5960x So I won a i7-5960X, now what?

[SlipAngle]

I was pleasantly surprised by winning a i7-5960x CPU. Thank you, Intel! I would like to build a gaming PC, so I believe it should cover other tasks like video editing, photo editing etc. I would be happy with a CPU frequency of about 4.4GHz. I have a modest budget, so I am looking for the best value for money. Yes, I know that is sort of an oxymoron building an X99 on the cheap. J

Here is what I have:

·         Intel i7-5960X - WOHOO thank you Intel!!

·         Asus X99-A/USB3.1

·         Corsair 650W PSU

·         256GB Velociraptor Drive

·         Case

·         $200 Amazon gift card – Thank you mom!

·         Video Card from an old PC, good enough for now.

·         Most importantly, support from my lovely wife to buy the other pieces I need to finish the project!

Here is what I need:

RAM

I am trying to decide between buying something that has a high clock speed, higher latency and higher cost vs lower clock speed, latency and cost. I know that 16GB is fine for my current needs but should I get 32GB to “future proof” my system? I am considering the following:

·         G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM 3000 CL15 (15-15-15-35) at 1.35V $123 @ Amazon

·         Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4 DRAM 3000MHz CL15 (15-17-17-35) at 135v $109.99 @ Amazon

·         Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4 DRAM 2133MHz C13 (13-15-15-28) at 1.2V                
$100 @ Amazon

Cooling

Here I am torn between buying a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo and the Noctua. Will the 212 Evo do a good enough job or am I wasting my time with it?

·         Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO $28 @ Amazon

·         Noctua NH-D15 6 heatpipe with Dual NF-A15 140mm fans $66 @ Amazon

Here is what I want:

Gen3 M.2 drive

·         Haven’t done any research on this yet, but I know I want a fast OS drive.

Better Case

·         Might move to the need column if the Noctua cooler is the winner and it won’t fit.

Noctua Case fans

·         If I stay with the current case I would at least want better case fans.

GPU

·         I am currently leaning to a NVidia 1060; my screen is a 1920 x 1080 TV so I don’t need SLI or anything that fancy. I do play AAA titles, so a good frame rate with some eye candy is desirable.

Am I crazy, way off base or right on the money? Please let me know.

 

[deleted_member_030719]

Send it to me, I'll build it for you

[JSD10]

High clock speed ram is unnecessary 

[pyrojoe34]

Honestly... I'd recommend selling it and building an entire ballin PC with the money. Get a 6800k instead and buy some awesome other stuff and a sick monitor setup.

[Clanscorpia]

Sell it. If your playing games then a 6600K and a 480 are great for the price and cost the same as that CPU

[OCXenox]

Yes aslong as you dont want to spend a lot and i mean a whole lot money on a gpu and monitor which are appropriate for a +1000$ cpu u better sell it as unused.

 

PS: my pc is worth only this cpu!!!; its overkill 

[Shiv78]

6 minutes ago, pyrojoe34 said:

Honestly... I'd recommend selling it and building an entire ballin PC with the money. Get a 6800k instead and buy some awesome other stuff and a sick monitor setup.

that^

[19_blackie_73]

3 minutes ago, pyrojoe34 said:

Honestly... I'd recommend selling it and building an entire ballin PC with the money. Get a 6800k instead and buy some awesome other stuff and a sick monitor setup.

1 minute ago, Clanscorpia said:

Sell it. If your playing games then a 6600K and a 480 are great for the price and cost the same as that CPU

Always depends on the entire financial situation of OP.

If you are not low on money and as you already have mobo + cpu, I'd get:

• the fast lpx kit
• the noctua nh d15 - good cpu needs good cooler especially if you want to oc
• you won't see much difference to a M.2 drive with NVMe if you only put os and such things on it ->  get another decent sata ssd
• new case: get the one you like
• case fans: don't, it's almost a waste of money if you have a crappy case.
• GPU: 1060 is fine for 1080p, but I'd get a 1070 and 1440p screen for real eyecandy

 

 

[OCXenox]

1 minute ago, 19_blackie_73 said:

Always depends on the entire financial situation of OP.

