PC noob questions

[mackmelly]

I've wanted a custom PC for like over a year now, and now that my crap-tastic laptop thats no different than a toaster, is starting to really become obsolete, I've been doing some serious research about PC parts and planning to buy a PC with a $2k budget. After doing research I'm just overwhelmed with all the options there is, and I need some solid ground to think upon.

 

Current Planned build: 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/HXjR7P + Windows 10 OS (~$80) + CM Devastator mouse and keyboard combo($30) + power line adapter for internet (~$30)

 

GPUs:

 

So there are reference cards, which are the cards directly from the company like nvidia's GeForce series, then theres like other cards like EVGA's, or MSI's version of the same card for example EVGA GTX 980 Ti. I've looked the 980 Ti superclocked by EVGA on youtube which is apparently better than Titan X reference card. I've tried to look for EVGA Titan X superclocked on youtube and I'm not sure if I'm getting the right results because people don't always state if its EVGA superclocked or if its just plain GTX Titan X. What I really just want to do is buy the best single card GPU there is and Titan X seems to be that one even though the 980 Ti isn't that shy off it. I can extend the budget if I wanted to so it's not like I don't have the money for it, hell I would pay the extra $400 or so just because it looks so good (black is definitely my favorite color and that card = eyegasm), and 12GB of VRAM arouses me. I do plan to play on 1080p but since this card is very capable for 4k I'll play 4k resolution on the monitor I picked. Also I'll be using my PC for some workstation related projects, like 3d modelling, Unreal Engine stuff, and decently intense renders, and some photogrammetry projects as well. But 70% of the time it's gaming, I feel like I should pay the extra $400 for this card. 

 

So its EVGA GTX 980 Ti 6gb Superclocked vs EVGA GTX Titan X 12gb Superclocked

 

The 980 Ti fits in the initial budget but that budget can extend to fit in a Titan X, I want the Titan X badly but part of me thinks it's not worth it but doesn't care, I need opinions that bashes on either 980 Ti or the Titan X, it's one or the other.

 

CPU: 

 

Intel Core i7-5930k 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor vs Intel Core i7-4790k 4Ghz Quad Core Processor

 

My question about overclocking CPU's is what harm will it do to my PC if the processor is performing more than it should. Can the processor keep performing like that for long periods of time as in maybe 6 hours straight? I just get worried about overclocking as it seems like it would damage something, and I'm not trying to pay more non-sense money if something breaks. Same question about GPU's I don't even know how to overclock a GPU. I need advice about this.

 

RAM:

 

For a PC that's 70% gaming and 30% workstation, is 16gb gonna be overkill? I have a friend who has a $3.5k build i7 CPU (didnt specify), evga titan x (doesn't know if its superclocked), and has 64gb of ram. I'm going to be using my PC the same way he his, he games but he also does intense blender rendering works and doesn't have a problem with his PC at all.

 

SSD:

 

I just know that it makes boot-up faster as well as starting up programs, but I don't fully understand how it works necessarily like if I installed Auto-desk Inventor or Revit do I install the program files on the SSD? What about games, does the game files also go on the SSD or do I put them on the HDD and it loads the game fast even though it's not on the HDD? Can someone explain please.

 

 

Wide Screen monitors:

 

So I'm used to 16:9 screens, but when I play something such as MicroVolts then my resolution needs to go down to below 720p (I know, so old that I can see dinosaurs through this resolution). The monitor selected in pcpartpicker is 29" ultrawide 2560 x 1080p which is absolutely gorgeous, my only concern is the free sync for AMD cards, and since I have an nvidia card that won't be available to me but if the game is running 60fps and above will it matter a lot? Is screen-tear really noticeable? I'm not a first person shooter guy I'm more of an open world RPG storyline guy although I have some exceptions for some other games. 

