high budget Newbie trying to build monster build

[mamimami]

Alright so, this is my first post (in any forum like this, really) so bare with me a little. I'm planning on building the biggest and baddest (the good kind of bad) rig I can, money is not a problem unless I hit the $13K mark or so, but other than that everything should be fine. I'm building this computer because I've been gaming since I have memory on the worst possible hardware (and consoles) given that I come from a third world country (Venezuela), but I moved to the States and I'm ready to have the full enthusiast experience. I'm buying all the parts on December so the list of part will change as time goes, especially if a new CPU gen from Intel/AMD or GPU from NVIDIA/AMD is released that exceeds the ones in the current build.

 

A quick rundown of my build is this: (Part list is here -> https://pcpartpicker.com/user/mamimami/saved/mGBXHx)

Spoiler

• CPU: i7-8700K
• Thermal compound: Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut (I'm not sure if custom loops require this but I would assume so) and Conductonaut (Yes, I'm also delidding the CPU)
• Motherboard: Asus ROG Maximus X Apex (I heard it's really good for overclocking)
• RAM: 32GBs (2x16GBs) Trident Z RGB DDR4-3866MHz (I was gonna go for 64GBs (4x16) on the Maximus X Formula but that one had issues with my setup and PCIe lanes where the M.2 SSDs would disable other SATA lanes or however those are called, I don't have much experience with that)
• Storage:
  • Two Samsung 970 EVO M.2 SSDs running on RAID 0
  • Four Seagate IronWolf Pro 6TB 3.5" 7200RPM HDDs on RAID 10 (Yes I know it's overoverkill but I'm a data hoarder)
  • One Intel Optane 905P 1TB SSD (Not on the part list as it isn't on any store yet)
• GPU: Two Asus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Strix OCs on SLI (Yes, I know scaling isn't that great but I still want them for games that do have pretty good scaling such as Crysis)
• Case: Corsair Obsidian 1000D (Amazing airflow and great room for upgrading)
• Case fans: Still haven't decided, I'm gonna buy the case first to measure everything and get the right amount of fans with the right sizes, I was thinking of buying Corsair's ML140s and ML120s to cover all the case fan slots.
• PSU: Corsair AX1600i 1600W 80+ Titanium
• Monitors: Three Acer XB271HU 27" 2560x1440 (2K) 144Hz G-Sync IPS monitors
• Extras:
  • Corsair K95 RGB Platinum (I wanted to try out the new Bloody Light Strike ones but I really like the looks of this one) (Buying the Gunmetal+Speed Switches+RGB Mousepad combo)
  • Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum (Just bought it some days ago so I took it off the list)
  • Ergotech Triple Stand for the three 27" monitors as they will never fit on my desk (no shit)
  • Asus ROG SLI HB Bridge
  • Sony WH1000XM2 Bluetooth headphones (for when I go out)
    • Haven't decided yet on the main headphones I'll use for the PC, if you guys can recommend the best of the best out there I'd be grateful
  • Schiit Fulla 2 (For the main headphones)
  • Pewdiepie 399.99 chair (You can ignore this, it's mostly for the meme)     ʸᵉˢ ᴵ'ᵐ ᵍᵒⁿⁿᵃ ᵖᵃʸ ⁴⁰⁰ ᵈᵒˡˡᵃʳˢ ʲᵘˢᵗ ᶠᵒʳ ᵃ ᵐᵉᵐᵉ
  • And the custom liquid cooling loop (Link on the part list, would be great if someone can confirm it's the best I can get)
  • iFixit Pro Toolkit (For whatever I may need)
  • Be aware that I did not choose to buy any Cablemod products, as I don't know much about them, so if you know the gist tell me about it!

I may be new to building but I've following Linus and other multiple computer hardware channels for around three years, so I think I get most of the basics when it comes to building a PC or choosing the components. By the way, if you know the components, you may have already noticed that every single component is RGB lit and most of them work with Asus' Aura Sync, I'm also trying to mimic Linus' ultimate RGB build he did a year ago while still upgrading the components to match the most powerful for the time (part of it is just to piss of a friend that hates RGB components). Also I'm aware of the electricity costs, don't worry.

 

The things I need most help with at the moment are simple things that I have not been able to find anywhere, which are:

1. How often should I maintain my cooling loop?
2. Is it very hard to actually assemble the loop and get everything in place?
3. Is it fine to run one monitor on the slave GPU while the other two are on the main one, since the GPUs only have 2 Displayports, meaning one must run on a different card?
4. Does overclocking hurt the components as bad even if they are extremely cooled?
5. Is there anything I may be missing or any component that could be upgraded?
6. Do I use kryonaut also for the GPUs and the water blocks? Or how does those work?
7. How much is "enough" thermal paste?

If you can answer any of those questions, please reply to this post with the number before the answer, and thanks for reading!

 

EDIT: More questions! (6-7)

EDIT2: Hit the $12K mark, so all the current components will stay as they are until RAM prices go down and new components are out, hopefully the successor to the GTX 1080 will run 4K games like it's nothing.

[H20Burner]

1 minute ago, mamimami said:

Alright so, this is my first post (in any forum like this, really) so bare with me a little. I'm planning on building the biggest and baddest (the good kind of bad) rig I can, money is not a problem unless I hit the $13K mark or so, but other than that everything should be fine. I'm building this computer because I've been gaming since I have memory on the worst possible hardware (and consoles) given that I come from a third world country (Venezuela), but I moved to the States and I'm ready to have the full enthusiast experience. I'm buying all the parts on December so the list of part will change as time goes, especially if a new CPU gen from Intel/AMD or GPU from NVIDIA/AMD is released that exceeds the ones in the current build.

 

A quick rundown of my build is this:                (Part list is here -> https://pcpartpicker.com/user/mamimami/saved/mGBXHx)

  Reveal hidden contents

• CPU: i7-8700K
• Thermal compound: Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut (I'm not sure if custom loops require this but I would assume so) and Conductonaut (Yes, I'm also delidding the CPU)
• Motherboard: Asus ROG Maximus X Apex (I heard it's really good for overclocking)
• RAM: 32GBs (2x16GBs) Trident Z RGB DDR4-3866MHz (I was gonna go for 64GBs (4x16) on the Maximus X Formula but that one had issues with my setup and PCIe lanes where the M.2 SSDs would disable other SATA lanes or however those are called, I don't have much experience with that)
• Storage:
  • Two Samsung 970 EVO M.2 SSDs running on RAID 0
  • Two Seagate Barracuda Pro 12TB 3.5" 7200RPM HDDs also on RAID 0 (Yes I know it's overoverkill but I'm a data hoarder)
  • One Intel Optane 905P 1TB SSD (Not on the part list as it isn't on any store yet)
• GPU: Two Asus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Strix OCs on SLI (Yes, I know scaling isn't that great but I still want them for games that do have pretty good scaling such as Crysis)
• Case: be quiet! Dark Base 900 Pro (Good airflow and I like full towers)          (Also may change it to the new $2K case Linus reviewed yesterday if it's full tower)
• Case fans: Still haven't decided, I'm gonna buy the case first to measure everything and get the right amount of fans with the right sizes, I was thinking of buying Corsair's ML140s and ML120s to cover all the case fan slots.
• PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower DPS G RGB Titanium 1500W 80+ Titanium
• Monitors: Three Acer XG270HU 27" 2560x1440 (2K) 144Hz monitors
• Extras:
  • Corsair K95 RGB Platinum (I wanted to try out the new Bloody Light Strike ones but I really like the looks of this one) (Buying the Gunmetal+Speed Switches+RGB Mousepad combo)
  • Logitech G502 Proteus Spectrum (Just bought it some days ago so I took it off the list)
  • Ergotech Triple Stand for the three 27" monitors as they will never fit on my desk (no shit)
  • Asus ROG SLI HB Bridge
  • Sony WH1000XM2 Bluetooth headphones (for when I go out)
    • Haven't decided yet on the main headphones I'll use for the PC, if you guys can recommend the best of the best out there I'd be grateful
  • Schiit Fulla 2 (For the main headphones)
  • Pewdiepie 399.99 chair (You can ignore this, it's mostly for the meme)                         ʸᵉˢ ᴵ'ᵐ ᵍᵒⁿⁿᵃ ᵖᵃʸ ⁴⁰⁰ ᵈᵒˡˡᵃʳˢ ʲᵘˢᵗ ᶠᵒʳ ᵃ ᵐᵉᵐᵉ
  • And the custom liquid cooling loop (Link on the part list, would be great if someone can confirm it's the best I can get)
  • iFixit Pro Toolkit (For whatever I may need)
  • Be aware that I did not choose to buy any Cablemod products, as I don't know much about them, so if you know the gist tell me about it!

