My New Build for Winter 2018

Avanah

Hi all,

I am looking into building my next PC. I want to play any game and Stream on it as well. I put together build and would like your thoughts on it all. I was going to originally wait until the Canon Lake came out but it was delayed.

My budget is $3,000. 

Thoughts?

Projected 2018 Winter build...........................

Intel - Core i7-8700K 3.7GHz 6-Core Processor  (I will OC this)

CRYORIG - H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler (Heard great things about this)
ASRock - Z370 Extreme4 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
Samsung - 960 EVO 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (OS and Boot Drive/ OBS)
Samsung - 960 EVO 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (Data and Games)
EVGA - GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB SC2 Video Card (Should I wait for the 1180Ti?)
Fractal Design - Define R6 Black ATX Mid Tower Case (I have the current R5)
EVGA - SuperNOVA G3 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply
Microsoft - Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit (Still on Windows 7, Time to move up I guess for DX12)
Acer - XB271HU bmiprz 27.0" 2560x1440 165Hz Monitor (Can I do better around the same price or cheaper?)




My Current System I built in 2015.........................

1. CPU: i5 6600k OC @4.4Ghz 
2. CPU Cooler: Hyper EVO 212 
3. Motherboard: Gigabyte Z170 UD5
4. RAM: Crucial 16Gb DDR4 2133
5. Boot/OS Drive: Samsung EVO 850 250GB
6. Data/Games Drive: Samsung EVO 850 500GB
7. GPU: EVGA GTX 980ti DDR5 
8. Case: Fractal Design R5
9. PSU: Corsair 750W CX750M Lifetime Fan of Corsair.
10. Fans: 2x Noctua Fans 120mm
11. Monitor: Acer 1440p 25"  (Not sure if I should keep this to use as a second monitor for streaming)
12. Windows 7 64 Home Premium.

I'm giving my Old system to my Dad as he really needs a new PC, but he only needs it for email, Bills, basic browsing, Videos so I will be selling the following items outright:

Samsung EVO 850 500GB
EVGA GTX 980ti DDR5

Quizzical

I don't see a reason to get two separate SSDs.  Mainstream Intel CPU platforms don't have sufficient bandwidth coming off of the CPU to give you full bandwidth to both SSDs and a video card at the same time.  Depending on how the motherboard is implemented, the two SSDs might be sharing bandwidth with each other or it might be set up such that if you plug them in, you only have an x8 connection to the video card.

Ridelynn

The two drive bandwidth thing would only be a significant issue if you were trying to access both drives heavily at the same time.

Like copying very large files from one to the other frequently, or attempting to record/stream two HD video streams on the different drives at the same time.

Normal circumstances, most people can barely saturate a single SATA link for a sustained period of time, let alone two NMVe links at the same time, for more than a few seconds at a go. For most people, booting up the machine from a power off is the most intensive data i/o operation they will perform on their computer at all.

I don't blame you for wanting SSD storage for boot and for bulk storage. If that's a cheaper way to get the capacity you need than, say, one single 1TB drive, hey - it will work fine and no issues. I wouldn't worry about the bandwidth thing at all.

Avanah

Quizzical said:

I don't see a reason to get two separate SSDs.  Mainstream Intel CPU platforms don't have sufficient bandwidth coming off of the CPU to give you full bandwidth to both SSDs and a video card at the same time.  Depending on how the motherboard is implemented, the two SSDs might be sharing bandwidth with each other or it might be set up such that if you plug them in, you only have an x8 connection to the video card.

The SSD's are M.2's. They attach directly to the MOBO. No cable to SATAs. As the MOBO has Dual M.2 connections, I see how it would not handle both with an i7. Some boards even have 3x M.2 slots.

Asm0deus

Quizzical said:

I don't see a reason to get two separate SSDs.  Mainstream Intel CPU platforms don't have sufficient bandwidth coming off of the CPU to give you full bandwidth to both SSDs and a video card at the same time.  Depending on how the motherboard is implemented, the two SSDs might be sharing bandwidth with each other or it might be set up such that if you plug them in, you only have an x8 connection to the video card.