 

Here are games I'm planning to play with this PC:

 

Wishlist Games:

The Forest - $15
CS:GO - $15
DBZ XU- $50
Mad Max- $60
Shadow of Mordor - $50
GTA V - $60
Watch Dogs - $40
Battlefield Hardline (via ORIGIN) - $30
Need for Speed Rivals (via ORIGIN) - $10-20
The Witcher 3 -$60

Fallout 4 - $60

Batman Arkham Knight -$60

H1Z1- $20

Dragon Age: Inquisition - $50

 

[Aytex]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor  ($372.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($119.99 @ B&H) 

Motherboard: MSI X99A SLI PLUS ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard  ($199.99 @ Amazon) 

Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  ($96.99 @ Newegg) 

Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($77.99 @ Amazon) 

Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($49.98 @ OutletPC) 

Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Superclocked+ ACX 2.0+ Video Card  ($649.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Case: NZXT S340 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($59.99 @ Directron) 

Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($99.99 @ Amazon) 

Monitor: LG 29UM67 60Hz 29.0" Monitor  ($249.99 @ Micro Center) 

Total: $1977.89

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-01 19:03 EST-0500

 

changed to a 5820k and a AiO to OC\

Got you a sexier case, its still black, NZXT is fabulousssss 

 

and no 16 gigs is never overkill

Hell even 24 or 32 isnt

 

For SSD's the EVO is a great SSD nice speed good warrenty/manufacturer ect. a gr8 one m8

Autodesk wise, if your intening to save projects on it you will run out of space, quick....

 

When your OCing your risking your whole CPU for better preformance, also the 5820k will greatly give you a edge in rendering/edting/3d shit than the 4790k

[The_Stig]

1. Dont get a 5930k unless your doing 3way SLI or stuff that needs the extra PCI lanes

2. Dont get a i7 and a 212 EVO... Get a Be quiet Dark Rock Pro 3 or a 240mm AIO cooler 

3. 16gb isnt overkill

[Hman1250]

K what intensive work do you do that'll eat up more than 6GB of VRAM

[stealth80]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-5930K 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor  ($459.99 @ NCIX US) 

CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($99.99 @ Micro Center) 

Motherboard: MSI X99S SLI Krait ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard  ($202.98 @ Newegg) 

Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  ($109.99 @ Newegg) 

Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($77.99 @ Amazon) 

Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($49.98 @ OutletPC) 

Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Superclocked+ ACX 2.0+ Video Card  ($649.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Case: NZXT S340 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($59.99 @ Newegg) 

Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($99.99 @ Amazon) 

Monitor: LG 29UM67 60Hz 29.0" Monitor  ($249.99 @ Micro Center) 

Total: $2060.88

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-01 19:08 EST-0500

 

Heres what I would go with, similar to previous except using 5930k and taking advantage of quad channel memory

[TheRandomness]

K what intensive work do you do that'll eat up more than 6GB of VRAM

Simply having steam, a single chrome tab and space engineers open I was using more than 8GB. 16GB is starting to become normal...

[Khenjie23]

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor  ($372.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($119.99 @ B&H) 

Motherboard: MSI X99A SLI PLUS ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard  ($199.99 @ Amazon) 

Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  ($96.99 @ Newegg) 

Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($77.99 @ Amazon) 

Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($49.98 @ OutletPC) 

Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Superclocked+ ACX 2.0+ Video Card  ($649.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Case: NZXT S340 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($59.99 @ Directron) 

Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($99.99 @ Amazon) 

Monitor: LG 29UM67 60Hz 29.0" Monitor  ($249.99 @ Micro Center) 

Total: $1977.89

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-01 19:03 EST-0500

 

changed to a 5820k and a AiO to OC\

Got you a sexier case, its still black, NZXT is fabulousssss 

 

and no 16 gigs is never overkill

Hell even 24 or 32 isnt

 

For SSD's the EVO is a great SSD nice speed good warrenty/manufacturer ect. a gr8 one m8

Autodesk wise, if your intening to save projects on it you will run out of space, quick....

