Silent, Small & Subtle - and a no compromises power house in disguise

[Mortis Angelus]

Just want to hear your opinion about my planned build:

 

Case: Fractal Define Nano S (non windowed)

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-Z170N-WIFI

CPU: Intel Core i7 6700K Skylake

RAM: Kingston HyperX Savage 16 GB 2400 MHz CL12 (HX424C12SBK2/16)

GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti Xtreme Gaming WaterForce (GV-N98TXTREME W-6GD)

SSD: Samsung 512 GB 950 PRO SSD 2500/1500 MB/s

HDD: 2x Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green, 3.5", IntelliPower, 64MB in RAID 1

PSU: Seasonic X-650 80+ Gold, Modular, Semi-passive cooling

CPU-cooler: NZXT Kraken X61 AIO Liquid Cooler

Extra: Buffalo External DVD-R/RW Unit (DVSM-PT58U2VB)

 

Total Price (at Jimms.fi): 2524.40 EUR (= 2 817.10 USD, Yes, feel sorry for us in the Nordic Countries. You Americans have it so cheap)

 

EDIT: I have pretty much reached my budget for this build. I had hoped for 2500 EUR including Windows, but as it looks now, Windows will fall outside of that mark as of this moment...

 

 

Build Purpose:

I do mostly gaming, but I also work with Adobe creative suite (Photoshop, Premiere, Lightroom, etc), and I'm about to go into Autodesk Maya 3D and Unreal Engine 4. I want a no compromise computer that will last me a very, very long time. I do this at 1440p at 16:9 (might go 21:9 in the future, but not right now).

 

Why these components?

My current PC is as loud as a milling operation for rock salt. I've grown to hate loud PCs. Thus I've chosen a somewhat over-sized cooling solution in order to keep cool temps without having to increase the fan-speeds that much, unless under some really heavy load during gaming or heavy rendering. But I also want to keep it small, taking up as little room as possible (maybe a gimmick, but I think it's interesting how powerful one can make small-form-factor PCs these days). I'd just love to have a small looks-like-nothing "sleeper"-box in the corner that will be packed with power and awesomeness. On idle load, or when just watching movies/YouTube, the computer should be more or less silent.

 

 

So, do you guys have anything to comment on this build? Is it worth the money for having a state-of-the-art computer of this caliber that should last at least 10 years with the occasional GPU-upgrade and AIO-cooler replacement?

 

Edited February 7, 2016 by Mortis Angelus

[E.Beadle]

32 gigs of ram instead, switch to an x-99 chipset.  

 

Go for a silent build with a case that that offers dampening.  

 

Linus has the quite silent build using the x-99 ws.  

Make sure your cpu cooler has fans that run at dba you enjoy.  Replace them with thr noctua or corsair sp quiets. 

 

For a smaller er form factor look up lian-li pc 06 and pc-07 series.  (Trade off for form and silence).  

 

Swap out the gpu for a quadro if you're going to do 3d applications.  It will handle the renders much faster. 

 

Why the greens over the blacks?

[Mortis Angelus]

4 hours ago, E.Beadle said:

32 gigs of ram instead, switch to an x-99 chipset.  

 

Go for a silent build with a case that that offers dampening.  

 

Linus has the quite silent build using the x-99 ws.  

Make sure your cpu cooler has fans that run at dba you enjoy.  Replace them with thr noctua or corsair sp quiets. 

 

For a smaller er form factor look up lian-li pc 06 and pc-07 series.  (Trade off for form and silence).  

 

Swap out the gpu for a quadro if you're going to do 3d applications.  It will handle the renders much faster. 

 

Why the greens over the blacks?

FIRST OF ALL: Seems like I was unclear about my budget (yes, I did not mention that); I cannot go much higher than 2500 EUR (I still don't have any Windows included in that price). With that said....

 

"32 gigs of ram instead, switch to an x-99 chipset."

