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Workstation & Gaming Build

foxystarfox
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Alright, so I'm graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in Screen Arts and Cultures at the end of August. I recently left my job to focus on finishing school, so I don't have the money to really start this build yet, but I was hoping to get some feedback.

 

I plan to use this thing as a workstation and also as a serious gaming machine. I was working as a cinematographer/editor at my most recent place of employment and using my late-2011 Macbook Pro to process video-content. All things considered, the old girl has performed pretty admirably, but even with 16gigs of ram and a 240gb SSD (both courtesy of OWC) I'm dealing with some ridiculous render-times especially when processing higher bitrate video. I've got a cooling pad, but it does very little to prevent the thermal-throttling problems that plague pretty much all macs.

 

I'm pretty new to building PCs, but this may I threw together a gaming rig for my brother and I'm really eager to have one for myself. I already bought the case when I bought the parts for my brother because I figured it would motivate me to build my own system, but money is probably going to be an issue until I'm no longer dealing with school. Multitasking is pretty important to me since I want to minimize downtime in my workflow, as well as do some twitch streaming and game-capture stuff.

 

I'm really wondering if it's worth it to upgrade to a six-core i7 instead of going with the 4790k, but I think the eight threads should be enough especially if I get a capture-card. 

 

I haven't picked a graphics card yet, but I think I'm going to either wind up being stingy and get a gtx970 (probably Strix, I'm kind of an ASUS fanboy) or just spend all the money and try to score a gtx980 ti.

 

I'd appreciate any feedback you guys can give me, including monitor suggestions because finding something at a reasonable price point with professional color-depth and gaming-level refresh rates seems like an impossible task.

 

I primarily use Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Speedgrade. I've been messing around with Blender a little bit lately as well.

 

 


 

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($328.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler  ($89.99 @ Mwave) 

Thermal Compound: Innovation Cooling Diamond "7 Carat" 1.5g Thermal Paste  ($7.89 @ OutletPC) 

Motherboard: Asus Z97-WS ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($279.99 @ B&H) 


Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($177.89 @ OutletPC) 



Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro OEM (64-bit)  ($131.65 @ OutletPC) 

Wireless Network Adapter: Asus PCE-AC56 802.11a/b/g/n/ac PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter  ($48.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Total: $1275.37

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-06-13 16:30 EDT-0400

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Posted

keep the i7-4790k. its enough good.

 

this is great build.

 

850W is overkill. you'd be fine with a good 600/650 considering you only going to have one 980Ti or 970

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1300$ max budget?

If you need remote help fixing something on your computer

I can help over Teamviewer if you wish

just msg me on my profile

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Looks good. Nice, high quality components throughout. 

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1300$ max budget?

 

Around there yeah. I'm trying to keep it down as much as possible though while retaining upgradeability. 

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the motherboard doesn't fit. get cheaper one.

 

I was looking at this as another option. That way I wouldn't need to use up a PCI slot on the wi-fi card.

 

The Z97-WS seems really appealing as a sort of safety-net though. I don't really know much about overclocking and I figured having a board with that level of validation would be a decent investment given I do intend to overclock eventually and I can't afford to destroy my system if I'm using it for work.

 

At some point I hope to put in a custom water-cooling loop with a 360mm radiator in the top, some ekwb blocks, nice dark-nickel compression fittings and some UV reactive dye, but that will be way in the future.

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keep the i7-4790k. its enough good.

 

this is great build.

 

850W is overkill. you'd be fine with a good 600/650 considering you only going to have one 980Ti or 970

 

Yeah, but at $109.99 for 850W and fancy-pants Japanese capacitors why not? If I ever decide to go SLI it would be nice to just know I'm covered. 

 

You're probably right though, even the crazy Nvidia cards don't pull that much power these days. 

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