 

When your OCing your risking your whole CPU for better preformance, also the 5820k will greatly give you a edge in rendering/edting/3d shit than the 4790k

 

 

 

This selection is pretty good for 2k budget.

 

Edited December 2, 2015 by Khenjie23

[Streetguru]

I've wanted a custom PC for like over a year now, and now that my crap-tastic laptop thats no different than a toaster, is starting to really become obsolete, I've been doing some serious research

Get a Fury over that 980ti so you can actually use the free-sync on your display

Otherwise you could quite easily fit a 4k display into that budget so I'd probably recommend something like this for gaming.

 

Only reason it's ITX is due to the motherboard pricing

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PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/v2hwdC

Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/v2hwdC/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($242.99 @ SuperBiiz)

CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X31 69.5 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($68.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Motherboard: MSI H81I Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard  ($62.99 @ Directron)

Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($33.99 @ Adorama)

Storage: A-Data Premier SP550 480GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($119.99 @ Amazon)

Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($49.98 @ OutletPC)

Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 Fury 4GB Triple Dissipation Video Card  ($499.99 @ Amazon)

Case: Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini ITX Tower Case  ($44.99 @ Micro Center)

Power Supply: Rosewill Hive 650W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($69.89 @ OutletPC)

Total: $1193.80

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-01 22:37 EST-0500

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With this monitor and you should be set, don't worry greatly about running the 4k display with max game settings right now, you can always run it at 1080p 120Hz, and within the next year or so cards will come out that can run games 4k ultra, but for right now 4k at medium-high is going to be plenty obtainable for most games

[brob]

X99 supports quad channel memory operation. To take advantage of this one should get a 4-module memory kit. The motherboards typically have 8 memory slots, so there is still room to upgrade without replacing modules.

 

The GTX 980 Ti is about the best gaming gpu available. It also provides excellent performance in most design type applications.

 

An i7-5930K doesn't really offer any advantage in gaming. The 4GHz stock clock of the i7-5930K means that it will outperform the later cpu in any application using less than 9 concurrent execution threads, i.e. pretty much any current game title. Design software performance depends a great deal on the software package. Newer releases tend to use the gpu to accelerate most functions so cpu needs tend more to faster cores rather than more cores. But this is far from universal.

 

Here is an alternative that you may want to consider.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($439.95 @ B&H)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler  ($64.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Asus Z170 PRO GAMING ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($154.99 @ Micro Center)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory  ($82.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($77.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($49.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB FTW ACX 2.0+ Video Card  ($649.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Deepcool TESSERACT BF ATX Mid Tower Case  ($30.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit)  ($94.98 @ OutletPC)
Case Fan: Deepcool UF 120 66.3 CFM 120mm  Fan  ($9.99 @ Newegg)
Monitor: LG 29UM67 60Hz 29.0" Monitor  ($249.99 @ Micro Center)
Keyboard: Cooler Master CM Storm Devastator Gaming Bundle Wired Gaming Keyboard w/Optical Mouse  ($28.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $2035.81
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-01 23:28 EST-0500

[Praesi]

There are way faster Cards than the EVGA ftw 6gb.

[brob]

There are way faster Cards than the EVGA ftw 6gb.

 

It would be helpful to know what those are.

[Praesi]

It would be helpful to know what those are.

Zotac amp!extreme

MSI Lightning

Gigabyte G1

EVGA Kingpin (but this one isnt worth the ridiculous pricetag if you dont go for serious overclocking)

[brob]

Zotac amp!extreme

MSI Lightning

Gigabyte G1

EVGA Kingpin (but this one isnt worth the ridiculous pricetag if you dont go for serious overclocking)

 

Unfortuately the first two will not fit the OP case.

 

G1 and FTW have pretty much identical specs and I have not seen any benchmarks that can be reasonably used to compare the two.