Can't afford 32 gigs atm. Will opt for upgrade later on. X99 is also out of the question in terms of budgets. X99 board here start at twice the starting price of the z170-board. Not to mention the ca 100 - 200 EUR increase in price of LGA2011-v3 CPUs (at least over here).

 

"Go for a silent build with a case that that offers dampening."

The Nano S is equipped with sound dampening materials all around. Sure there are even better cases for sound dampening, but for the price this is the best compromise, I believe, between price, form-factor, cooling and noise. Or did you mean that the Lian-Li-cases would be more silent? But what case(s) would you suggest other than the Lian-Li-cases (cause I still don't know why you recommend them, please enlighten me)?

 

"Make sure your cpu cooler has fans that run at dba you enjoy.  Replace them with thr noctua or corsair sp quiets."

If the included fans become an issue, I certainly will swap them out. I have, however, read that both the Gigabyte cheapo fan and the NZXT-fans are very quiet. Cause getting 3 additional Noctuas will bump the price up even more by about 60 EUROs. But again: If the issue arises, I will change them.

 

"For a smaller er form factor look up lian-li pc 06 and pc-07 series.  (Trade off for form and silence). "

Why? Are they cooler and more silent? I'm asking, cause I've never even heard about this brand.

 

"Swap out the gpu for a quadro if you're going to do 3d applications.  It will handle the renders much faster. "

No! This is a misconception that people have. If I want a quadro that performs at the same level in gaming as a 980Ti, and a bit better during 3D-rendering, I need a quadro that costs more than a Titan X. A quadro at the same price range as a 980Ti will be worse in every aspect - even at rendering. And considering my budget and the fact that I mainly do gaming the 980 Ti is better.

 

"Why the greens over the blacks?"

I guess you are talking about AMD when mentioning "blacks"? There are only 1 liquid-cooled GPU on team RED, and the Fury X is in all terms (performance, efficiency, temps) worse than the 980 Ti (except price. Team RED is cheaper). The other thing is: I don't want an additional fan in the system like the other cards from e.g. EVGA and  Zotac, have. The Waterforce cools both the GPU and the VRAM with one massive heatsink - which I like!

 

 

 

What I really consider doing though is to wait for Pascal and Polaris to hit the market and see what they have to offer.

[E.Beadle]

The image below are the Lian Li series I was speaking about, they are smaller cases that are said to be wall mountable. So you can mount these on the wall or even put up a very small shelf to hold this up. 

I did see the adjustment, I was thinking that it would be lower. Perhaps share the website you will be making your purchases off of so the Western world could help you better. 

I do know one man who may help you out quite well. I am unsure if he is on here. I'll send him a link so he could share his input. 

[Mortis Angelus]

12 hours ago, E.Beadle said:

The image below are the Lian Li series I was speaking about, they are smaller cases that are said to be wall mountable. So you can mount these on the wall or even put up a very small shelf to hold this up. 

I did see the adjustment, I was thinking that it would be lower. Perhaps share the website you will be making your purchases off of so the Western world could help you better. 

I do know one man who may help you out quite well. I am unsure if he is on here. I'll send him a link so he could share his input.

Those are sure some nice cases. But then I will have to color-scheme the entire thing to make it look nice. Too lazy. And I guess those cases also cost quite a bit more.

 

"Perhaps share the website you will be making your purchases off of so the Western world could help you better. "

 

I did, mate. Where I mentioned the price of the build: Jimms.fi Unfortunately, they don't have the webpage in English yet, albeit having an option for English....

 

 

BTW: I realized that I misunderstood you yesterday regarding this:

 

"Why the greens over the blacks?"

I now realize you were talking about the hard drives. Sorry!The greens are there for mass-storage that won't be used all the time. I don't need the always turned-on Blacks for this purpose. The greens will do fine.  I realized that I also might not fit 2x 3.5" drives into this case, so I might go for a single 2TB + an additional 3 - 4 TB for external backup.