Old dog.. new tricks: Please review my build plan

[MrOud]

It's been a long time since I've built a custom system (in fact, it used an 8MB Voodoo2; so yeah... a little while). I'm putting together the plan for a new build and I was hoping to get some feedback on the parts I've picked just to let me know if I’ve accidentally set myself any traps or chosen some parts where a much more affordable alternative will provide roughly the same performance or a few extra dollars that will make up for it on return of investment.

 

Primarily the system will be used for doing photo restoration (photoshop and lightroom) and video editing/DVD rendering (Premier, Encore, AME @ 1080p resolutions although 8mm film to 4k video would probably be sick) and let's be honest... some games are going to be played on this system I'm located in BC, Canada and trying to keep the budget to $2500/3000 although that's nothing set in stone.

 

CPU: Intel i7 5820K - OC'd to hopefully the 4GHz region (3.8 - 4.2... but we'll see how the silicon lottery plays for me; I don't want to push it too too hard however)

Mobo: ASUS X99-A II - http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIABDC4DK7562

 

RAM: 32GB DDR4 - I'm thinking 2133 (which as I understand from the intel spec sheet is the maximum supported speed[?]) 4x8GB and probably corsairs.

With the motherboard this does leave room still to throw in another set and increase to 64GB if need be. As I understand with this being a quad channel board each DIMM will be on it's own channel. If at some point I were to upgrade should I remove two of the installed DIMMs and pair them their set mates on the same channels? Or can I just throw the new ram into the free slots with out worry of old and new (identical brand and model) DIMMs playing nicely together?

 

GPU: Nvidia GeForce 970 - I'm not set on any particular brand (MSI, EVGA, etc) and figure this will partly come down to any good sales that might be on when I do order the parts.

 

Cooling: I want to use a premade water cooler such as the H100 (front mounted, pulling). For the amount of OCing I'm wanting to do will I need a 240mm rad or would I be safe using a smaller rad that just holds a single 120mm fan (like on the H50 for example)? Else wise it will just be the fans on the GPU, a second 120mm fan  on the front drawing in air and another 120mm fan on the back pushing air out, with the exhaust fan set to a lower speed than the intakes to help create a positive case pressure. Is there an easy way to measure case pressure? Or do I just have to play with some arduinos and sensors to get the numbers?

 

Power Supply - I used an online calculator to estimate my system, and played a little bit with adding multiple drives, increasing the OC, etc etc It showed something between 500-550W depending. Would 600W be enough of a safety margin. I would I be better off going with a >= 20% margin and getting a 750W or slightly higher wattage PSU? (At some point I may go add a second card for SLI)

 

Drives - I'm still not sure if I want to go with an M.2 drive or not but I will be adding at least an SSD to keep the OS install and complimenting that with my larger mechanical drive to hold my more static files. I've been using linux mint as my daily driver for the last couple years although for use of the adobe CC I will be installing a copy of win10. Yes I know there's open source alternatives but at the end of the day I like using the adobe products for professional work. Has anyone had an issues with doing a dual boot on an M.2 drive? Given my hardware choices will I face any major known issues running linux on this system (better linux drivers is part of why I choose the nvidia card). Has anyone had any experience with doing video editing/rendering on a VM? (Linux running win10 running adobe stuff - or should I just drop that dreamy notion and install windows on it's own partition)

 

For now the monitor I have should be good enough but at some point I would like to upgrade to an ultra wide or at least a second large LCD.

 

and for the sake of completeness...

 

Case: Fractal Design R5 - Affordable, attractive, tonnes of positive reviews, low noise. Shut up and take my money.

 

So that's my planned build. Thoughts? Suggestions? Constructive criticisms?

 

Thank you for taking your time to help me.

[MrDrWho13]

I'd go for the 240mm rad personally (Or maybe even a triple fan one, you know, just to be sure  ). 

I would also go for the 750W PSU, but you shouldn't need more watts than that.

Are you sure the 970 will be powerful enough? I would aim for a GTX 1070 or 1080 if I was doing that sort of stuff.

I like the rest of the build, and what you're doing sounds really fun! I would say you'd need at least a couple of TB if you're doing stuff that involves massive file sizes. *cough* 4k *cough*.

I apologise if all the stuff I added makes it go over budget  

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, MrOud said:

It's been a long time since I've built a custom system (in fact, it used an 8MB Voodoo2; so yeah... a little while). I'm putting together the plan for a new build and I was hoping to get some feedback on the parts I've picked just to let me know if I’ve accidentally set myself any traps or chosen some parts where a much more affordable alternative will provide roughly the same performance or a few extra dollars that will make up for it on return of investment.

 

Primarily the system will be used for doing photo restoration (photoshop and lightroom) and video editing/DVD rendering (Premier, Encore, AME @ 1080p resolutions although 8mm film to 4k video would probably be sick) and let's be honest... some games are going to be played on this system I'm located in BC, Canada and trying to keep the budget to $2500/3000 although that's nothing set in stone.

