Build Upgrade Considerations

[Cyborgsmith]

Hi guys,  going to be doing an upgrade on my current build,  wanted the communities advice on how I should be spending money. 

 

Currently I have

 

Corsair 750D with

MSI Gaming M5 Z170 w/ 6700k@4.2

MSI Gtx 970 @1.5ghz

2x Corsair Force LE 250gb in Raid 0

2x 2TB WD Red in Raid 1

Corsair H110GTX cooler on the CPU. 

RMi 850

 

For upgrades Ill be adding either a 1070/1080,  plus an Intel 400g pcie SSD

 

So this is advice time,  should I invest in an exotic gpu air cooling setup,  or would my money be better spent water cooling everything. Money isn't really a huge deal with this build but I would like to keep it cost effective. 

 

Also,  1070 vs 1080 I game at 1440p

 

Cheers

Dylan. 

[Kirky2k15]

Ditch the Intel SSD and go with Samsung 950 pro or SM961

[Unexas.]

You could go for a m.2 NVME Drive.

[ShaunOfNintendo]

For 1440p gaming, the GTX1070 is the best value for your money. I upgraded my 970 to a 1070 last week and it's been a dream come true for 1440p gaming.

 

For the SSD I'm going to agree with @Kirky2k15 on that one. It's true that PCI SSDs are technically faster than those connected with a STAT cable, but honestly you're not really getting a substantial performance increase.

 

STAT is a bottleneck for SSD, but in a real life scenario it's not noticeable. My PC boots to windows in 10 seconds from my Samsung 500GB EVO SSD.

[Cyborgsmith]

4 minutes ago, ShaunOfNintendo said:

For 1440p gaming, the GTX1070 is the best value for your money. I upgraded my 970 to a 1070 last week and it's been a dream come true for 1440p gaming.

 

For the SSD I'm going to agree with @Kirky2k15 on that one. It's true that PCI SSDs are technically faster than those connected with a STAT cable, but honestly you're not really getting a substantial performance increase.

 

STAT is a bottleneck for SSD, but in a real life scenario it's not noticeable. My PC boots to windows in 10 seconds from my Samsung 500GB EVO SSD.

That confirms what I thought about the 1070. 

 

As for SSDs,  the biggest speed related concern I have is working with 4k video,  even when converted to cineform its a pig. The biggest desire with a blazing fast ssd is to negate load times as much as possible. 

The new Samsung 960pros do look very appealing except I'm a firm believer in keeping my hardware cool and after reading Puget systems writeup here,  I'm not really a fan.

 After all the headaches I've had with hardware that "could" handle sustained hi temperatures (HD6950) only to malfunction,  I'd rather stay away from the hot stuff. 

 

 

 

 

[ShaunOfNintendo]

34 minutes ago, Cyborgsmith said:

That confirms what I thought about the 1070. 

 

As for SSDs,  the biggest speed related concern I have is working with 4k video,  even when converted to cineform its a pig. The biggest desire with a blazing fast ssd is to negate load times as much as possible. 

The new Samsung 960pros do look very appealing except I'm a firm believer in keeping my hardware cool and after reading Puget systems writeup here,  I'm not really a fan.

 After all the headaches I've had with hardware that "could" handle sustained hi temperatures (HD6950) only to malfunction,  I'd rather stay away from the hot stuff. 

From what I've read in the past (and this might not be true anymore) is that PCIe SSD, like the Intel 750 series ones, can get very hot. However, if you still feel like dipping into the water cooling solution (see what I did there?) you could always water cool that PCIe SSD if you so chose to go that route. 

[Cyborgsmith]

Just now, ShaunOfNintendo said:

From what I've read in the past (and this might not be true anymore) is that PCIe SSD, like the Intel 750 series ones, can get very hot. However, if you still feel like dipping into the water cooling solution (see what I did there?) you could always water cool that PCIe SSD if you so chose to go that route. 

I really want to watercool all of it,  the problem is its not very cost efficient.  The premium that you pay for watercooling components is insane. The cost for me to watercool my current setup would come in at almost the same price as buying a 1070. 

[Quaker]

If you are going to upgrade from a GTX-970, a GTX-1070 doesn't seem like much of a boast. I'd go for the GTX-1080 if price isn't a big issue. There are several water cooled 1080s as well.

 

For the SSD, there's no reason to get an Intel unit over a Samsung 960.

 

For heat concerns, make sure your case has adequate airflow, and that there's some airflow over the SSD. (SSD temperature is never really a problem unless you are constantly moving gigabytes of data around. Under normal operating conditions, SSD power usage is very low.)

 

[Cyborgsmith]

13 minutes ago, Quaker said:

If you are going to upgrade from a GTX-970, a GTX-1070 doesn't seem like much of a boast. I'd go for the GTX-1080 if price isn't a big issue. There are several water cooled 1080s as well.

 

For the SSD, there's no reason to get an Intel unit over a Samsung 960.

 

For heat concerns, make sure your case has adequate airflow, and that there's some airflow over the SSD. (SSD temperature is never really a problem unless you are constantly moving gigabytes of data around. Under normal operating conditions, SSD power usage is very low.)

 

For the price the most cost effective buy right now is the evga hybrid cooler card

 

I generally prefer that no single component go over 40c in my system.  

[Quaker]

On 10/7/2016 at 11:47 AM, Cyborgsmith said:

I generally prefer that no single component go over 40c in my system.  

That seems a bit extreme, especially when, as long as the temp is well below the max operating temp, it doesn't really matter. A CPU running at 40C works just the same as one running at 60C.

Also, regardless of the specific temperature of any point in the system - the chip, the chip's heatspreader,, the cooler, the inside of the case, etc - the absolute quantity of heat produced is the same, and it all ends up in the local atmosphere.

(That is to say, whether the CPU is running at 40C or 60C, the actual amount of heat generated is the same. All that changes is the temperature at a specific point.)