Upgrading Mobo, CPU, RAM, need thoughts and opinions

[Helius]

Hello,

 

I'm looking to upgrade my motherboard, CPU and RAM, everything else is okay.

I haven't followed the new hardware or architectures that have come out the last two or three years, so I need some help on what parts I should choose.

 

These are the parts I will be keeping (fans & storage not included):

- H100i water cooler

- GTX 980 Ti

- 850W PSU

 

I use my PC for gaming (e.g. Battlefield 1 or Assassin's Creed), game development, general software development, 3d modeling & video editing.

 

I don't have a lot of time to research the different parts that I could use due to a time constraint, so I thought it'd be best to ask here.

 

I have read up on a bit of stuff though, so I do have some questions:

1. Should I go with Broadwell, Skylake or something else?

2. Now that DDR4 is out, should I get some DDR4 RAM instead of DDR3?  - Seems that the amount of GB and MHz has gone up with DDR4, but that the CAS latency is slower. What is preferable?

 

I have had a look at this motherboard and CPU:
ASUS X99-A II (Like the option of easily adding more RAM)
i7-5820k

 

And I guess around 32GB of RAM at X speed should be fine.

 

I'd like to keep the price at around 950 USD, if possible, but I do have more money at my disposal.

 

Best regards

[thebrownieguy]

Its true that ddr4 gets you higher fps. If you can, go ddr4 all the way. Also, do you really want to go x99? Most benchmarks show the 6700k getting more fps than most (if not all) x99 cpus. But if you plan on using professional software, go x99.

[Gonio]

Not entirely up to date on prices, but think that DDR4 is on par with DDR3 or already below? Anyway unless your specific programs make a real good use of ram speeds, I would go for DDR4 anyway + that is what that mobo supports. DDR3 will get more expensive trough time, and better DDR4 might become cheaper in the future if you really run into trouble, but doubt it..

Similar story for your workloads that would benfit from the X99 platform and the extra CPU power. The mentioned CPU is a Haswell and the currently newest X99 series is Broadwell. It makes use of the improved Intel turbo boost 3.0 that might be notable for your workloads, so would advise the 6800K over the 5820 at a bit higher cost.

[SliceT]

DDR4 could be better future proof if you need to re use it.

also X99 Taichi looks good and very decent pricing!

[Helius]

Thanks for all the replies, do you have other hardware ideas? Do I actually need that many CPU cores, I can imagine that most software wouldn't even utilize all the cores.

 

Would something like these fit better?

MSI Z170A MPOWER Gaming Titanium

i7 6700k

 

 

It seems that i7 6700k seems to do a tiny bit better in single-core utilization, while i7 6800k seems to do much better in multi-core utilization.

[Gonio]

What you say is correct. If it is only for gaming the 6700K is the better option, since games overall have not much benefit with more cores and CPU heavy games have more use for high clockspeed then more cores.

For example I play a game called Europa Universalis 4 and a gaziljon post on Steam are why they have so much fps drops mid to late game despite the GPU and CPU don't look like bottlenecks, but then still blame it on the GPU. But the game utilize only 1 thread for the calculations and as those calculations get bigger and bigger you are basically held back by how well a single core can clock.

 

However you don't only do gaming. You mention a few things that overall can also benefit from more cores. If you really want to be sure is looking up the software and how it utilize multithreaded in overall usage for your own use case. Or if you have experienced that your software is CPU demanding is great point aswell

 

So then it comes down to your own choice and decide what trade off you want. But I myself can run games overall fine anyway despite not the highest clocked CPU on the market (3930K) while it still had good use for the programs I ran for work. But think the games you mention are more GPU bound then CPU. Also with proper cooling you can OC a little if you would notice your CPU is a bottleneck for you.

 

Mobo seems fine as long as it has all you require.