New build for VR, dev, video and some games (~€2000/2500)

JackKelly

Hey,

I'm putting together a new desktop machine. It's been about 10 years since I built my last PC so it would be great to get some feedback before making any purchases.

I want to use this PC for VR/AR content and development as well well as some video production and general development. I'll also use it for games.

The only thing I haven't considered yet is a monitor. I'm not sure whether to go with TN or IPS. I'd be willing to spend another €400 or so on this but I haven't any ideas yet?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (€338.70 @ Amazon Deutschland)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (€36.40 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Motherboard: Asus Z170 PRO GAMING ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (€147.85 @ Mindfactory)
Memory: G.Skill TridentZ Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (€105.84 @ Mindfactory)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (€155.78 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (€74.62 @ Mindfactory)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (€74.62 @ Mindfactory)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 1080 8GB STRIX Video Card (€806.99 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX Glass ATX Mid Tower Case (€187.84 @ Mindfactory)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 650W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (€130.00)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit (€105.60 @ Mindfactory)
Keyboard: Corsair K70 RAPIDFIRE Wired Gaming Keyboard (€191.84 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Mouse: Corsair M65 PRO RGB FPS Wired Optical Mouse (€77.83 @ Mindfactory)
Total: €2433.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-08-25 21:04 CEST+0200

K.O.Kiki

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (€338.70 @ Amazon Deutschland)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler (€71.32 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Motherboard: Asus Z170 PRO GAMING ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (€147.85 @ Mindfactory)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (€79.00 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (€155.78 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (€67.90 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (€67.90 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB FTW Gaming ACX 3.0 Video Card (€766.09 @ Mindfactory)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX Glass ATX Mid Tower Case (€187.84 @ Mindfactory)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 650W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (€130.00)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit (€105.60 @ Mindfactory)
Keyboard: Corsair K70 RAPIDFIRE Wired Gaming Keyboard (€191.84 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Mouse: Corsair M65 PRO RGB FPS Wired Optical Mouse (€77.83 @ Mindfactory)
Total: €2387.65
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-08-25 23:19 CEST+0200

CPU cooler: Get a better CPU cooler than the Hyper 212 - go for the best (Noctua).
RAM: DDR4-3200 isn't worth €20 over DDR4-3000.
HDD: Don't buy Seagate HDDs; go Hitachi.
GPU: I've heard better stories for EVGA tech support than Asus.
Keyboard: €200 is madness IMHO - up to you though.

Icyseanfitz

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (€338.70 @ Amazon Deutschland)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler (€71.32 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Motherboard: Asus Z170 PRO GAMING ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (€147.85 @ Mindfactory)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (€79.00 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (€155.78 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (€67.90 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (€67.90 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB FTW Gaming ACX 3.0 Video Card (€766.09 @ Mindfactory)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX Glass ATX Mid Tower Case (€187.84 @ Mindfactory)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 650W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (€130.00)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit (€105.60 @ Mindfactory)
Keyboard: Corsair K70 RAPIDFIRE Wired Gaming Keyboard (€191.84 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Mouse: Corsair M65 PRO RGB FPS Wired Optical Mouse (€77.83 @ Mindfactory)
Total: €2387.65
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-08-25 23:19 CEST+0200

CPU cooler: Get a better CPU cooler than the Hyper 212 - go for the best (Noctua).
RAM: DDR4-3200 isn't worth €20 over DDR4-3000.
HDD: Don't buy Seagate HDDs; go Hitachi.
GPU: I've heard better stories for EVGA tech support than Asus.
Keyboard: €200 is madness IMHO - up to you though.

:P:pac:

JackKelly

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

CPU cooler: Get a better CPU cooler than the Hyper 212 - go for the best (Noctua).
RAM: DDR4-3200 isn't worth €20 over DDR4-3000.
HDD: Don't buy Seagate HDDs; go Hitachi.
GPU: I've heard better stories for EVGA tech support than Asus.
Keyboard: €200 is madness IMHO - up to you though.

Thanks for the reply.