It's nice to have your OS apart from your game drive that way if you have lots of game it's less hassle when doing OS reinstalls etc.  Also OBS works better if it's on a different drive than the game you are playing/streaming/recording to.

OP you might want to look into the ryzen 2700x as from what I have seen if you're streaming I think the 8 cores does a nicer job than the 6 core 8700k....should prob google some videos out there of 8700k vs 2700x...IIRC something about the 8700k hitching during streaming while the 2700x did not, probably due to the extra 2 cores though I think they said non streaming and pure game performance the 8700k was better.

Quizzical

Avanah said:

Quizzical said:

I don't see a reason to get two separate SSDs.  Mainstream Intel CPU platforms don't have sufficient bandwidth coming off of the CPU to give you full bandwidth to both SSDs and a video card at the same time.  Depending on how the motherboard is implemented, the two SSDs might be sharing bandwidth with each other or it might be set up such that if you plug them in, you only have an x8 connection to the video card.

The SSD's are M.2's. They attach directly to the MOBO. No cable to SATAs. As the MOBO has Dual M.2 connections, I see how it would not handle both with an i7. Some boards even have 3x M.2 slots.

There are places to plug them in, but they'll be sharing bandwidth.  If the idea of getting two SSDs was to have more bandwidth than if you had one, that's probably not going to happen for you as you're configuring it unless one of the M.2 slots is using PCI Express lanes normally dedicated to the video card--in which case, you'll cut your bandwidth to the video card in half.

You effectively have 20 PCI Express 3.0 lanes coming off of the CPU socket, split into 16 PCI Express lanes that directly connect to the socket and 4 that are a DMI link to the chipset, which further subdivides it.  If you're hoping to use 16 lanes for the GPU and 4 each for the SSDs, you'd need to use 24 out of 20 available, not to mention other connectivity needed for SATA, USB, Ethernet, or whatever.

There are various ways that the motherboard could handle this.  It could say that the GPU only gets 8 lanes, which leaves 4 each for the SSDs.  More likely, it will say that both of the SSDs have to share the same DMI connection--and also share it with whatever else needs bandwidth.  In that case, two SSDs in parallel is more likely to get you less performance than one SSD rather than more.

That doesn't mean that it won't work.  It will work, and it will feel intuitively fast.  But it will likely be slower than if you only had one SSD, in addition to having more things that can go wrong because you have more parts in the system.  That's not a catastrophic error akin to trying to plug DDR3 memory into a DDR4 slot.  But it's not what I'd recommend.

That's really just due to the platform you've chosen.  AMD's X470 chipset will do a little better, with an x16 connection coming off of the CPU to a video card, a dedicated x4 connection for one SSD, and another x4 connection to go to the chipset, which will further subdivide it among other things.  That would make it possible for two SSDs to outperform one, which isn't going to happen for you on a Z370 motherboard.

If you really want a ton of connectivity, the solution would be to go to an HEDT platform.  Sky Lake-X has 44 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, though the sub-$1000 CPUs disable 16 to leave you with 28.  AMD's Threadripper platform effectively has 64 lanes, though 4 are reserved for a connection to a chipset.  But still, that's 60 PCI Express 3.0 lanes with a direct connection to the CPU socket.  You could have 3 GPUs and 3 M.2 PCIe SSDs all have their own dedicated lanes without needing to share bandwidth.

It's not a huge deal.  But I'd recommend just getting one SSD and staying with a mainstream desktop platform.

-----------------------------

By way of analogy, imagine that your house has a 100 Mbps Internet connection.  If you're the only one in the house, you can use the full 100 Mbps all to yourself.  But if ten people in your house are all trying to use the Internet at once, they can't all use the full 100 Mbps at once.  There isn't enough bandwidth out of the house for that to happen.  They'll all still have Internet connectivity and it will work, but the shared connection will mean that when someone else is downloading or streaming or whatever at the same time as you, you get a lot less than 100 Mbps of bandwidth to yourself.

