Need to Upgrade Motherboard and RAM for new 5960x

[ShadowWolf810]

Hi all, I'm looking to upgrade my system quite a bit. Can't come up with a good configuration that meets everything I need/want so I need your help. I have already purchased my Intel 5960x. I'm currently running DDR3 and an AMD CPU and Motherboard so I'm working on upgrading those now as well. 

 

1. Budget & Location

For the RAM and Motherboard I could consider a spending a little over $1000 USD in total but would be nice to be closer to $800, and even less if I can meet all the requirements I'm looking for in a more cheap fashion.

2. Aim

This is a gaming/streaming and video editing rig. Will probably end up getting 1 (maybe 2) 980 Ti for the graphics card but am waiting on Pascal/Polaris to see what they offer as my current cards will hold me over until I can decide what I want to do there. As far as video editing goes, I don't need a Quadro for what I'm doing, however I am a freelancer so I get a wide range of projects, ranging from simple edits to 30 min 4K productions. I like to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to RAM so am looking to go with 64 GB even though its overkill. More on that later. 

3. Monitors

2 1080p 60 Hz monitors, nothing too special as of now. May upgrade to 1 or two 4k monitors in the future but that would be way down the road.  

4. Peripherals

Already have all of them. 

5. Why are you upgrading?

I'm upgrading mostly because my first build system is getting on in years, and to increase speed/stability with renders, livestreaming, working with lots of programs all at once like Avid, DaVinci, After Effects, Photoshop etc. And computer building is a big hobby of mine so whats the point of not having the most badass system of all your friends? 

 

Requirements/Desires
Now instead of listing possible Motherboards/RAM that I've seen as candidates I'm just going to list the features I'm hoping to find. Obviously we're looking at 2011-v3 and DDR4 though. 

 

-Lots of USB 3.0 ports. Between game consoles, capture cards, controllers and other peripherals I need a lot. In the range of 8-12 would be ideal so I'm not ever having to switch ports based on what I need to do. Motherboards with USB 3.1 expansion cards are fine because I can just use those as extra ports until I get something that can actually take advantage of the faster speeds of 3.1. 

 

-I would like support for up to 128 GB of RAM to future proof my build so I'm not needing to upgrade Motherboards again but there are very few of these around it seems. Again 64 GB will probably remain overkill for quite some time but I'd much rather get another kit of 64 GB RAM to upgrade should I decide to, than have to buy a new Motherboard, and all 128 GBs in the future.  

 

-Slight preference for standard ATX form factor over Extended ATX for case size and leaving more room for custom water cooling in the future. 

 

-eSATA port on the Motherboard would be nice for my external RAID drives to connect with. I have an eSATA port on my case front I/O so wouldn't be the end of the world if there wasn't one but it looks so much better if I can hide it in the back. 

 

-A dedicated fan controller would be nice. Not sure if its just not functioning properly with the board I have currently or what but I have had a very hard time actually getting this to work so the fan controller included with mostly ASUS boards would be a nice addition to have although it may not be necessary. 

 

RAM Config: 

Now this has been changing somewhat because if I managed to find a Motherboard that can support up to 128 GB then I'd prefer to get 64 GB in a 4x16 kit, so that I could then get another identical kit in the future to upgrade. Also that way if I ever just absolutely had to have 128 GB of RAM in the future but decided to buy a board capped at 64 GB now I'd be able to use the RAM again, unlike if I were to get a 8x8GB kit or something like that.

Have been looking at Corsair Dominator and Vengence LPX like these: 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233899

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233897 

 

Conclusion: 

Overall, any and all advice or recommendations are welcome to help me narrow down possibilities. I've done a fair bit of research on my own and every time I start to sell myself on a particular board that is in my price range and has most of my specifications I start to look at the reviews from other customers and see post after post about people having to RMA 2 or 3 boards over and over to get them to work, after only lasting a few weeks. Just complete horror stories with people swearing off Company A or Company B because of just how bad whichever board is! Odds are that they'd all function just fine with little to no problem but wanted to get a bunch of peoples opinions first! So there you have it, please post Newegg links to recommended boards or RAM that have worked well for you in the past, or suit as many of my specifications as possible! Thanks everybody! 

[Streetguru]

16 minutes ago, ShadowWolf810 said:

 

You could have just built a 5820K system for what that CPU costs, should just return it as you aren't going to need it's 2 extra cores

 

why would you buy a 980ti for a 1080p display?

[ShadowWolf810]

17 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

You could have just built a 5820K system for what that CPU costs, should just return it as you aren't going to need it's 2 extra cores

 

why would you buy a 980ti for a 1080p display?

The idea is future proofing. I'd much rather buy something now that will still be high end if not top of the line for the next 5+ yrs than get something that I'm going to be itching to upgrade in the next year. 

As for the 980ti, again its futureproofing. I plan to get 4k monitors within the next year so I'm not gonna buy a 970 or something only to have it not be enough by the time I want to upgrade. Not only that but most NLEs can use CUDA to accelerate real time video processing, so even though its overkill for 1080 gaming, it'll still help tremendously with editing. Or maybe I wanna be able to smash VR games. Point is, there are a lot of valid reasons for these, and my main questions were about finding a good combination of RAM and Motherboard. 