CPU cooler: What about going for liquid cooling? That Noctua looks absolutely enormous!
RAM: Good point
HDD: I had a read of the Backblaze hard drive report and you are spot on. I'll change those. Should they be a lot more expensive? Noticed they were ~€130 each opposed to to ~€60 for the Seagates.
GPU: Yeah, looking around at reviews and forums it seems that ASUS can have really poor QC. I'm going to reconsider the motherboard too

For the monitor I saw the Asus PG279Q. Again, seems to be a total lottery whether you get an decent one or not so I'm reluctant to go with ASUS, but it's meant to be excellent if/when you get a working model. A fairly big risk to take for a ~€750 monitor thought

As for the keyboard/mouse, if I'm going all out I may as well have a shiny keyboard

Icyseanfitz

i recently built a gaming rig with a similar enough budget,

cooler wise i went with this arctic (the lads here recomended the smaller version of it) delighted with its performance, 6700k @ 4.4 at load sits around 50 degrees.

bought a 1080 myself, was looking at zotac, palit, asus evga and msi, from what i read there isnt much of a difference performance wise between any of them. Evga have a great customer service record which is why i bought their ftw edition, that and some of the other cards (zotac, palit) seemed massive

bought a k70 lux, fantastic keyboard, love the custom lighting profiles you can get for it, currently have an iron man one one haha

K.O.Kiki

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-motherboards,3984.html

ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K4 & Gigabyte Z170-HD3 are around the same price.


The Noctua is indeed big, but it is also whisper quiet.

Arctic Liquid Freezer 120 would be a good bet for an AIO liquid cooler though.

BloodBath

Do you really need 200-250w+ coolers for cpus with 50-60w power consumption?

With such a large budget I'd be looking at a 6-8 core processor as well. Quad cores are coming to the end of their mainstream life cycle. 8 core / 16 thread cpus are coming soon.

Zen will force Intel the follow suit.

For development the extra cpu power is always good. Building high quality static lighting in a large scene can take hours on even an overclocked quad core.

You would probably save a good chunk ordering most of the parts from mindfactory.de through geizhals.de as well. Everything except the case and monitor.

JackKelly

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

cooler wise i went with this arctic (the lads here recomended the smaller version of it) delighted with its performance, 6700k @ 4.4 at load sits around 50 degrees.

bought a 1080 myself, was looking at zotac, palit, asus evga and msi, from what i read there isnt much of a difference performance wise between any of them. Evga have a great customer service record which is why i bought their ftw edition, that and some of the other cards (zotac, palit) seemed massive

What motherboard did you go for? How noisy is the liquid cooler? Yeah, I think I'll go with the EVGA too having read a bit more about ASUS and their questionable warranty and QS across the board

BloodBath wrote: »

With such a large budget I'd be looking at a 6-8 core processor as well. Quad cores are coming to the end of their mainstream life cycle. 8 core / 16 thread cpus are coming soon.

...

You would probably save a good chunk ordering most of the parts from mindfactory.de through geizhals.de as well. Everything except the case and monitor.

I hadn't thought about the 6-8 cores. I'll check them out. I was planning on using mindfactory.de. They are much cheaper for most things.

BloodBath

JackKelly wrote: »

What motherboard did you go for? How noisy is the liquid cooler? Yeah, I think I'll go with the EVGA too having read a bit more about ASUS and their questionable warranty and QS across the board



I hadn't thought about the 6-8 cores. I'll check them out. I was planning on using mindfactory.de. They are much cheaper for most things.

The 6800k is probably the best value offering from intel in the 6 core / 12 thread area at the moment. That would mean changing the board as well.

It shouldn't push the overall price up too much, maybe €150-200, and might actually warrant that big ass cooler. 140w TDP, probably over 200 with a decent overclock.

Icyseanfitz

I was looking at an x99 setup myself but decided against it due to games using per clock speed over more cores for the vast majority of titles. Saying that video editing etc would make x99 a much nicer prospect

BloodBath

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

I was looking at an x99 setup myself but decided against it due to games using per clock speed over more cores for the vast majority of titles. Saying that video editing etc would make x99 a much nicer prospect

Yeah it's not an easy choice at the moment. If you are going with the gtx 1080 you probably want to maximize your cpu speed and the 6800k struggles to go above 4.4ghz with excellent cooling. The 6700k will do better in most cases.

It depends where your priorities lie. Maximising gaming/VR performance or speeding up build times for development.

aosaigh

BloodBath wrote: »

Yeah it's not an easy choice at the moment. If you are going with the gtx 1080 you probably want to maximize your cpu speed and the 6800k struggles to go above 4.4ghz with excellent cooling. The 6700k will do better in most cases.