If, on the other hand, you had ten separate 100 Mbps Internet connections for your house, all ten people could use the full 100 Mbps at once.  That would be a goofy thing to do, of course, as it would be saner to get a single 1 Gbps Internet connection.  But still, you'd need more bandwidth out of the house to allow multiple people to simultaneously use 100 Mbps.

Vrika

Are those GTX 980 Ti and Samsung 850 EVO too slow for you? If I were you I'd place them in your new computer and upgrade only when needed.

For GPU you'll likely want to upgrade at some point, but that way you could hang on with GTX 980 Ti for 3-6 months and then upgrade straight to GTX 1180. Skipping a GPU generation like that would save a lot of money.

For SSD I don't really see why Samsung 850 EVO would be too slow. If you get M2 SSD as your primary drive, then that 850 EVO is more than fast enough as secondary drive.

Ridelynn

With respect to your monitor... if your willing to go Freesync instead of GSync, yes, you can go significantly cheaper.

https://www.amazon.com/Acer-XG270HU-omidpx-FREESYNC-Widescreen/dp/B00VRCLHYS

Essentially the same monitor (The 165Hz is a 144 with a factory overclock), just with Freesync instead of GSync. And about $200 cheaper.

Or this:

https://www.amazon.com/Acer-bmijpphzx-FreeSync-Monitor-UM-HX1AA-013/dp/B079J59TV5/

$50 cheaper than the Gsync, curved VA panel with Freesync and HDR

Sticking with GSync though, and it's going to cost you a lot. I'm not claiming these two monitors are the best to get, just showing some examples from the same manufacturer of other options.

Ozmodan

Vrika said:

Are those GTX 980 Ti and Samsung 850 EVO too slow for you? If I were you I'd place them in your new computer and upgrade only when needed.

For GPU you'll likely want to upgrade at some point, but that way you could hang on with GTX 980 Ti for 3-6 months and then upgrade straight to GTX 1180. Skipping a GPU generation like that would save a lot of money.

For SSD I don't really see why Samsung 850 EVO would be too slow. If you get M2 SSD as your primary drive, then that 850 EVO is more than fast enough as secondary drive.

The rumors are rampant that the 1100 series is not going to much of a jump in processing power.  The 1080 ti will be quite close to an 1180 if that is true.   Secondly, we have no idea when Nvidia is putting those cards into production, you would have thought there would have been an announcement by now if they were going to be available by the end of the year.  

Also, if you are just using the one SSD as a boot drive, a 128 one will do fine.  I have to disagree with Ridelynn though, Intel boards are notorious for lacking PCI lanes, I still think you could have a bottleneck there.

Vrika

Ozmodan said:

Vrika said:

Are those GTX 980 Ti and Samsung 850 EVO too slow for you? If I were you I'd place them in your new computer and upgrade only when needed.

For GPU you'll likely want to upgrade at some point, but that way you could hang on with GTX 980 Ti for 3-6 months and then upgrade straight to GTX 1180. Skipping a GPU generation like that would save a lot of money.

For SSD I don't really see why Samsung 850 EVO would be too slow. If you get M2 SSD as your primary drive, then that 850 EVO is more than fast enough as secondary drive.

The rumors are rampant that the 1100 series is not going to much of a jump in processing power.  The 1080 ti will be quite close to an 1180 if that is true.   Secondly, we have no idea when Nvidia is putting those cards into production, you would have thought there would have been an announcement by now if they were going to be available by the end of the year.  

Second point:

GTX 1080 was announced in May and released in June:
  https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/05/06/geforce-gtx-1080/

Why would they now make the announcement at least 8 months in advance when previously 1 month was just fine for them?

Ridelynn

Vrika said:

Ozmodan said:

Vrika said:

Are those GTX 980 Ti and Samsung 850 EVO too slow for you? If I were you I'd place them in your new computer and upgrade only when needed.

For GPU you'll likely want to upgrade at some point, but that way you could hang on with GTX 980 Ti for 3-6 months and then upgrade straight to GTX 1180. Skipping a GPU generation like that would save a lot of money.