 

CPU: Intel i7 5820K - OC'd to hopefully the 4GHz region (3.8 - 4.2... but we'll see how the silicon lottery plays for me; I don't want to push it too too hard however)

Mobo: ASUS X99-A II - http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIABDC4DK7562

 

RAM: 32GB DDR4 - I'm thinking 2133 (which as I understand from the intel spec sheet is the maximum supported speed[?]) 4x8GB and probably corsairs.

With the motherboard this does leave room still to throw in another set and increase to 64GB if need be. As I understand with this being a quad channel board each DIMM will be on it's own channel. If at some point I were to upgrade should I remove two of the installed DIMMs and pair them their set mates on the same channels? Or can I just throw the new ram into the free slots with out worry of old and new (identical brand and model) DIMMs playing nicely together?

 

GPU: Nvidia GeForce 970 - I'm not set on any particular brand (MSI, EVGA, etc) and figure this will partly come down to any good sales that might be on when I do order the parts.

 

Cooling: I want to use a premade water cooler such as the H100 (front mounted, pulling). For the amount of OCing I'm wanting to do will I need a 240mm rad or would I be safe using a smaller rad that just holds a single 120mm fan (like on the H50 for example)? Else wise it will just be the fans on the GPU, a second 120mm fan  on the front drawing in air and another 120mm fan on the back pushing air out, with the exhaust fan set to a lower speed than the intakes to help create a positive case pressure. Is there an easy way to measure case pressure? Or do I just have to play with some arduinos and sensors to get the numbers?

 

Power Supply - I used an online calculator to estimate my system, and played a little bit with adding multiple drives, increasing the OC, etc etc It showed something between 500-550W depending. Would 600W be enough of a safety margin. I would I be better off going with a >= 20% margin and getting a 750W or slightly higher wattage PSU? (At some point I may go add a second card for SLI)

 

Drives - I'm still not sure if I want to go with an M.2 drive or not but I will be adding at least an SSD to keep the OS install and complimenting that with my larger mechanical drive to hold my more static files. I've been using linux mint as my daily driver for the last couple years although for use of the adobe CC I will be installing a copy of win10. Yes I know there's open source alternatives but at the end of the day I like using the adobe products for professional work. Has anyone had an issues with doing a dual boot on an M.2 drive? Given my hardware choices will I face any major known issues running linux on this system (better linux drivers is part of why I choose the nvidia card). Has anyone had any experience with doing video editing/rendering on a VM? (Linux running win10 running adobe stuff - or should I just drop that dreamy notion and install windows on it's own partition)

 

For now the monitor I have should be good enough but at some point I would like to upgrade to an ultra wide or at least a second large LCD.

 

and for the sake of completeness...

 

Case: Fractal Design R5 - Affordable, attractive, tonnes of positive reviews, low noise. Shut up and take my money.

 

So that's my planned build. Thoughts? Suggestions? Constructive criticisms?

 

Thank you for taking your time to help me.

I would definitely get a gtx 1060 or Rx 480 over the gtx 970.

[TheRandomness]

Welcome to the forums

CPU: 6800k > 5820k

Motherboard: Perfectly fine. 

RAM: 32GB is overkill (you will never need 64GB unless you have 5000 chrome tabs open, 3 games and rendering 5 8K videos) and you can go higher with speeds with ease because of XMP.

GPU: The 970 is outdated (and outperformed) by the 1060 and 480. Get whichever (aftermarket) one is cheaper. 

Cooling: The H100i would be really nice for a build like this (so would the H110i)

PSU: 650W is overkill but would leave a nice amount of headroom. Get a PSU from Seasonic, XFX (except XT), Super Flower, Antec's HCG and HCP lines and EVGA's G2/GQ/GS/P2 lines. 

Drives: An M.2 SSD still acts like a normal SSD and will be able to be dual booted from. 

 

Top tip, use http://pcpartpicker.com/ to make lists. It checks the compatibility of all the components and highlights potential issues. 

[partypanda64]

This Build here will give you a much more solid experience, the inclusion of the new Pascal 1080 will help with video editing/rendering. Because you are also in the $3000~ prices range you are able to afford much more premium parts.

Edited August 15, 2016 by partypanda64

[TheRandomness]

4 minutes ago, partypanda64 said:

This Build here will give you a much more solid experience, the inclusion of the new Pascal 1080 will help with video editing/rendering. Because you are also in the $3000~ prices range you are able to afford much more premium parts.

You missed the PSU. Also, he said $2500-3000 CAD. 

[MrOud]

4 minutes ago, partypanda64 said:

This Build here will give you a much more solid experience, the inclusion of the new Pascal 1080 will help with video editing/rendering. Because you are also in the $3000~ prices range you are able to afford much more premium parts.

That's $3000 US, I live in much more pricey Canada-Land

 

Thanks for the suggestion on the 1060 Abyss. Looks like a good card at about the same cost And thank you all for your quick replies