dschur

Morgan's build is solid. I just got that video card and it is insanely great performance for the money. Seriously it has better specs than a reference Titan when you run the OC. Annoying you have to load their stupid software to get that clock, but it works flawlessly and very quietly. 4790 is impossible to beat on price performance. I tried a Skylake build, but I couldn't get it under $1,600. Personally I would bump the HDD to 2TB if you can squeeze a teeny bit more budget.

Completed the build going with the 750. Final thoughts: 1) Despite the ranting on the internetz, the boot time on the 750 after post is 10-15 seconds. I haven't even installed the updated firmware, and won't until Intel releases it in the basic control software, vs the data center version. Maybe something else will be 5 seconds quicker, but honestly, it doesn't matter. Once running, apps load almost instantly. 2) Case is ridiculously large. I loved the space available, and cable management is a dream. Only ugly bit is the PCIe cables to the graphics card. The ones from the PSU are a bit short, and have two sets of plugs at the end. These will be replaced to tidy it up. Despite this, While I will not admit to the wife, it is a bit large. 3) Overclocked to 4.6 without really trying hard. The AI software went nuts trying to go over 5 GHz, and seems to read the wrong temp value from the CPU. Just used the basic tuning in BIOS, and hold 4.6, stable, with the H110 set to the Quiet mode. Pump still at max, but fans are almost silent. Could probably do more here, but not really necessary. Have yet to figure out a way to actually overstress this. Even the fans on the video card barely come on during the heaviest gaming I tried, and then only the middle speeds. Only issue during build was the Sound drivers. To avoid the loads of crapware that seem to come on the "Install Disks" I just downloaded all drivers directly and installed. I missed the Realtek one, so the sound didn't work. After install they were fine. Everything else was perfect with a fresh install of Win 10. I am sure there is room to save in a few areas, and maybe this setup doesn't have the performance headroom of a X99 system, but it was easy as heck to get set up and going, and performance is a hug step up from my old setup. Thanks for the comments and feedback, All good points, and were worth considering, if only to help me feel comfortable with the ultimate direction.

Thanks for the insight numlock. Guess it helps me understand why my old one never ever seemed worth upgrading. Gonna go do some deep study of x99 Cheers

Thanks Brob. Only concern on the gumstick drives is the thermals. The 750 is big and takes up a slot, but that lets it cool better, and allows it to have an actual heatsink. SInce I no longer need to leave a slot for a 56K faxmodem (lol, just noticed I still had one in my old rig) or even a sound card, I'm not really going to use the PCIe slots past the graphics card. The SM951 (or the new 950 Pro NVMe) are pretty close to the Intel cost wise, although they are 112 GB bigger for that money. I think I am going to pull the trigger on this as is. Worst case if the boot time starts to piss me off I will put in the old SATA SDD for boot only.The new drivers seem to have improved the 750 boot time, but some data seems to suggest that ANY PCIe or M2 drive is going to boot slower than SATA.

That SSD will fill up fast. Definitely add a 4TB HDD for a couple hundred more. Even if you only ever game on the system, you can at least move stuff between the drives to avoid reinstalling (Steam is pretty good at allowing this), and many games will really run just fine from an HDD anyway. You can also run backups of your main drive image to the HDD regularly. Between two drives in the same system it is super fast, and the first time you ever restore from backup after trashing your main drive you will wonder why you never did it before. Decent backup software like Acronis is worlds better than the basic one you get with Windows. Any amount of pictures and music, let alone video will chew up all of the SSD.

We are pretty close on these builds really. I totally agree the Intel 750 is pure indulgence. I actually have that Samsung in my old system, and may repurpose as the Boot drive in this one. The 750 seems to actually Boot slower even with the new firmware from what I have read.Once running though, exceedingly fast app load times. I could easily go with that memory. The higher speed has no impact it seems unless you use the integrated graphics (do people really do that?). Trident is mostly bling, and it isn't a whole lot more money. Almost any of the ASUS boards could be a winner. I like the extra usb 3.1 and Bluetooth on the Deluxe. Some minor stuff like the sound system is nice too. Decent place to save some money like you did, it is an impressive build for a 2k budget. Have a look at the HGST drive. Performance is a smidge behind the WD (rounding error really) but the HGST has enterprise level MTBF, which I consider more important for a data drive. For the power supply we are dealing with personal preference. Both are cranking Amps in the 70 plus range for 12v rail, which is really what matters. I've just always like Seasonic, and I like how quiet it can be at low load. I think the GIGABYTE card is slightly higher OC potential, and at low load the cooling is very quiet. Not a big difference either way, I just like the whole rig to go close to silent when I'm not gaming. The Kraken and the new H110i are similar performance, so it probably comes down to aesthetic preference. I was going to go with the Kraken until seeing a video review of the Corsair. Guess the look worked for me, Kraken is nice too. Agree totally on the Skylake path being my first choice, although I will revisit the Haswell one more time to be sure

Why 5820? Skylake will easily match OC frequency and the extra 2 cores don't seem to help all that much. Is there much advantage to x99 over z170? Either is going to be a noticeable improvement over the 920. Don't think I ever got it over 3.7 MHz I think. Overall, I don't know that Haswell or Skylake are going to be any sort of eyepopping change from even my ancient first generation i7. Certainly nothing like we got spoiled with going from Core Duo up to Nehalem. I was thinking that if I upgraded, going to Skylake and z170 was going to have longer legs than x99. I'll go donsome research on Haswell vs Skylake. Thanks for the input. Lol Stig. Bru Rays are the frat boy alternative format. They can show you a movie, and try and get you drunk at the same time

Want to be able to run most games in Ultra settings without really having to bother with tweaking the settings. My i7 - 920 lasted me almost 6 years with a couple of graphic card updates and upgrading to an SSD, so looking for the same sort of longevity. USA, $Sub 3,000 budget, I like a full tower. Reasonable noise, not looking for silence, but it is a factor. Cable management and a clean build is a must. Monitor is a perfectly decent Dell 30" (2560 x 1600 I think). Single monitor setup. Use is mostly gaming, some Photo processing and non-professional video editing. I may overclock, but will probably go moderate and see if the basic MB settings get me to 4.6 GHz or so. Reason for the upgrade is mostly to get to the z170 chipset. Old MB had no USB3, and getting to the point where performance was not going to cut it with a 6 year old CPU. Anything seem to stick out as a complete waste? Any suggestions on upgrades to consider, or advice on getting the build quality to 11 ? (considering braided cables for SATA and seeing if the PSU cables look ok or need swapping out) RAM - probably not much value in the higher than base speed, but for $40 or so these sticks seem to avoid the boot issues I've read about for the Mother board. They look cool too PSU - a bit higher than needed, but 50% headroom does not seem overly wasteful. If I ever did go SLI one day I'd have capacity. Optical Drive - yea, it is out of fashion, but helpful to rip cd's and watch Bru Rays. Pioneer seems best at read error tolerance. CPU Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor CPU Cooler Corsair H110i GTX 104.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler Motherboard Asus Z170-DELUXE ATX LGA1151 Motherboard Memory G.Skill TridentZ Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory Storage SSD Intel 750 Series 400GB PCI-E Solid State Drive Storage SSD Hitachi Ultrastar 7K6000 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive Video Card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Video Card Case Phanteks Enthoo Primo ATX Full Tower Case Power Supply SeaSonic Platinum 860W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply Optical Drive Pioneer BDR-209DBK Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer Operating System Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit)