X99 again

[Qrtrmstr2k]

My wife is probably as cool as Linus's...no I mean it...this woman surprises me with stuff all the time, over Christmas it was this insanely expensive ship for Star Trek Online.....but Friday takes the cake...she came home with gift for my birthday, I guess she got my folks involved, anyway, the new Broadwell-E chip is already on order thru NCIX (though I have no idea how this works since it was overpaid way over MSRP) 

 

Anyway, point is, I am building a new PC with the new extreme CPU from Intel (when it launches) and after spending hours and hours and hours watching Linus and Luke's videos, I have pretty much narrowed down the hardware except for the following parts:

 

the case 

 

after seeing Linus (or Luke, whoever was at CES) and seeing that Corsair 400c, I fell in love. That has to be one of the damned sexiest cases I have ever seen. It's just so simple and yet you can tell so much thought was put into it...but the reason I am not able to just jump on the case is the motherboard option...

 

So this is where I desperately need the community's help.

 

There is a catch that goes with my fancy new CPU...and thankfully Linus covered this in a video (2 users 1 CPU) and that's what I have to build. We both use computers for different reasons...I do what pretty much all of us in the community do (render, OC, game etc etc etc) she is a light gamer, usually does browser based gaming (like Facebook and Bubblebox or I think she still uses her Chuzzle disc) stuff like that and she does tons and tons of word processing (she's an 8th grade SpEd teacher, dept head, and union rep) she also does a lot of server based computing (stuff with shutterfly and Netflix and she is always in constant contact with her districts servers, I even had to setup her iPhone to alert her when she had server messages) point is, I don't think I'm gonna need to allocate a lot of cores to her on this build, was thinking a 6/4 split...

 

So the problem I am faced with is the motherboard selection. Strictly for aesthetic purposes I liked that MSI x99 board with the rgb lighting but 1) I am concerned about quality control with their boards and 

2) I am not certain a gaming board (while I am also looking at the Asus RVE board as well) is the best option in this situation

 

So when Linus showed off that Asus x99-e ws I thought "maybe this is the direction I should go in for this build" 

 

I do plan on doing some gaming, no, a lot of gaming, though I am not desperate for 4k, I can settle for 1440 if I have to step it back for the other virtual machine. And I am going to overclock it, semi agrresivly but I'm not trying to create a liquid hydrogen looped world record overclock lol this is going to be the daily driver at home and has to be capable of doing everything we do now, but going down from 2 machines to 1. Why? Because she does 50-60% of her work on her assigned notebook which was fairly long in the tooth when her district gave it to her. She doesn't know a lot about tech and doesn't care so I was the one who had to write the letter to the school board asking them to let her use funds that were already appropriated for teacher notebooks, to upgrade her to a new one, and if any of you are teachers or have teachers in your family, you know school districts idea of a "new computer" is something that's 5 years old and just new for said teacher, not actually new hardware...and then the tech guys at the district lock everything down on the software side so that there is no updating of anything or removing of anything so she has this old machine with all this bloatware from Dell and they are "too busy" to remove it and won't give her the admin password so I can remove it, thing is so old (and a Dell at that) it can't even go on our 5Ghz channel and I had to try and find a decent 2.4 channel that isn't congested which is a joke because everyone in our neighborhood are old retirees and are ALL on 2.4 with everything in their homes, I wouldn't be surprised if they found a way of making their rotary phones use 2.4 lol j/k but seriously the congestion is terrible...but I digress..her notebook gets bogged down with silly crap that whatever software and settings on it tell it to do xyz and sometimes she has to get on the desktop to get anything done

 

anyway, so it looks like I have to do an eatx board which eliminates the 400c tower cause I'm gonna have 4 gpu's

 

oh, and another question I have....according to Linus's video, I need 1 gpu per VM and a third to boot up in unRAID...but can I have an elcheepo for unRAID, my old 980 for her, and get 2 pascal gpu's and have them set in SLI for my VM? Will that even work? 

 

so...any help/knowledge anyone can offer will be much appreciated...as the medieval Brits used to say "have at thee" lol

[Nacho Marco Segui]

Did she pay the 2000 dollars for the 10 core cpu?

[Moonzy]

if you do some math, its cheaper to build two towers with approx the same specs for much lower price

and you dont have to deal with unraid setup, and other potential issues with running VM

[Qrtrmstr2k]

3 minutes ago, Nacho Marco Segui said:

Did she pay the 2000 dollars for the 10 core cpu?

