Compatibility check + hesitations

[Luckylock]

Hey folks, I'm soon going to buy a bunch of new hardware and I was wondering if all of these were compatible / the best choice for me. I'm a competitive gamer and I like to stream / record my gameplay.

 

Case: Fractal Design Define R4 (without window)

CPU: i7-4790k

Ram: G.SKILL Ripjaws x Series 8 GB (2x4)

 

These parts I am pretty confident about buying, but I am hesitating for these:

 

MOBO: ASRock Z75 Pro3 LGA 1155 Intel Z75 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

 

-> This mobo gives me a PCI slot, which I need to be able to use my sound card. It doesn't cost too much and offers me everything I need. I want at least one PCI slot. I am really unsure if I am making a good choice with this motherboard.

 

CPU COOLER #1: Noctua NH-D14 (air)

CPU COOLER #2: Corsair H100i (liquid)

 

Pros / Cons of each? (If you have other suggestions, I am open, but these seem to be the best around)

[Luckylock]

Seeing as this thread I just made is already getting burried and forgotten, I shall bump!

 

I would greatly appreciate you guys' imput 

 

Thanks.

[skullbringer]

The motherboard you picked is from an older generation than your cpu which means it doesnt have the correct 1150 socket to fit your i7-4790k.

 

I have picked a comparable motherboad in terms of price and features you desire for you: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-motherboard-z97pcmate

 

EDIT: Concerning the coolers:

The NH-D14 is probably the second best air cooler on the market, only beeing bettered by its successor the NH-D15. They are both huge taking up the first PCI slot of a normal ATX motherboard. (not an issue in your case, as the first slot is a pcie 1x that you will likely never need). Also they are very tall, so you need to pay attention how wide your case is. (also not an issue in your case, the R4 fits both.) Ram compatibility can be an issue, but again not in your case (Ripjaws X are fine). Also they are one of the quietest air coolers on the market, and probably the best performing ones. BUT they cost practiaclly as much as a good AIO watercooling unit.

 

Comparing it to the H100i, the watercooling solution will give you much more room in the cpu area. But as your other components dont need the extra space as mentioned before this really isnt an argument here.

Further the H100i does have a rgb led built into the cpu block, that you can tune to what color you want. (but as you dont have a windowed case, not really an argument either) Performance, noise and price are also practically equal.

 

Long story short: With the parts you selected, you can choose either of those coolers and you wont get any benefits or negative effects compared to the other. Id say pick what is cheaper at the store youre buying from.

[Luckylock]

Wow skull you are awesome, and your help is amazing. Thank you so much for that in-depth response, you cleared up a lot of questions I had. 

 

The truth is, I am wondering if I should really make this upgrade or keep everything and just buy a new motherboard (see below for more info)

 

 

OPTION #1:

 

My old rig is this (I didn't know anything about computers and bought a pre-built, will never make that mistake again o_o)

 

Computer / Case: HP Pavilion p7-1047c Desktop PC

Motherboard: Pegatron 2AC2 (Carmel)

Power Supply: Cooler Master Extreme Power Plus - 500W Power Supply (prebuilt came in with 250w, had to buy a new one for my GPU)

Processor: Intel Core i5-2400s (2.5 GHz, up to 3.3 GHz turbo)

Memory Stick #1: SAMSUNG 4GB 240-Pin SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10700)

Memory Stick #2: Elpida Memory - 2GB Unbuffered DDR3 SDRAM DIMM

GPU: PowerColor AMD Radeon™ HD 7870 GHz Edition

 

I was planning to keep my GPU and my power supply (I still have the 250w that came in with the prebuilt). I might sell the rest for around 300$ total (family members showed interest) and do the upgrade.

 

I could do this ^

 

OR

 

OPTION #2

 

Simply buy a new motherboard (looking at the ASRock B75MR2.0 LGA 1155) and be able to finally install my sound card I bought a couple months ago + get the full speed of my SSD because my mobo only has SATA 2.0 connectors.

 

 

Option 1 will allow me to get a beast yet silent computer with everything I will ever need or want for a very long time. (Around 800$ - 300$ = 500$ upgrade~)

Option 2 will allow me to get my SSD at full speed and install my sound card at low price but I'm still stuck with that pre-built crap. hurray!

 

It will mostly depend on if said family member buys my old rig or not.  :mellow:

 

To sum it up, I really hate myself for buying a pre-built computer, haha. I mean everything is working great and I have all the frames that I want for my games and I use my GPU to encode my stream so there's no issue. It's just that if I'm going to spend 100$ to get my sound card and ssd working, might as well spend the extra 400 to really have something amazing right? It feels very superficial and uneccessary though.