PC Upgrade - April 2016 - Time to end the bottleneck!

[Senzelian]

It's finally time to upgrade my PC. And probably also time to clean it.
Using two GTX 980s in a Z97 board with an i5-4670 is a little awkward, so instead of just buying an i7-4790K I'll go crazy and got a whole new platform.

Here is my current build:

Spoiler

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor  (€232.17 @ Mindfactory) 
CPU Cooler: Corsair H105 73.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  (Purchased For €103.07) 
Thermal Compound: ARCTIC MX4 20g Thermal Paste  (Purchased For €19.90) 
Motherboard: Asus SABERTOOTH Z97 MARK S ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (Purchased For €258.49) 
Memory: Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (Purchased For €68.90) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (Purchased For €275.00) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (Purchased For €338.00) 
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card (2-Way SLI)  (Purchased For €563.80) 
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card (2-Way SLI)  (Purchased For €619.00) 
Case: Lian-Li PC-O8WX ATX Mid Tower Case  (Purchased For €444.22) 
Power Supply: Corsair 760W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  (Purchased For €161.85) 
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) 
Case Fan: Corsair Air Series SP120 Quiet Edition (2-Pack) 37.9 CFM 120mm  Fans  (€32.90 @ Caseking) 
Case Fan: be quiet! SilentWings 2 50.5 CFM 120mm  Fan  (€19.48 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Case Fan: be quiet! SilentWings 2 50.5 CFM 120mm  Fan  (€19.48 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Case Fan: be quiet! SilentWings 2 50.5 CFM 120mm  Fan  (€19.48 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Monitor: LG 34UM95-P 60Hz 34.0" Monitor  (Purchased For €699.00) 
Keyboard: Cooler Master CM Storm QuickFire TK Wired Mini Keyboard  (Purchased For €89.00) 
Mouse: Mionix NAOS 7000 Wired Optical Mouse  (€69.99 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Other: Corsair Professional Individually sleeved DC Cable Kit, Type 3 (Generation 2), BLUE (Purchased For €79.00)
Other: Corsair Individually Sleeved 24pin ATX Cable (Generation 2), BLUE (Purchased For €19.90)
Total: €4132.63
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-04-02 14:08 CEST+0200

 

Today I got the new parts and I can finally start working on it tomorrow or maybe even today.
Here is a little preview  (More pictures soon)

[Majestic]

6 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Using two GTX 980s in a Z97 board with an i5-4670 is a little awkward

Seems more like subjective rationalization. Because I don't buy for a second the 4670 posed a significant bottleneck at 60hz ultrawide with two 980's.

 

Nice stuff nevertheless, but the title is off.

[DXMember]

so you got the dominator platinums?

where's your board? or will you use the z97?

[Senzelian]

2 minutes ago, Majestic said:

Seems more like subjective rationalization. Because I don't buy for a second the 4670 posed a significant bottleneck at 60hz ultrawide with two 980's.

We will find out
I'll do some benchmarks before taking the old system apart. Steam VR, Valley, Cinebench, and so on.

At least it'll look sexy and Cities Skylines will run better.
 

1 minute ago, DXMember said:

so you got the dominator platinums?

where's your board? or will you use the z97?

"(More pictures soon)"
And if you have a look at my profile picture...

[Majestic]

Just now, Senzelian said:

I'll do some benchmarks before taking the old system apart. Steam VR, Valley, Cinebench, and so on.

Neither of those are indicators of bottlenecks. Only absolute performance. Ofcourse a 6700K is faster in cinebench, but at 3440x1440 60hz, the i5 won't significantly hamper performance. Steam VR is just the source engine running 200fps, hardly taxing. 

 

Try out some games that are giving you trouble (supposedly). I doubt you'll notice any difference. Well, perhaps Skylines.

[DXMember]

3 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

We will find out
I'll do some benchmarks before taking the old system apart. Steam VR, Valley, Cinebench, and so on.

At least it'll look sexy and Cities Skylines will run better.
 

"(More pictures soon)"
And if you have a look at my profile picture...

okay, see, now that makes more sense

also do firestrike

[Senzelian]

1 minute ago, Majestic said:

Neither of those are indicators of bottlenecks. Only absolute performance. Ofcourse a 6700K is faster in cinebench, but at 3440x1440 60hz, the i5 won't significantly hamper performance. Steam VR is just the source engine running 200fps, hardly taxing. 

 

Try out some games that are giving you trouble (supposedly). I doubt you'll notice any difference. Well, perhaps Skylines.

[Walker998]

10 minutes ago, DXMember said:

so you got the dominator platinums?

where's your board? or will you use the z97?

GOLD!

[Senzelian]

1 hour ago, Majestic said:

Neither of those are indicators of bottlenecks. Only absolute performance. Ofcourse a 6700K is faster in cinebench, but at 3440x1440 60hz, the i5 won't significantly hamper performance. Steam VR is just the source engine running 200fps, hardly taxing. 

 

Try out some games that are giving you trouble (supposedly). I doubt you'll notice any difference. Well, perhaps Skylines.

Even if there is literally not difference at all and all I did was to throw out a ton of money for nothing, then it was still worth the experience. At least I learned something about it and had a ton of fun while doing it.

