930 should be enough for vms and daily plex server tasks.
this way he can save money from cpu&ram for gaming rig and put em for 980ti and ssd+ram+gold psu upgrade for server

edit: this could be gaming rig http://pcpartpicker.com/p/bdLLQ7 and this http://pcpartpicker.com/p/FvrsGX for server upgrade about 2k total.

Good point, going i5 for the gaming rig and off-loading VM responsibilities would be nice. He does mention he wants to do lab work on his VMs. I personally use VMs as well, for lab work, and I have a dedicated Plex/File server. I tend to run the VMs I'm working a lot on, on my local machine, and background ones on the Workstation.

Does anyone know if by spring the X99 successor will be out?
 

CAPSLOCKSTUCK

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I would like to point you to one specific line in my sig wherein the veritable @rtwjunkie states.....

" planning for the future is futile"
 
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