Hardware & Technical Building a new pc.. parts list, am I missing anything??

[Jon flint]

Sounds like it is going to be a beast, all looks ok it's your money and your dream PC, but I see no mention of case fans, are you planning on using the ones that come with the case as they are often pretty poor (even on expensive cases) and tend to have no sort of speed control?

I personally always replace case fans with BeQuiet ones, they aren't the dearest but they are very quiet in use. Get as many pwm ones that your motherboard has headers for or just buy none pwm ones and either a manual fan controller or an auto one with temp sensors, your PC will run cooler and quieter. I go by the rule of having as many large fans running slowly principle, so if you have fan slots that take either 120mm or 140mm fans always use 140mm and use as many as your case will support. If your case has a fan on the side panel where your GPU's are you want a big fan blowing IN over the GPU's, this makes a huge difference to temps (I have tested having the fan sucking air out and blowing in, with my single GTX770 the temp difference with Elite running was 20c + in favour of the air blowing in over the GPU's!).

Super slow reply on my part... Sorry!

It's an open case design, so there's no case fans to speak of. The lack of directed airflow is part of the reason I chose a motherboard with a small built-in fan for vrm cooling (literally a small fan beneath the io shroud that kicks in if the VRMs hit 90 degrees+.)



As for build progress... Well there isn't any, all the bits arrived, but I've not really had time to do much more than assemble the case!

I did use the time to do a little research into the potential for an nvme m.2 drive to "steal" pci-e lanes from the GPUs, turns out to be a non issue. The CPU itself has 16 lanes, so with sli each card will run with 8x. All the m.2 slots connect via the additional 24 chipset pci-e lanes (via the PCH rather than direct to CPU) and will not affect the GPUs at all. Populating all 3 m.2 slots would see me loose some SATA ports but since I've only got a single nvme m.2 it's no problem.

 

[lysan]

SLI GPU's I always wondered if they really would give you any boost in FPS. Most games don't even support it.

 

[Jon flint]

SLI GPU's I always wondered if they really would give you any boost in FPS. Most games don't even support it.

From what I've seen in reviews and on tech sites, some games will give upto a 90% boost, some nothing at all and some even loose performance.

Any games running on dx12 should natively support explicit multi GPU and see some performance increase, although that'd require disabling sli and running as two separate cards.

If nothing else, sli is just for benchmark bragging rights as almost all 3d mark type benchmarks do support sli

 

[lysan]

From what I've seen in reviews and on tech sites, some games will give upto a 90% boost, some nothing at all and some even loose performance.

Any games running on dx12 should natively support explicit multi GPU and see some performance increase, although that'd require disabling sli and running as two separate cards.

If nothing else, sli is just for benchmark bragging rights as almost all 3d mark type benchmarks do support sli

Sure thing, but if I'm going to get me SLI I'm gonna be sure it actually boost my games, Arma, ED, IL and DCS is not going to get a whole lot better with SLI as far as I know.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

The build looks a bit cheap. Get a threadripper.

 

[relayer]

Here's my take, having built 300+ pcs -

What are you going to use this machine for? Because that makes a huge difference in what you want in a machine. Think of it as Outfitting different ships Also, I work on balancing machines for clients and not adding unnecessary cost.

If it's mostly/strictly for gaming, you don't need "all that" in a cpu. Most of your heavy lifting is going to be graphics. I know of few games that will use multithreading - I've been seeing "coming soon!" on that point for a dozen years.

I also wonder why you need all that fast storage; two SSDs AND an M.2? At this point, M.2 as a form factor is in the same place as the Vesa Local Bus was right before PCI made it obsolete; it's a middle-place step. Someone above made the suggestion of a single but larger SSD and I concur. I also reinforce others' advice to get a spinning rust disk (or two) as external storage and backup drives.

Dunno why you'd need 32GB of DDR4 RAM for games either. 8 would be fine, 16 would be nice (even though mostly unused).

The parts list you gave looks to me like this machine would excel at video and sound editing, with that chip and that drive array, except you wouldn't need that much graphic power. It's overkill for games.

Keep in mind that although a machine may last quite a long time (for instance, this rig I am on was built in 2007 and still serves very well for many tasks), you're probably going to get 3-5 years out of it before form factors and technical advances make you feel you need to upgrade a gaming machine again. VR is coming in a big way.

If you can afford it and want to go for the bragging rights, I can totally support that

Just some considerations to think about.

 

[Morbad]

If it's mostly/strictly for gaming, you don't need "all that" in a cpu. Most of your heavy lifting is going to be graphics. I know of few games that will use multithreading - I've been seeing "coming soon!" on that point for a dozen years.

Six cores isn't overkill. While the 8700K will only be faster in small handful of games than the cheaper 8600K or a quad core i7, if the OP ever decides to stream or do anything while gaming he'll be glad to have the extra cores/threads.

Dunno why you'd need 32GB of DDR4 RAM for games either. 8 would be fine, 16 would be nice (even though mostly unused).

8 should be considered an absolute minimum, and 16 is standard, for good reason. 32 is not overkill for a heavy multitasker. Even Elite: Dangerous itself can push memory utilization to the point where 8GiB is flatly insufficient, at the right settings.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Here's my take, having built 300+ pcs -

What are you going to use this machine for? Because that makes a huge difference in what you want in a machine. Think of it as Outfitting different ships Also, I work on balancing machines for clients and not adding unnecessary cost.