[handymanshandle]

14 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Even if there is literally not difference at all and all I did was to throw out a ton of money for nothing, then it was still worth the experience. At least I learned something about it and had a ton of fun while doing it.

Regardless the i7 is an upgrade, for gaming maybe not as much. Though if you wanted to get into CPU heavy task, the i7 would deal with it better.

[Senzelian]

This took much longer than I expected and while I still got some stuff to do, I'm happy that the machine is at least working now.
I had some problems with the Intel LAN drivers where it simply wouldn't detect the network controller, but I got that fixed somehow.

I still have to do some cable management, benchmarks, overclock the CPU and put the "Dominator Platinum Light Bar Upgrade" kit on my RAM.
But here are some pretty terrible pictures of what the machine looks like and what it looked like before.

Before...

 

While building...

Here I painted the mounting tabs for my be Quiet Silent Wings 2. You'll see how it looks like in the last shot.

 

After...

 

[NoobCase]

mmm pretty awesome case to be honest... build looking pretty clean

 

Can you do anything with the pcie cables for the GPUS, those really mess it up  And whats up with the middle SSD?

 

And the classic.. the Copper SLi bridge... and why 2? pretty sure 1 is more than enough.

[BeardRex]

Need to get some GPU holder or something.. that sagging..

[Senzelian]

13 minutes ago, NoobCase said:

mmm pretty awesome case to be honest... build looking pretty clean

 

Can you do anything with the pcie cables for the GPUS, those really mess it up  And whats up with the middle SSD?

 

And the classic.. the Copper SLi bridge... and why 2? pretty sure 1 is more than enough.

Of course I can and will do something about the PCI-e cables. I just didn't have enough time to fix it yet.

The SSDs are sitting on rubber grommets and because of the cable it freaks a bit out. I'll secure it better as soon as I have more time.
The second SLI bridge was just there for troubleshooting. SLI didn't work at first and I thought it was because of a SLI bridge, but it actually was a PCI-e cable that came loose.
 

1 minute ago, BeardRex said:

Need to get some GPU holder or something.. that sagging..

I don't care about sagging and I think GPU holders look even worse. From my angle I don't even see that they're sagging

[Dr_Pleeper]

This thing is beautiful.

 

[BeardRex]

Quote

I don't care about sagging and I think GPU holders look even worse. From my angle I don't even see that they're sagging 

 

Well in this case I personally wouldn't care for looks. There's a few ways to hold up GPUs. My two ones are heavy as hell and I have a random GPU holder that kind of looks cool. I'd rather have it looks a bit weird than having the PCI slots break because of heavy cards.

[Dr_Pleeper]

@Senzelian Mind telling me what desk this is? Been looking for one and this one looks really nice

[Senzelian]

1 minute ago, BeardRex said:

 

Well in this case I personally wouldn't care for looks. There's a few ways to hold up GPUs. My two ones are heavy as hell and I have a random GPU holder that kind of looks cool. I'd rather have it looks a bit weird than having the PCI slots break because of heavy cards.

Don't worry, they don't break 

[Senzelian]

Just now, Dr_Pleeper said:

@Senzelian Mind telling me what desk this is? Been looking for one and this one looks really nice

It's just a kitchen countertop mounted on some legs I got from a hardware store. Really simple and easy to build. But I would recommend to attach it to the wall with two right angled brackets, cause otherwise it gets a bit shaky if you get the cheaper legs like I did

[DXMember]

whuaaaat??? Gigabyte makes white Windforce 980s ?? Why was I not aware of that?

I was actually considering getting two 980/980ti instead but I wanted them to be white and since we don't have any HOF cards in my country and there was another white cooler but it was heavily overpriced, approaching Nirvana...

 

actually now that I think of it... G1 Gamings from Gigabyte originally came in Black/White, right? I think those were the ones that were overpriced to like 900+€

[Senzelian]

3 minutes ago, DXMember said:

whuaaaat??? Gigabyte makes white Windforce 980s ?? Why was I not aware of that?

I was actually considering getting two 980/980ti instead but I wanted them to be white and since we don't have any HOF cards in my country and there was another white cooler but it was heavily overpriced, approaching Nirvana...

 

actually now that I think of it... G1 Gamings from Gigabyte originally came in Black/White, right? I think those were the ones that were overpriced to like 900+€

Gigabyte doesn't make white cards.
Apart from the 980Ti which is mainly black with some white accents, they're all black.

The reason why I have white G1s is because I painted them. You can find my thread about it in my signature.

[DXMember]

5 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Gigabyte doesn't make white cards.
Apart from the 980Ti which is mainly black with some white accents, they're all black.

The reason why I have white G1s is because I painted them. You can find my thread about it in my signature.

)) too bad can't click the signature, it's behind the line of redemption )))

I'm on IE11

[Senzelian]

42 minutes ago, DXMember said:

)) too bad can't click the signature, it's behind the line of redemption )))

I'm on IE11

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/366562-two-g1-gaming-gtx-980-in-white/

[arnavvr]

Why would you go to a 6700K? A 5820K would offer so much better performance.

[NoobCase]

3 hours ago, arnavvr said:

Why would you go to a 6700K? A 5820K would offer so much better performance.

Only in certain CPU heavy multithreaded tasks...