If you are not low on money and as you already have mobo + cpu, I'd get:

• the fast lpx kit
• the noctua nh d15 - good cpu needs good cooler especially if you want to oc
• you won't see much difference to a M.2 drive with NVMe if you only put os and such things on it ->  get another decent sata ssd
• new case: get the one you like
• case fans: don't, it's almost a waste of money if you have a crappy case.
• GPU: 1060 is fine for 1080p, but I'd get a 1070 and 1440p screen for real eyecandy

 

 

And all in all this will cost you around 1500$...

[19_blackie_73]

1 minute ago, OCXenox said:

And all in all this will cost you around 1500$...

depends....

nhd15+ram+case + 1060 is around 500$-600$ mainly depending which case he will get...

[OCXenox]

3 minutes ago, 19_blackie_73 said:

depends....

nhd15+ram+case + 1060 is around 500$-600$ mainly depending which case he will get...

I was quoting on the idea of buying a QHD monitor + 1070 + fast ram

[arkam]

 

Quote

29 minutes ago, SlipAngle said:

 

I was pleasantly surprised by winning a i7-5960x CPU. Thank you, Intel! I would like to build a gaming PC, so I believe it should cover other tasks like video editing, photo editing etc. I would be happy with a CPU frequency of about 4.4GHz. I have a modest budget, so I am looking for the best value for money. Yes, I know that is sort of an oxymoron building an X99 on the cheap. J

Here is what I have:

·         Intel i7-5960X - WOHOO thank you Intel!!

·         Asus X99-A/USB3.1

·         Corsair 650W PSU

·         256GB Velociraptor Drive

·         Case

·         $200 Amazon gift card – Thank you mom!

·         Video Card from an old PC, good enough for now.

·         Most importantly, support from my lovely wife to buy the other pieces I need to finish the project!

Here is what I need:

RAM

I am trying to decide between buying something that has a high clock speed, higher latency and higher cost vs lower clock speed, latency and cost. I know that 16GB is fine for my current needs but should I get 32GB to “future proof” my system? I am considering the following:

·         G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM 3000 CL15 (15-15-15-35) at 1.35V $123 @ Amazon

·         Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4 DRAM 3000MHz CL15 (15-17-17-35) at 135v $109.99 @ Amazon

·         Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR4 DRAM 2133MHz C13 (13-15-15-28) at 1.2V                
$100 @ Amazon

Cooling

Here I am torn between buying a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo and the Noctua. Will the 212 Evo do a good enough job or am I wasting my time with it?

·         Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO $28 @ Amazon

·         Noctua NH-D15 6 heatpipe with Dual NF-A15 140mm fans $66 @ Amazon

Here is what I want:

Gen3 M.2 drive

·         Haven’t done any research on this yet, but I know I want a fast OS drive.

Better Case

·         Might move to the need column if the Noctua cooler is the winner and it won’t fit.

Noctua Case fans

·         If I stay with the current case I would at least want better case fans.

GPU

·         I am currently leaning to a NVidia 1060; my screen is a 1920 x 1080 TV so I don’t need SLI or anything that fancy. I do play AAA titles, so a good frame rate with some eye candy is desirable.

Am I crazy, way off base or right on the money? Please let me know.

 

For ram go the speed doesn't matter.

 

If you are overclocking your CPU go with noctua otherwise go with CM 212.

 

M.2 drives will certainly give you that speed prefer samsung's m.2 drives

 

NZXT ,Phantex, coolermaster make some great cases, your choice. NZXT s340, Phanteks Etho pro, Fractal design define S are some great choices. 

 

You can get 2 extra case fans as more case fans are not necessary, noctua, corsair all are good.

 

With a 1060 you are on a sweet spot for 1080p gaming but if you insist on upgrading go with 1070 if you want 100+ framerates and if your current monitor can process those rates.

 

 

[OCXenox]

You can simply swap the cpu with a I7 6800k or I7 5820k and another 500$ of sold the 5960x.

[SlipAngle]

Thank you for all the replies so far. I did consider selling the CPU, but I would like to have an Overkill CPU at least once in my life.

