High Performance PC build €1500

Michael Collins

So the time has come to upgrade from my LGA755-based PC which is getting fairly long in the tooth now to say the least...

1. What is your budget? €1500 or so

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? High Performance Scientific Computing i.e. number crunching, some video editing, and general internet/music. No gaming.

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? Yes, probably just get Win 7 and upgrade to Win 10.

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? SSD and HDDs should be sorted - if there's good value on a decent SSD it wouldn't hurt to have another one. Have speakers sorted too.

5. Do you need a monitor? Yes (not too critical)

5a. If yes, what size do you need. 24'

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? Keyboard and Mouse. Any ideas?

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? Yes

8. How can you pay? Credit Card

9. When are you purchasing? Next few weeks

So far I'm learning towards the following Skylake based system:

1. Motherboard: Asus Z170 Pro Gaming €167
2. Processor: i7-6700K 4.0 GHz €341
3. RAM: DDR4 Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) €100
4. Case: Nanoxia Deep Silence 5, looks good and seems to be compatible with the following... €114
5. Watercooling: Raystorm 750 EX240 Watercooling Kit €190
6. Monitor: Philips 24" LED 1920 x 1080 €140

With a decent keyboard and mouse etc this comes to about €1200.

Is there any obvious incompatibilities in the above or do you have any suggestions?

Yep, no graphics card! The motherboard has 3 simulataneous monitor outputs which is all I need. I'm sure many of you will find this strange (what a waste like!), but I won't be playing games, and I don't think the video editing would see much benefit from an external graphics card.

There's quite a few Skylake motherboards out there, I've no particular attachment to the one above. It might seem like overkill for a nongaming PC, but I do want to try overclocking, and I like the amount of ports on this board. Still, I welcome other suggestions.

Could change the CPU to the i5-6600K 3.5 GHz €240 if you guys think the 6700k is not worth it, but then again the CPU is probably the most critical component given the usage.

As for the watercooling, I just want to try it out! And I do intend to overclock so might even be slightly necessary!

Cheers for your help guys,
MC.

Digital Solitude

Nothing wrong with that build IMO, there's cheaper Z710s but meh, you're not going to fret €50 here I imagine.

A 250w PSU is enough there. A GPU may help the editing, depends on the scope of it.

grindle

Michael Collins wrote: »

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? High Performance Scientific Computing i.e. number crunching, some video editing, and general internet/music. No gaming.

GPUs are pretty well-established for number-crunching nowadays, make sure the programs you're using don't benefit from having one before you leave one out.

mrs aol

Hi
I'm building a similar ish Skylake system.
Board Asus Z170-k
i5 6600k
Be Quiet! Dark rock 3
Ram Corsair Vengence LPX 3000 16G (4x4)
Antec 450w PSU
Samsung 850 Evo M2 SSD 250G
Seagate Barracuds 2TB HHD

I have an old case and extra hhds. I'm not adding a graphics card (at this stage) either. I'll be interested to see how you get on and the comments you get here. I'm itching to get started here. My parts are apparently in a warehouse in Athlone, they were due to be delivered on Friday.

Michael Collins

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Nothing wrong with that build IMO, there's cheaper Z710s but meh, you're not going to fret €50 here I imagine.

A 250w PSU is enough there. A GPU may help the editing, depends on the scope of it.

Cheers Digital, I'm sure I would have remembed the PSU at some point!

Editing will be minimal really, I can pick up a GPU later if I feel it would help a lot. I'm not sure on this, will any editing software that's out there make good use of the GPU for encoding?

grindle wrote: »

GPUs are pretty well-established for number-crunching nowadays, make sure the programs you're using don't benefit from having one before you leave one out.

That's a good point. I have a GTX 860M with 640 CUDA cores in my laptop, which I'm assuming is decent. But the real point is I've had it for a year and still haven't had time to actually use it in any of my programs, so I'll add the GPU to the list for when I actually get my CUDA act together!

mrs aol wrote: »

...
I have an old case and extra hhds. I'm not adding a graphics card (at this stage) either. I'll be interested to see how you get on and the comments you get here. I'm itching to get started here. My parts are apparently in a warehouse in Athlone, they were due to be delivered on Friday.

What's your application aol?

I'll keep you updated on how it goes.

I probably won't get around to building this until Christmas though...

Digital Solitude

If you're considering adding a GPU bump PSU to 400w