For SSD I don't really see why Samsung 850 EVO would be too slow. If you get M2 SSD as your primary drive, then that 850 EVO is more than fast enough as secondary drive.

The rumors are rampant that the 1100 series is not going to much of a jump in processing power.  The 1080 ti will be quite close to an 1180 if that is true.   Secondly, we have no idea when Nvidia is putting those cards into production, you would have thought there would have been an announcement by now if they were going to be available by the end of the year.  

Second point:

GTX 1080 was announced in May and released in June:
  https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/05/06/geforce-gtx-1080/

Why would they now make the announcement at least 8 months in advance when previously 1 month was just fine for them?

Both nVidia and AMD are notorious for months-long paper launches when it suits them to do so. The 1080 was a pretty good example. Sure, they announced it in May, it was "available" in June, but by available, it was in extremely low quantities for an extremely long time. It wasn't until around August  that the supply chain finally got caught up.

And the 1080 is far from the only example of the same tactic, or even longer between announcement and initial availability. Shoot, you could make a reasonable case that Vega has never come out of that stage.

https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/451454/gtx-1080-now-for-sale-all-out-of-stock/p1 

(a pretty interesting read to go back with hindsight - can definitely tell we didn't see the mining bubble around the corner)

Vrika

Ridelynn said:

Vrika said:

Ozmodan said:

Vrika said:

Are those GTX 980 Ti and Samsung 850 EVO too slow for you? If I were you I'd place them in your new computer and upgrade only when needed.

For GPU you'll likely want to upgrade at some point, but that way you could hang on with GTX 980 Ti for 3-6 months and then upgrade straight to GTX 1180. Skipping a GPU generation like that would save a lot of money.

For SSD I don't really see why Samsung 850 EVO would be too slow. If you get M2 SSD as your primary drive, then that 850 EVO is more than fast enough as secondary drive.

The rumors are rampant that the 1100 series is not going to much of a jump in processing power.  The 1080 ti will be quite close to an 1180 if that is true.   Secondly, we have no idea when Nvidia is putting those cards into production, you would have thought there would have been an announcement by now if they were going to be available by the end of the year.  

Second point:

GTX 1080 was announced in May and released in June:
  https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/05/06/geforce-gtx-1080/

Why would they now make the announcement at least 8 months in advance when previously 1 month was just fine for them?

Both nVidia and AMD are notorious for months-long paper launches when it suits them to do so. The 1080 was a pretty good example. Sure, they announced it in May, it was "available" in June, but by available, it was in extremely low quantities for an extremely long time. It wasn't until around August  that the supply chain finally got caught up.

And the 1080 is far from the only example of the same tactic, or even longer between announcement and initial availability. Shoot, you could make a reasonable case that Vega has never come out of that stage.

https://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/451454/gtx-1080-now-for-sale-all-out-of-stock/p1 

(a pretty interesting read to go back with hindsight - can definitely tell we didn't see the mining bubble around the corner)

I agree that the availability can be low. But that only means you might have to wait the card's delivery for weeks after you place an order. It doesn't mean NVidia is already too late for announcing a new graphic card and delivering it this year like Ozmodan said.

Avanah

How do I make sure i can order a new card before they release so i know mine will be ready?
I seem to never find out until they are all gone.
Any good sites that have the sales or pre-sales updated?

Ozmodan

if you want to do your build this year, get the 1080 ti, Nvidia new line will probably be out in limited numbers for xmas.  I would not hold up my system hoping for an earlier release.

Avanah

Mars_Orbital said:

you misspelled "Threadripper" for the CPU . THe rest of the build is over priced fluff that lazy builders use to try hard. IMHO .

Send me the Money and I will get the "Threadripper". lol

Ridelynn

Avanah said:

Mars_Orbital said:

you misspelled "Threadripper" for the CPU . THe rest of the build is over priced fluff that lazy builders use to try hard. IMHO .

Send me the Money and I will get the "Threadripper". lol

My first though was "On a $3K budget you could do pretty much whatever you wanted"

Then I remembered GPU and RAM prices, and your including a monitor on top of that.

My first thought was wrong.