 

 

[OCXenox]

1 minute ago, SlipAngle said:

Thank you for all the replies so far. I did consider selling the CPU, but I would like to have an Overkill CPU at least once in my life.

 

 

I dont know what you are doing but I think a 6800k will still be more than overkill...and whats a overkill cpu with a "normal" gpu...you see the prorpotion doesnt fit.

[SlipAngle]

The idea is to get an overkill GPU later, don't tell my wife right now! I have to save some more money for that first. I can always give the 1060 to my son. Now that I think about it my son is also starting to work on AutoCAD so he might have to use my PC at times.

[OCXenox]

6 minutes ago, SlipAngle said:

The idea is to get an overkill GPU later, don't tell my wife right now! I have to save some more money for that first. I can always give the 1060 to my son. Now that I think about it my son is also starting to work on AutoCAD so he might have to use my PC at times.

Does AutoCAD even support 16 Threads? Not sure I have only worked with catia and solidworks so far. But these definitely dont profit of more than 8 cores.

 

BTW this might be interesting http://ark.intel.com/products/82930/Intel-Core-i7-5960X-Processor-Extreme-Edition-20M-Cache-up-to-3_50-GHz for e.g. the ram speeds

[SlipAngle]

I saw that 2133MHz spec, and the max CPU frequency is 3.5GHz, but really? This is an X series CPU, made to be overclocked. I am sure this is the lawyers speaking.

[OCXenox]

The 2133Hz ram speed means that any faster ram would be downclocked to 2133Hz..so faster than supporter would be waste.

but the cpu clock you mean is the max turbo boost, but as this is a unlocked processor u can raise the freqency above the 3.5 Ghz. Turbo boost only means that, when u dont change anything the cpu would go up to this frequency under heavy load.

[OCXenox]

They say they achieved 4.5 Ghz with ease.

[SlipAngle]

Nice and that is using the stock 1.35V

 

This is some of the marketing from my mobo:

 

This is the first platform to support DDR4 memory and it's able to drive memory frequencies to 3200MHz (and beyond when overclocked)! ASUS-exclusive T-Topology circuit design plus OC Socket provides superb memory-overclocking capability to unleash the full power of DDR4 by minimizing coupling noise and signal reflection.

 

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/X99AUSB_31/

[OCXenox]

Its definitely not the first bord that supports DDR4, there are many more out there...if its the first platform...dont know.

And the high memory speed is usless due to the cpu limitation and if the cpu will be more stable is just a marketing i suppose...but hey you never now until u try XD.

[SlipAngle]

Bought the Noctua NH-D15 CPU Cooler and Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB DDR4 3200 C16 RAM. My Antec case isn't quite deep enough to mount both fans, so I am off to buying a new case. I'll post some pictures later.

[done12many2]

On 11/11/2016 at 3:31 PM, OCXenox said:

The 2133Hz ram speed means that any faster ram would be downclocked to 2133Hz..so faster than supporter would be waste.

 

That is completely inaccurate. 

 

The 2133 MHz rating is for "official support" only.  The 5960x officially supports 2133 MHz, but higher speed RAM will indeed run much faster than officially supported.

 

As an example, I've attached a screen shot of my G.Skill TridentZ 3200 c14 (best stuff for x99 at the moment) doing just that.

 

On 11/11/2016 at 3:23 PM, SlipAngle said:

the max CPU frequency is 3.5GHz, but really? This is an X series CPU, made to be overclocked.

 

A good 5960x will overclock a great deal higher than it's stock 3.5 GHz Turbo.  I've yet to see one that wouldn't do in excess of a 1 GHz overclock in capable hands.

 

The chip is an absolute beast.  With that said, be prepared to tame the heat it produces once you start pushing high clock speeds.  

 

[SlipAngle]

Wow nice to see it running at 4.9GHz. That is a beast of a system you have going there. I have been playing with my system and did manage to get it to 4.7GHz and it is running stable at about 70 C. I realized that I really need a new video card before I post any benchmarks, my old 8800 GTX card really isn't cutting it. I also need a new case so I can fit both fans on my CPU cooler so I don't want to create too much more heat at the moment.

 

What case are you using?

 

CPU cooler currently just fits with one fan installed.