If it's mostly/strictly for gaming, you don't need "all that" in a cpu. Most of your heavy lifting is going to be graphics. I know of few games that will use multithreading - I've been seeing "coming soon!" on that point for a dozen years.

I also wonder why you need all that fast storage; two SSDs AND an M.2? At this point, M.2 as a form factor is in the same place as the Vesa Local Bus was right before PCI made it obsolete; it's a middle-place step. Someone above made the suggestion of a single but larger SSD and I concur. I also reinforce others' advice to get a spinning rust disk (or two) as external storage and backup drives.

Dunno why you'd need 32GB of DDR4 RAM for games either. 8 would be fine, 16 would be nice (even though mostly unused).

The parts list you gave looks to me like this machine would excel at video and sound editing, with that chip and that drive array, except you wouldn't need that much graphic power. It's overkill for games.

Keep in mind that although a machine may last quite a long time (for instance, this rig I am on was built in 2007 and still serves very well for many tasks), you're probably going to get 3-5 years out of it before form factors and technical advances make you feel you need to upgrade a gaming machine again. VR is coming in a big way.

If you can afford it and want to go for the bragging rights, I can totally support that

Just some considerations to think about.

Good analysis here. However, it is necessary to anticipate the future too

 

[ChopperGreg]

Good analysis here. However, it is necessary to anticipate the future too

I agree.
I'm not a total computer geek, but as I see it, for along time 4 core processors were kind of the standard because more cores were simply costing to much, but with 8th gen being only a few 10's of $ more than the 7th gen equivalent ( when the i8's are available ), Intel is making 6+ core processors much more affordable with Gen 8. I foresee more people buying more 6+ core CPUs and the game ( and other app ) industries starting to make more use of those extra cores than they do now.

As such I was originally holding out for 7820 or a 7900, but the prices were just out of reach. Now, they are not only more affordable, the equivalent Gen 8's with better upgrades are also in reach.

 

[Patrick_68000]

I agree.
I'm not a total computer geek, but as I see it, for along time 4 core processors were kind of the standard because more cores were simply costing to much, but with 8th gen being only a few 10's of $ more than the 7th gen equivalent ( when the i8's are available ), Intel is making 6+ core processors much more affordable with Gen 8. I foresee more people buying more 6+ core CPUs and the game ( and other app ) industries starting to make more use of those extra cores than they do now.

As such I was originally holding out for 7820 or a 7900, but the prices were just out of reach. Now, they are not only more affordable, the equivalent Gen 8's with better upgrades are also in reach.

Yes, in a few years 16 cores/32 threads will be the standard. No doubt

 

[Jon flint]

. If you can afford it and want to go for the bragging rights, I can totally support that .

Pretty much nailed it right there

While I do use Maya/Photoshop, that's just a hobby. The pc will mostly be used for gaming. A lot of this build is intentional overkill to make up for the horrible compromises in my current rig (an upgraded pre-built). Also, a lot of it is just for the fun of building something cool

The 32gb of ram for instance was simply because I absolutely hate leaving empty ram slots on a motherboard and I also wanted to see some kind of upgrade from my current pc's 16gb ram, even if any performance benefits are purely imaginary.

As for the storage, well, put simply, I wanted an nvme m.2 drive because everyone kept telling me how amazing they were! The twin SSDs were just a bargain, and combined 1tb of fast storage + the 256gb m.2 is plenty for what I need (although admittedly an unusual setup)

Admittedly it's not totally no-compromises build, I could have gone with an i9 or threadripper but they were somewhat above my budget.

 

[relayer]

The 32gb of ram for instance was simply because I absolutely hate leaving empty ram slots on a motherboard and I also wanted to see some kind of upgrade from my current pc's 16gb ram, even if any performance benefits are purely imaginary.

As I said, all completely valid points Sometimes people go more nuts than they have to and in three years a perfectly-good rig for what they need to run (edge city) is going to be retired as a living-room media center somewhere. A computer is a terrible thing to waste


What I look for is form factor life - pcie/bus advances, chipsets with a wide range, etc. Often, I will use a motherboard that is overly "muscular" because I see an upgrade path for several years. This lets me put in a nice CPU immediately and (now) 16Gb of nice RAM, leaving two slots open for future chips and a top-of-the-line-at-the-time-for-the-socket CPU at hundreds of $ less. By the time THAT'S pitched up to top specs, it will be time for another motherboard, depending on what tech has happened in 5 or 6 years (also by that time, it was cheaper for me to buy two sticks of 16Gb than to populate the open sockets with two more 8s!)

But hey, flaunt it if ya got it

Good analysis here. However, it is necessary to anticipate the future too

That's why I just wanted to raise some issues for consideration.

Now, they are not only more affordable, the equivalent Gen 8's with better upgrades are also in reach.

Yes; that's why my first concern is the formfactor of the mainboard slots and chips.

Yes, in a few years 16 cores/32 threads will be the standard. No doubt

Right, but then this guy will probably be onto the new "Edge"

 

[Patrick_68000]

Finally, if the guy has the money, why go without ? There are people who drive a Ferrari on the roads with the speed limits