I think they overpaid like $2400 total for it on NCIX and I hope we get the difference from the MSRP when it launches.

[Qrtrmstr2k]

4 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

if you do some math, its cheaper to build two towers with approx the same specs for much lower price

and you dont have to deal with unraid setup, and other potential issues with running VM

1) the CPU is already paid for

 

2) we currently have 2 pc's...I was watching a Linus video at dinner like 6 weeks ago and she overheard this being able to drop down to 1 PC and she asked if that meant only 1 psu and I said "yeah, duh" lol that's where this came from I think...not having me gaming and then powering up another 460w PC for her stuff...we do spend a lot of time on computers...more than your average person...I work from home, I'm probably in my chair at the computer 16-18 hours a day (16 hours on gym days, 18 hours on off gym days) and she is on her notebook (until it suddenly bogs down) at least 6 hours a day, weekends it's a lot more than that...

[Moonzy]

4 minutes ago, Qrtrmstr2k said:

1) the CPU is already paid for

 

2) we currently have 2 pc's...I was watching a Linus video at dinner like 6 weeks ago and she overheard this being able to drop down to 1 PC and she asked if that meant only 1 psu and I said "yeah, duh" lol that's where this came from I think...not having me gaming and then powering up another 460w PC for her stuff...we do spend a lot of time on computers...more than your average person...I work from home, I'm probably in my chair at the computer 16-18 hours a day (16 hours on gym days, 18 hours on off gym days) and she is on her notebook (until it suddenly bogs down) at least 6 hours a day, weekends it's a lot more than that...

i understand that its already paid for... but if you DID (rephrase) some math...

 

anyway for motherboard, if you're doing something like this i suggest going with WS boards as they tend to be more reliable and Asus will (hopefully) entertain to your needs if you face issue with this setup, but gaming boards should do just fine i believe

 

and you also need to dedicate one core (or thread(?)) to the host (unRAID) as well as a gpu (any old gpu will do, as long as its alive and will output a video signal) and a monitor, as well as some ram i believe

 

as for whether you can run SLI or not in VM, i believe you can as long as you assign both cards to the same VM, though im not sure since i never played with this tech

 

you might have to explore this on your own since its not common for an average user to do this lol

[Qrtrmstr2k]

21 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

if you do some math, its cheaper to build two towers with approx the same specs for much lower price

and you dont have to deal with unraid setup, and other potential issues with running VM

1) the CPU is already paid for

 

2) we currently have 2 pc's...I was watching a Linus video at dinner like 6 weeks ago and she overheard this being able to drop down to 1 PC and she asked if that meant only 1 psu and I said "yeah, duh" lol that's where this came from I think...not having me gaming and then powering up another 460w PC for her stuff...we do spend a lot of time on computers...more than your average person...I work from home, I'm probably in my chair at the computer 16-18 hours a day (16 hours on gym days, 18 hours on off gym days) and she is on her notebook (until it suddenly bogs down) at least 6 hours a day, weekends it's a lot more than that...

 

I probably should have added in the opening that her dad passed away about a year ago, but years ago he gave her this solid oak desk for graduating with a teaching degree and getting hired at this district. But the desk isn't set up for a computer, it's solid oak and has 7 drawers and she loves it. Loved it for all the capacity and loved it because it's like a "teachers desk" from back in the day, and now since it was from her dad, she has the nostalgia with it...so this build will let her have her desk space back which she really has needed for years...a lot of the time she has to spread her work out and sit on the floor because she has no room on her desk because of her monitor, tower, keyboard, mouse, speakers...this way she can move her keyboard under the monitor and kinda move stuff around as needed...when I told her this was possible she got excited...and you know how women are,

even though I really wanted that processor, the only reason I got it was because it is a

benefit to her as well hahaha 

 

don't get me wrong, I love my wife, so grateful for her, but I'm smart enough to know that the only reason our women let us have something we want that's super expensive is because it either benefits them or they will find a way to make it benefit them, like hold it over your head for the rest of your life when you argue about who's turn it is to do the dishes...the 6950x just became the new automatic "I lose" card that she'll play whenever she wants lol

[ericlee30]

1 hour ago, Qrtrmstr2k said:

I think they overpaid like $2400 total for it on NCIX and I hope we get the difference from the MSRP when it launches.

