Thinking of building a new rig...

Right now I'm just like, daydreaming, picking and choosing components I'd like to have, costs be damned. We'll see what I can actually swing when it gets down to actually making a purchase.

Stuff I've "assembled" so far:

• Fractal Design Define C TG (Casing; ATX)
• ASUS ROG Strix X299-XE Gaming (Mobo; socket 2066)
• Intel Core i9 7900X (10-core CPU; socket 2066)
• Noctua NH-U14 S (Already bought, unused, wouldn't fit in rig I have now)
• Corsair RM1000i (PSU*)
• G.Skill TridentZ RGB (DDR4**)
• Samsung 960Pro M.2 (SSD***)

Assuming it ever actually makes it out on the market:

• ASUS Radeon RX Vega 64 Strix Gaming (GPU, pref. x2)

*Preliminary; picking PSU is a lot of work, but my current Corsair has worked out fine, and this unit has 4-pin fan for RPM monitoring and speed control. Lots of PSUs cheap out with 2-pin fans that could die without you ever knowing it until your PSU overheats and shits itself. 1000W, because the 7900X seems capable of pulling well over 300W on its own when overclocked on all cores. Also, Vega 64 can easily do 300W apiece as well, so if I want XF setup (and with dual 16x slots I think I would), then 850W PSU would seem to be a tad undersized. Even if I have no plans on going for an all-core 4.7GHz overclock (I am pretty damn sure the Noctua can't handle it if the CPU hits 110C with older all-in-one watercoolers ), I would like to push it a bit upwards at least and then it'll probably start sucking down some juice, so a bit of margin is good thing to have methinks.

**3200 and 3600 speed grades are almost identical in price for a 32GB set of 4; just SKR100ish difference (US$10ish when factoring in sales tax) so might as well go with the faster. Anything above that is kray-kray ezpensive. Thing is, 32GB is still almost SKR5k. Filling all DIMM sockets, which is something I prefer to do, is a dog's hair under SKR10k just for RAM; holy smokes! That's a lot of dough for some LED bling! Also, I don't really need 64 friggin gigs of RAM! These DIMMs don't seem to be available in 4GB capacities however, and I don't know how many high-end DIMMs are these days.

***Capacity pending what I can swing when adding everything up. I have 480GB SSD right now and not anywhere near running out of space on it. Thinking of going Evo instead of Pro, but it's not THAT much cheaper, and you get TLC flash which is...well, not as flashy. Could also go with another make of SSD, IE cheaper, slower most likely, but Samsung is AFAIK the overall fastest of what's available currently so that's what I'd prefer.

Sooo. This is what I'm thinking. Not because it's practical, but mainly just because if you're gonna buy something, why not buy something you'll be happy with. Go big or go home, sort of. I have to replace stuff anyway, because my current chassis is too small for the coolers popular on today's GPUs, and my mobo has no PCIe 3.0 4x M.2 slots, and since it's uATX it's not practical to run dual GPUs on it, and if I do I'll only get 8x bandwidth to each of them, which frankly irks me.

Also, all my current components are a half-decade old already if not more and have been powered on 24/7 basically since day 1, so things just might start dying and where would I be then? Stuck with a bunch of obsolete stuff I can't plug into anything new. So I might as well start over from scratch I'm thinking.

 

If most of the demanding work done on your PC is gaming, you might want to wait for the Coffee Lake 8700K to release. 6 cores, 4700MHz will easily be the best gaming CPU on the market and should also at least match the best 8 core Ryzen in multithreaded for only $360. This would mean dual GPU would be 8x8 PCIe, but this goes to my next point...

I would never go mGPU in a million years unless I already had the fastest sGPU card on the market (within reason..not Titan). A single 1080Ti won't match dual Vegas in absolute FPS but I dare say it will provide a more pleasant gaming experience overall. It's not just Crossfire concerns, with Vulkan and DX12 mGPU support is up to the game devs. Some won't bother with mGPU support since it is a niche within a niche.

Noctua makes the best coolers, no question.

I heard you like big power supplies and these days the best ones are super efficient even at really low loads, so go nuts there

WRT RAM, I've found 3000-3200MHz with good timings to be the sweet spot. Hell this 4x8GB 3000MHz GSkill kit runs at 14-14-14-34; games tend to love low latency in my experience.

I hear you regarding TLC, but the 3D NAND in the 960 EVO ain't your daddy's TLC. That stuff might be more durable than regular NAND in MLC mode, and it is super fast even without the SLC cache (which should rarely get saturated in the first place). In fact with its SLC cache the EVO can be faster than the PRO in some workloads.

Also mGPU is completely doable in mATX. I'm never building another full ATX machine again.

 

I like Folding@Home too. A 10-core CPU + dual GPUs would make for some truly monster aggregate PPD scores.

Your next point is rational, but very, very boring. Also, single GPU allows for only half the LED bling!

It's like people who raise their pickups; it's not because it's so practical they do it.

RM series is actually their "entry level" high-end part; also, it's 18cm long, so it will juuust about fit into the casing I want.

