New Rig (Your Thoughts?)

Drseevee · May 30, 2017

Righto,

My old rig is pretty much dead after several RMA's I'm pretty confident that what little life it had left is gone. All that aside I think that getting a new system will be more reliable.

Basically I would like a system to do some gaming and some pretty decent Virtualization using VMware Workstation 10.

My budget is ~$2000 AUD.

There isn't a great need for this PC and I can wait for hardware to be released etc if that is better i.e. intel Sky-lake HPDT.

Existing Hardware:

Asus STRIX GTX-970

BenQ 27" 60Hz IPS I forget the model.

~12TB of HDD's
2 optical drives

Other Peripherals; keyboard mouse soundcard etc

I just have a preference for 6-cores with HT I prefer it for VMware and the odd rendering/streaming I do, same with the amount of RAM 32GB min, dont really care about speed. I'm not sold on AMD but I'm open minded.

I plan on using this system until it is unusable with a few upgrades perhaps. Hopefully 5+ years.

PC Part Picker link: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/dK7WTH

CPU: Intel I7-6850k (~$100 AUD more than a 6800K)

Motherboard: Asus x99 Deluxe-II

RAM: Kingston FuryX DDR4 ram (2400MHz 32GB kit was cheaper than 2133MHz ???) Not fussed, prefs cheap, relieable, not flashy (read NO RGB) and easily overclocked to ~2400MHz.

Case: Corsair 750D Full tower

PSU: Any Antec 80+ platinum or higher or other reputable brands with very good warranty, if needs be I can take my HCP-1000 out from my old rig and forget about fixing it,

Boot: SSD ~500GB

Cooling: Noctua - NH-D15

I've mostly spitballed this over the last few hours.

My main concerns are the impending release of the Z299 socket and Intel i9 series. will this make it cheaper to buy this stuff later or is now a good time? Will there be any advantages to wait for improvements in the processors etc or will it just place everything out of my budget?

Hopefully, that's enough, and not too much, information.

Cheers

pelark · May 30, 2017

Don't buy X99 now, if you wan't more than four cores get a R5 1600/ R7 1700

Zyndo · May 30, 2017

34 minutes ago, Drseevee said:

Snip

X299 will almost certainly be worth waiting for. Especially since its probably mere weeks away from landing on shelves all over the world. the CPU's and chipsets will be undoubtedly better than what is available with X99, so as long as it doesn't come with some massively inflated prices then X299 will definitely be the way to go. With as good as Ryzen is, I've heard that its virtualization tech isn't quite there yet (mentioned in a WAN show), so don't lose any sleep over not going team red this time around.

That being said, if for some reason you don't want to do that or it isn't affordable where you live, then there are a few recommendations I would make to your build:

1. 6800k or 6900k, not a 6850k. the only good advantage a 6850k has over a 6800k is the increased PCIe lanes.... which most people do not need more than the 28 lanes on the 6800k. Unless you know for sure you're going to be using that many lanes (which is honestly difficult to do for most normal users) then I would say its not worth even the extra $100 roo-bucks you're paying for it.

2. Get faster RAM. Faster RAM can make all the difference in the world and is usually not much more expensive than slower RAM. look for some 3000MHz+ RAM with some ~C14-C16 primary timings. Trident Z or Corsair LPX or whatever flavour you like really.

3.Nothing wrong with your choice of cooler, its arguably the best air cooler on the market especially considering its price... but its definitely the ugliest. considering the 750D has a window, I would highly recommend changing it to something more palatable (unless you really love the look of puke brown in your rig, then by all means you do you m8). Something like a BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 3 or Cryorig R1 ultimate/universal, or maybe even a Cooler Master Maker Air 8 if that is more your style, would be the way to go here. They provide very similar performance at a very comparable price... they just look better.

Drseevee · May 30, 2017

Cool,

Thanks for the input. I'll wait and see how things pan out. I vaguely remember Linus mentioning Ryzen and virtualization not being quite right as well.

6900k is like $1200AUD so I guess if i were to go X99 6800k would be better.

I do wish I could find RAM with better timings.

I'll look into more RAM options. My views were shaped by;

and came out with:

a) XMP is iffy, which I knew from experience

b) the cost benefit produces minimal returns above 3200MHz

& c) you can always O.C your ram but of course, YMMV and also, of course, affects timings.

In regards to aesthetics, I am fortunate enough to not care about a massive ugly brown cooler being perhaps the centrepiece in my case. Call me crazy but I just don't care. Thanks for the suggestions though. For me, performance is much more important and I don't trust AIO.

Until my next build, I guess it's time to start looking for LGA2011 boards for my 3930k and a win 7 licence. Shouldn't have got an OEM licence in hindsight.

Thanks for your feedback guys.

Drseevee