[Streetguru]

6 minutes ago, ShadowWolf810 said:

The idea is future proofing. I'd much rather buy something now that will still be high end if not top of the line for the next 5+ yrs than get something that I'm going to be itching to upgrade in the next year. 

As for the 980ti, again its futureproofing. I plan to get 4k monitors within the next year so I'm not gonna buy a 970 or something only to have it not be enough by the time I want to upgrade. Not only that but most NLEs can use CUDA to accelerate real time video processing, so even though its overkill for 1080 gaming, it'll still help tremendously with editing. Or maybe I wanna be able to smash VR games. Point is, there are a lot of valid reasons for these, and my main questions were about finding a good combination of RAM and Motherboard. 

Future proofing isn't a real thing aside from your case, and it sounds like you have a somewhat limited budget and made a poor decision spending a thousand dollars on your CPU without having the money for the rest of your system.

 

and a 980ti is not very future proof, especially with what nvidia is possibly doing to kepler cards which seem to be losing performance in fallout 4 patch 1.3, and in addition current gen nvidia cards aren't supporting DX12 very well, a 390 beats a 980ti in the recent hitman game using DX12, in addition with an nvidia card you have to spend at minimum $100 more to get adaptive sync on your display.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/49u358/early_hitman_dx12_benchmarks_390_is_15_faster/

 

A single 980ti is not going to be enough for a good VR experience either

As far as GPU acceleration goes premier, and vegas also support open CL, but your GPU isn't going to matter a great deal there as any mid range GPU is going to be fine for accelerating there, and if it were that important you'd want a workstation GPU.

your 980ti would basically sit idle running a 60hz 1080p display, and a 980ti alone even with an OC doesn't really have the performance to push 4k at 60hz, you're better off getting a mid range GPU like a 380/X for your 1080p and saving the money to put towards the top end next gen GPU that comes out in a few months, first upgrading to a 4k display, as GPU performance is always changing, displays not so much.

[brob]

1 hour ago, ShadowWolf810 said:

...

 

-Slight preference for standard ITX form factor over Extended ITX for case size and leaving more room for custom water cooling in the future. 

... 

I presume this is a typo and ATX was intended, not ITX?

 

The budget is not clear to me. Nor is it clear exactly what is to be included in that budget. But it does seem that there is up to ~1K for motherboard and memory. So I would suggest something like

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Motherboard: ASRock X99 Extreme6/3.1 ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard  ($273.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 64GB (4 x 16GB) DDR4-2800 Memory  ($379.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $653.97
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-23 22:48 EDT-0400

 

Personally I don't think the LED strip on Dominator Platinums is worth $120. The G.Skill kit above has better timings than the two Corsair kits linked in the OP.

 

[ShadowWolf810]

4 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

Future proofing isn't a real thing aside from your case, and it sounds like you have a somewhat limited budget and made a poor decision spending a thousand dollars on your CPU without having the money for the rest of your system.

 

and a 980ti is not very future proof, especially with what nvidia is possibly doing to kepler cards which seem to be losing performance in fallout 4 patch 1.3, and in addition current gen nvidia cards aren't supporting DX12 very well, a 390 beats a 980ti in the recent hitman game using DX12, in addition with an nvidia card you have to spend at minimum $100 more to get adaptive sync on your display.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/49u358/early_hitman_dx12_benchmarks_390_is_15_faster/

 

A single 980ti is not going to be enough for a good VR experience either

As far as GPU acceleration goes premier, and vegas also support open CL, but your GPU isn't going to matter a great deal there as any mid range GPU is going to be fine for accelerating there, and if it were that important you'd want a workstation GPU.

your 980ti would basically sit idle running a 60hz 1080p display, and a 980ti alone even with an OC doesn't really have the performance to push 4k at 60hz, you're better off getting a mid range GPU like a 380/X for your 1080p and saving the money to put towards the top end next gen GPU that comes out in a few months, first upgrading to a 4k display, as GPU performance is always changing, displays not so much.

Its not a matter of having enough money. This posts budget was for Motherboard and RAM only, as those are what I want to upgrade right now. Regardless, I don't know how $1000 for RAM and Motherboard comes off as a limited budget, that's basically as premium as it gets really. Like I said in my original post, I'm waiting on the new GPU's to see what they offer because you're right a 980ti may not actually be that future proof depending on those. But again, as I said, I might even get two 980 ti's depending on the new GPUs, which is more than enough for 4k and VR. That's why I'm sticking with my current cards for now, because like I said in my post, they'll be fine to hold me off until I decide to move up to a 4k monitor. 

 

Again this post is titled, and focuses on motherboard and Ram recommendations. 

[ShadowWolf810]

16 minutes ago, brob said:

I presume this is a typo and ATX was intended, not ITX?