But why? I am buying mine on release date and I can bet anything, including my Caselabs STH10, you and I will get our CPU's at or around the same time, and I will have saved way more money then you ( or your peeps ).

 

Could this be a severe case of more money then sense scenario?

 

I understand some people get too excited and do impulse buys,but never ever pre-order something that you know for a fact is over the MSRP just because its a pre- order, still doesn't mean you will get it any sooner then anyone else once they are officially lunched. Mind blown.

 

P.S. Quit repeating yourself  to others " 1) the CPU is already paid for " we get that already.

 

Get a refund and just wait tell lunch day then repurchase. Id put that extra $1000 you will save towards mods to make the build look much nicer.  Nice sleeved cables, water cooling, a better case then a $100 case for a $1500 CPU, lighting, ( tools to mod ) etc.....

 

Also just an FYI, most motherboard manufactures are releasing new SKU X99 boards for the Broadwell-E lunch, so the chances of getting a better board with better features then you have in mind is possible, but the only way to find that out is to just wait tell Computex, which is exactly 4 weeks away.

 

[Qrtrmstr2k]

2 hours ago, ericlee30 said:

But why? I am buying mine on release date and I can bet anything, including my Caselabs STH10, you and I will get our CPU's at or around the same time, and I will have saved way more money then you ( or your peeps ).

 

Could this be a severe case of more money then sense scenario?

 

I understand some people get too excited and do impulse buys,but never ever pre-order something that you know for a fact is over the MSRP just because its a pre- order, still doesn't mean you will get it any sooner then anyone else once they are officially lunched. Mind blown.

 

P.S. Quit repeating yourself  to others " 1) the CPU is already paid for " we get that already.

 

Get a refund and just wait tell lunch day then repurchase. Id put that extra $1000 you will save towards mods to make the build look much nicer.  Nice sleeved cables, water cooling, a better case then a $100 case for a $1500 CPU, lighting, ( tools to mod ) etc.....

 

Also just an FYI, most motherboard manufactures are releasing new SKU X99 boards for the Broadwell-E lunch, so the chances of getting a better board with better features then you have in mind is possible, but the only way to find that out is to just wait tell Computex, which is exactly 4 weeks away.

 

You're preaching to the choir...like I said, she doesn't know about tech, just knew I wanted it, she went looking and obviously found a place that would take an order...I gently questioned what she thought about only being able to pre-order it at one store in Canada, but I didn't want to seem ungrateful...anyway, it's done now. But this was the same awesome wife who, when I mentioned wanting Star Trek: TNG the complete set 25th Anniversary remastered on Bluray, I ended up with some "save a few bucks" knock off from China...the shipping label, even the packaging has Chinese instead of English and the discs all had cheap faded stickers of episodes on each (in Chinese as well) and when I opened it and we saw it, we had a good laugh...naturally I asked how much was the set? She said forty bucks hahaha I was like "well, I'm not gonna bother trying to watch, they're most likely bootleg but at least you got the series right lol but getting back to this...I thought for sure she got the wrong one...I was like "nooooooo!" But it's the right one...not the 5960x. I keep trying to warn her about "deals" on the interwebs lol I think she learned after that one...I hope anyway.

 

yeah I am waiting on the mobo. Newegg still has slim pickin's on the X99 boards so I figured the makers are waiting to unveil along with the Broadwell-E chips at Computex.

 

Like Moonzy said, I was originally going to do a gaming mobo but then I started really thinking about everything I am trying to get this to do and they suggested the WS board. All I know for sure is that it's gonna have to be extended because I'm gonna have to stick 4 gpu's in it. Which, I need to go back and look at Linus's CES video. I really like that Corsair case and I could have sworn it had a 3-way SLI on an extended board but the site says atx and down. So if that's the deal, I'm gonna have to find a case maker that has designed something similar to the 400c but will fit eatx, which sucks because I really really like that case...unless I can beg Linus to get the case and do a video finding a way to modify it to fit an eatx board, and 1 dual rad and 2 single rads, that is, if there is even enough room for water blocks on the gpu's in this set up. Though I'm gonna wait on ordering any new gpu's until I know the exact sizes on the pascals and how much room I have to work with. I'd rather he get Corsair to send him a case and make a video than me buy it and have to return it if I can't make it work.