Vrika

Ozmodan said:

if you want to do your build this year, get the 1080 ti, Nvidia new line will probably be out in limited numbers for xmas.  I would not hold up my system hoping for an earlier release.

Update on next gen GPUs: Gigabyte has confirmed that next gen mobile GPUs are scheduled towards the end of the year
  https://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-mobility-gpus-next-gen-late-2018-launch/

Normally desktop GPUs come some months ahead of mobile GPUs, for example GTX 1070 launched in June 2016 and GTX 1070 notebook version in August 2016.

Amathe

I once had a computer built for me with two drives. I will never do that again. Turns out, if there is any delay or discrepancy between those drives, you crash. 

Scot

Winter is coming but the OP is ready with a new PC.

Cleffy

I am also in the, you only need 1 SSD crowd. I always found managing a separate OS/Boot and Programs drives to be a headache in Windows. Only a couple programs make it easy to use on a separate drive.
Data can be separated pretty easy.

Asm0deus

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

Asm0deus said:

Quizzical said:

I don't see a reason to get two separate SSDs.  Mainstream Intel CPU platforms don't have sufficient bandwidth coming off of the CPU to give you full bandwidth to both SSDs and a video card at the same time.  Depending on how the motherboard is implemented, the two SSDs might be sharing bandwidth with each other or it might be set up such that if you plug them in, you only have an x8 connection to the video card.

It's nice to have your OS apart from your game drive that way if you have lots of game it's less hassle when doing OS reinstalls etc.  Also OBS works better if it's on a different drive than the game you are playing/streaming/recording to.

OP you might want to look into the ryzen 2700x as from what I have seen if you're streaming I think the 8 cores does a nicer job than the 6 core 8700k....should prob google some videos out there of 8700k vs 2700x...IIRC something about the 8700k hitching during streaming while the 2700x did not, probably due to the extra 2 cores though I think they said non streaming and pure game performance the 8700k was better.

I'm streaming in full HD max quality and never had any hitching...

Always take those "x vs y" videos with a huge grain of salt.

I do but this review actually had both the 2700x and the 8700k streaming PUBG side by side and you could clearly see it was smoother on the 2700x.  It's easy to refute words not so much when you got proof staring you in the face.

Asm0deus

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

...snip...

Or there was just something else wrong on the 8700k rig.

And you don't give many precisions, we don't know anything about the graphic card, the type of memory, the storage...

I can also compare a 8700k with a GTX 1050 and a 2700x with a 1080ti and say the 2700x runs smoother...

You can see my rig in my signature. Streaming in high quality is smooth as a baby's ass.

Mate I was just suggesting the OP look at her options, you seem determined to take affront that I suggest a 2700x might be smoother during streaming than a 8700k.  My lack of precision is due to the fact I was just saying the OP should do some research and I wasn't much interested in starting a debate of 8700k vs 2700x in her help me thread.

I am sure your rig is awesome no need to get upset. 

The thing is I didn't mention much else cause I don't remember which video it was I watched quite few 8700k vs 2700x ones and most of em were pretty even in that they had the same gpu etc etc.  Not everyone is a intel hater making videos that are biased in favor of amd.

One thing though most reviews have in common is that if you are very much into streaming the 2700x does a better job, that's not to say the 8700k sucks at it but I can see where 8 cores could come in very handy over 6 in high quality streams and where you got lots of other programs running alongside.

Quizzical

A Core i7 8700K and Ryzen 7 2700X are both good CPUs.  There are relatively modest differences in a lot of benchmarks, but most people would find that either one is plenty fast for their needs, assuming they build an otherwise good computer around it.

Vrika

Avanah said:

How do I make sure i can order a new card before they release so i know mine will be ready?
I seem to never find out until they are all gone.
Any good sites that have the sales or pre-sales updated?

@Avanah

NVidia's new top-end cards are now available for pre-order on their own website (www.nvidia.com). The prices are insane, but if you pre-order now you should get one at release.

SplitStream13

Don't get the Home edition of W10. The difference in price isn't that big. But home edition is shite in comparison.