Yeah, it's worth thinking about. Still, if I can get 3600 for only a nominally higher price than 3200... Moar biggar is funner.

Yeah, that too is worth thinking about. I haven't placed any orders yet. My nightmare is, like 1 or 2 months after I buy an 960, the 1060 will come out. In fact, Anandtech reviewed the 960 Evo in november last year...

I've only had bad experiences myself. Fans cooking dry of lubricant, cards running hot... No, I won't go there again. Also, with 2.5-slot coolers you just can't fit dual cards in uATX.

 

Fair enough on everything else, but I seriously wouldn't worry about a faster SSD coming out. Even if that happens, it's not like you're ever going to notice a practical difference between a 960Pro/EVO and a good SATA drive like the 850Pro/EVO. At least I'm pretty sure you're not hosting large databases or anything like that

 

If money is no question then 7900X is a great combination of high core count and decent clock speed. You can get more cores for the $$ with a Threadripper but you're going to lose out on clock speed/IPC for gaming.

 

Yeah, true. It's just, you know, computer buyers' OCD, worrying about The Next Great Thing. But seriously, my current SSD, a Corsair Neutron GTX Sata3 drive from 2012, is seriously not that far in speed from today's SATA drives. Even my now ancient first-gen 60GB Intel M25-E is fucking fast in all day to day operations. It does have that SLC flash working for it though, as well as 10** (!) data channels. Even an almost 9-year-old SSD coldboots windows 10 in about 2.5 seconds*. Interesting times we live in...

*Not including POST, which SSD can't speed up anyhow of course.
**Correction.

Indeed! Unfortunately, all TR boards I've seen are EATX format, which is too big for my preferred chassis! It's that beautiful, ginormous socket which screws things up.

 

I count 4 ATX TR boards on newegg?

 

I think he still wants that Intel single thread snappiness. Also money doesn't seem to be a huge concern so if he wants that kind of performance he could probably spring for a flipping i9-7980XE. Actually, Grall go ahead and get a i9-7980XE so I can live vicariously through you

 

I know, and that's fine. Just clarifying that X399 ATX boards do exist so he knows all his options.

 

Ok Grall repeat after me : "No, No No I suck"
One thing thats bothered me here is we have people who love computers and who have good paying jobs and yet no one has gone totally bat shit insane
(apart from maybe Colicab who put 6 ssd's into a striped array and who had an crazy transfer rate)
First off motherboard : dual cpu at the very least quad if they are available
some motherboards support up to 512gb ram why do you need that much? Again repeat after me "Ram Drive Baby"
A ram drive ?
"no, no no, no" and again for good measure "no"
Several ram drives in a striped array
Now ive moved your thought process into the correct ballpark I'll let you carry on...

 

@Davros
Thanks, man... You've been a big help, as always!

Actually, the thought of using a RAMdrive did occur to me, if I was to go the crazy route of populating all DIMMs with 8GB sticks (IE, 64GB); it would be the logical use. I bet zoning into new areas in WoW would load fecking fast if put on a quad-channel, 3600MHz RAMdrive... *droooooool*

Oh wow, I totally missed that. Then again, I probably wasn't looking hard enough!

Then again again, TR isn't really an option for me at this point in time, due to lacking AVX256 and 512, and the difficulties with high performance RAM. This probably is not making much difference in reality, but still, if I'm buying something phat that is going to last me a number of years, I'd rather skip easily skippable issues...

 

Try some hyperdrive 5's in a striped array of course

You can buy 16gb dimms

 

Caselabs > Fractal

 

I love the simple functionality of Lian Li. Unfortunately I've never been able to justify the price premium. For my next build ima splurge, life is short

 

I've done two builds with Lian Li cases over the years and they're definitely nice. Someday, however, I'm going to buy a Caselabs monster and put castors on it.

 

Haven't seen any other case that ticks as many of my boxes as the Fractal Define C. It's really compact and cleverly designed, only drawback is it won't fit eATX, but just as well really. I don't want to have to spend SKR7k on a friggin motherboard, no matter how much cool LED bling it has.

Also, the monstrous Maximus board curiously doesn't fit the Noctua NH-U14S I was thinking of using. It overlaps the first PCIe port... /fail!

Not sure what you're referring to. Anyway, my storage needs will be quite adequately taken care of even by a single M.2 drive I think...

Yes, we CAN buy 16GB DIMMs...

 

Two questions.

What do you need 10 cores for?
Also why crossfire?

 

Cause he got a hefty pair of Swedish meatballs. At least I think he is Swedish. Anyway he has huge balls.

 

Because...why not? Does everything have to be for a specific reason? I've only ever had quad core or less CPUs, it would be fun with something bigger for a change.


You might as well ask, why does this person need such an engine in their car?

Well, because the 2nd PCIe slot is there on the motherboard...

If it was empty it'd feel lonely...

...Need more dumb answers?

 

Dude get dual 1080Tis. Most models are <$100 more than Vega64 and they are quite a bit faster and cooler, not to mention you won't need a MiniFusion™ to power them.

A true boss would go with a couple of these.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814137126&ignorebbr=1