It depends where your priorities lie. Maximising gaming/VR performance or speeding up build times for development.

It sounds like going with the X99 is a better furture-proofing choice but will suffer temporarily from the current range of processors? Presumably the next generation of X99 processors will catch up?

Icyseanfitz

I'd say this batch of CPU's will be the last of the x99 platform, its pretty old in comparison to 1151 which is quite new and which supposedly kaby lake will use also use when it releases

BloodBath

aosaigh wrote: »

It sounds like going with the X99 is a better furture-proofing choice but will suffer temporarily from the current range of processors? Presumably the next generation of X99 processors will catch up?

IPC (instructions per clock) x clock speed has been king for games for a long time now. We should be seeing more optimisation for higher core counts with DX12 but this process has been slow as developers usually focus on what the majority of the market is using which is 2-4 core processors.

AMD's 8 core, 16 thread Zen is coming this year which should shake things up but intel will probably still rule for IPC and clock speeds.

Zen will completely destroy current i5's and i7's in apps that can utilise it fully though.

The problem with cramming more cores into a tiny area is heat which usually results in lower clockspeeds so we're back to the IPC x clockspeed problem.

Hard to predict what way it will go but as the market shifts to DX12, and AMD push octo cores, more core utilization should become the norm.

I think there should be a shift in how cpus are designed with maybe 2-4 of the cores being extremely high clock speed with slower support cores around it. You could probably do this yourself in the bios but I have no idea how effective it is.

Icyseanfitz

I'd love to see amd come out some killer CPU's/gpu's just to bring back some competition, but I struggle to see it happening tbh

BloodBath

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

I'd love to see amd come out some killer CPU's/gpu's just to bring back some competition, but I struggle to see it happening tbh

It's happening. Zen is going to be a killer range of cpu's if it's priced right. Vega gpus should arrive late this year as well which will compete with Nvidia's high end. They already compete at the low-mid range with Polaris.

Icyseanfitz

I've just heard it too many times with amd to have any confidence in them,
if they do it will be fantastic and should give Intel/nvidia a boot up the arse in terms of their price performance.
Up until buying the 1080 I've used amd GPUs BTW, I've a 390x now and had a 7970 before, loved the 7970 but the 390x has been a loud hot and inconsistent card

JackKelly

Thanks for all of the feedback. After an a good bit more research I've landed on the following:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor (€335.00)
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X61 106.1 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (€119.00)
Motherboard: Asus ROG MAXIMUS VIII HERO ALPHA ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (€225.00)
Memory: G.Skill TridentZ Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (€175.00)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (€127.00)
Storage: Western Digital Blue 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (€63.00)
Storage: Western Digital Blue 2TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (€63.00)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB FTW Gaming ACX 3.0 Video Card (€612.00)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX Glass ATX Mid Tower Case (€151.00)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA P2 650W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (€110.00)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit (€85.00)
Monitor: Asus PG279Q ROG Swift 27.0" 165Hz Monitor (€737.00)
Keyboard: Corsair K70 LUX RGB Wired Gaming Keyboard (€160.00)
Mouse: Corsair M65 PRO RGB FPS Wired Optical Mouse (€61.00)

• Cooler: I've decided to try an AIO liquid cooler (Kraken X61). Not sure if it's the right idea but I've found it very hard to find an easy-to-source air cooler that I liked and also performed well (and wasn't gigantic with RAM clearance issues).
• Motherboard: it's pretty expensive but it has a couple of features I liked (Wifi, Bluetooth, U2, decent on-board audio, ...)
• RAM: having thought about it, I'll be developing on this machine, probably with some virtual machines so decided to upgrade to 32Gb. Not much of a difference between 3200 and 3000 so sticking with x4 8Gb 3200 Trident Z
• Storage: sticking with the M2 for the moment on the primary drive and changed to two WD Blues for secondary storage (couldn't find any reasonably priced WGSTs)
• Monitor: going to roll the dice on the Asus PG279Q. Seems to be a great monitor if you get a good one.

Comes to around €3000 without VAT (purchasing via company) for everything. A good bit over the budget but this is partially due to including the monitor. I'm hopefully going to get everything from both mindfactory.de and BT Business Direct