 

The budget is not clear to me. Nor is it clear exactly what is to be included in that budget. But it does seem that there is up to ~1K for motherboard and memory. So I would suggest something like

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Motherboard: ASRock X99 Extreme6/3.1 ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard  ($273.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 64GB (4 x 16GB) DDR4-2800 Memory  ($379.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $653.97
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-03-23 22:48 EDT-0400

 

Personally I don't think the LED strip on Dominator Platinums is worth $120. The G.Skill kit above has better timings than the two Corsair kits linked in the OP.

Ah yes the ITX was a typo, I've fixed it in the OP. You are correct on the budget, up to $1000 for RAM and Motherboard. Other components mentioned were just to lay out my future plans, not to be included in my current budget. I appreciate the suggestions, I'll take a look. I know the bare minimum about RAM timings which is why I posted here! 

After looking, my main issue with this board is the number of USB ports. I've had really bad luck with buying USB port expanders, and even PCIe expansion cards to get the number that I need. 

For the RAM you suggested, maybe I'm just mistaken, which is quite possible, but it says its for Z170 chipset, shouldn't that have to match the motherboard chipset and be X99? 

 

[Streetguru]

13 minutes ago, ShadowWolf810 said:

 

Your budget for motherboard + RAM was $1000?

I'm simply saying that, that CPU was a waste of money, you could have taken the money saving from the 5820K and built a secondary dedicated streaming machine, or network rendering machine to improve productivity, there's not much reason to spend $800 more on a CPU for 2 more cores/4 more threads

 

Anyways, this  board has pretty solid reviews, a ton of USB 3.0 and 128gbs of RAM support, though when would you ever need 128gbs of RAM?
 

MSI X99A SLI PLUS LGA 2011-v3

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130841&cm_re=X99_128gb-_-13-130-841-_-Product

 

could also look at the sabertooth X99 board which has some nice features, but only supports up to 64gbs of RAM
 

And if you want a hardware fan controller, Sentry Mix 2 would be the way to go

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811992012&cm_re=Sentry_Mix-_-11-992-012-_-Product

[Streetguru]

12 minutes ago, ShadowWolf810 said:

For the RAM you suggested, maybe I'm just mistaken, which is quite possible, but it says its for Z170 chipset, shouldn't that have to match the motherboard chipset and be X99? 

 

Doesn't matter, only RAM that cares about it's motherboard is registered ECC

[ShadowWolf810]

1 hour ago, ShadowWolf810 said:

1. Budget & Location

For the RAM and Motherboard I could consider a spending a little over $1000 USD in total but would be nice to be closer to $800, and even less if I can meet all the requirements I'm looking for in a more cheap fashion.

Yes that was my budget. 

You are probably right when it comes to the CPU being overkill. Its as much out of necessity as it is that I happen to be able to afford something over the top right now and its badass. I have thrown around the idea of having a secondary streaming PC since I'll have 2 graphics cards, 32 gb of ram and a decent processor left over from what I replace in my current system. 

Now I am still kind of new to the motherboard features/overclocking realm so the MSI board you suggested looks good but can you tell me what the differences are between the one you linked: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130841&cm_re=X99_128gb-_-13-130-841-_-Product

 

And this one I found earlier? 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130836

 

I was actually really interested in the one I just linked until I saw a massive amount of negative reviews. 

Also as far as 128 GB of RAM its mainly just leaving myself room to upgrade in the future. Am starting to get into 3D programs like 3DsMax more and more so wanted to give myself the opportunity to upgrade a few years from now should I ever need that much horsepower. Hopefully by then 64 GB 4x16 kits of DDR4 will be like 100 bucks. 

That ASUS Sabertooth one you linked was also a pretty good contender. I'm sure most of these would probably be totally fine, kind of just got overwhelmed trying to weigh the different options and features and was hoping there was a board out there that just had everything I was looking for.

 

[Streetguru]

9 minutes ago, ShadowWolf810 said:

\

Looks like the more expensive one has yellow paint, and dual gigabit, which you probably don't need exactly. and a few more USB 3.0, but probably not worth the extra cash, especially with an option like the sabertooth X99 board there with similar features to that higher end MSI board for 100 less

[ShadowWolf810]

9 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

 

I'm guessing that is probably also the case between the ASUS Sabertooth and this one then as well. Only difference is more USBs and dual gigabit? 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132506

 

It might be worth having the dual gigabit integrated if I did make a dedicated streaming machine/network renderer, because it looks like most dual NICs are going for around 100 anyways. And then I'd also get the convenience of the extra USB 3.0s 

 

[Streetguru]

3 minutes ago, ShadowWolf810 said:

I'm guessing that is probably also the case between the ASUS Sabertooth and this one then as well. Only difference is more USBs and dual gigabit? 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132506

 

 

The sabertooth already comes with dual gigabit, I guess the deluxe just has 2 intel ports rather than 1 intel 1 realtek, the intel ones would be a be a bit faster

 

review of the deluxe can be found here, again probably not worth the money, also  I think nearly every X99 board has bad reviews due to early firmware issues with the chipset

 

 

 

[ShadowWolf810]

1 hour ago, Streetguru said:

 

Well I appreciate the help. I'm definitely closer to making a decision than I was before, and probably will end up saving some money with your advice!