I may be new to building but I've following Linus and other multiple computer hardware channels for around three years, so I think I get most of the basics when it comes to building a PC or choosing the components. By the way, if you know the components, you may have already noticed that every single component is RGB lit and most of them work with Asus' Aura Sync, I'm also trying to mimic Linus' ultimate RGB build he did a year ago while still upgrading the components to match the most powerful for the time (part of it is just to piss of a friend that hates RGB components). Also I'm aware of the electricity costs, don't worry.

 

The things I need most help with at the moment are simple things that I have not been able to find anywhere, which are:

1. How often should I maintain my cooling loop?
2. Is it very hard to actually assemble the loop and get everything in place?
3. Is it fine to run one monitor on the slave GPU while the other two are on the main one, since the GPUs only have 2 Displayports, meaning one must run on a different card?
4. Does overclocking hurt the components as bad even if they are extremely cooled?
5. Is there anything I may be missing or any component that could be upgraded?

If you can answer any of those questions, please reply to this post with the number before the answer, and thanks for reading!

1. Every 6 months if you are lazy or every month if you can.

2. No as long as you didn't pick a tiny case. 

3. No

4. As long as you keep them cool.

 

[mamimami]

3 minutes ago, H20Burner said:

1. Every 6 months if you are lazy or every month if you can.

2. No as long as you didn't pick a tiny case. 

3. No

4. As long as you keep them cool.

 

What am I supposed to do about #3, then?

 

EDIT: What could be the side effects?

[H20Burner]

1 minute ago, mamimami said:

What am I supposed to do about #3, then?

HDMI Does support up to 4k if you have the right cables. Search up HDMI 4k and you will find those. Assuming your monitor also supports hdmi.

[Shreyas1]

At your budget you might as well space out 3 4000 dollar builds over the course of 3 generations. That way, you can have high end hardware for 3 generations in a row

Edited May 23, 2018 by Shreyas1
Oops

[mamimami]

Just now, H20Burner said:

HDMI Does support up to 4k if you have the right cables. Search up HDMI 4k and you will find those. Assuming your monitor also supports hdmi.

Yeah, I'll do that, thanks.

[Mr Technician]

3 minutes ago, mamimami said:

What am I supposed to do about #3, then?

 

EDIT: What could be the side effects?

Just plug all three monitors into one of the cards. The second card will still contribute through the SLI bridge.

[mamimami]

Just now, Shreyas1 said:

At your budget you might as well space out 3 3000 dollar builds over the course of 3 generations. That way, you can have high end hardware for 3 generations in a row

I'd rather just deal with one to be honest, but it's not a bad idea for the next time I build a PC, I could use the Corsair Slate for that and do two builds.

[mamimami]

Just now, ThatFlashCat said:

Just plug all three monitors into one of the cards. The second card will still contribute through the SLI bridge.

The problem is the cards have 2 Displayports ports and I'm gonna be using three monitors, but if having two with displayport and one over HDMI will cause no trouble, then it's fine by me.

[Mr Technician]

1 minute ago, mamimami said:

The problem is the cards have 2 Displayports ports and I'm gonna be using three monitors, but if having two with displayport and one over HDMI will cause no trouble, then it's fine by me.

The type of connector won't matter at all since both Displayport and HDMI can run 1440p 144hz.

[DocSwag]

• Might as well go best of the best for PSU: Consider something like a prime ultra titanium instead unless you really want the RGB
• Why not g sync monitors?
  • Also, to add, if you really want to go overkill you could wait for the 4k 144 hz monitors coming out later this month/early June. They're rumored to be 2k+ but that's what you pay for top of the line

[aeroencychris]

20 minutes ago, mamimami said:

I'd rather just deal with one to be honest, but it's not a bad idea for the next time I build a PC, I could use the Corsair Slate for that and do two builds.

I think they meant $4000 to replace your original machine, which does make sense. No reason to have two builds at once. This machine is way way overkill and will offer minimal benefit over something significantly cheaper.

[mamimami]

1 minute ago, DocSwag said:

• Might as well go best of the best for PSU: Consider something like a prime ultra titanium instead unless you really want the RGB
• Why not g sync monitors?
  • Also, to add, if you really want to go overkill you could wait for the 4k 144 hz monitors coming out later this month/early June. They're rumored to be 2k+ but that's what you pay for top of the line

What's the best PSU? I could just slap some LED straps on it lmao
I tried finding G-Sync monitors but to no avail, and the ones I found had a lot of compromises too, if you know about a really solid one with hopefully slim bezels then I'm sold. About the 4K ones tho, I'm not sure if the GPUs could handle 4K modern games while still hitting the 144hz mark, as they struggle a bit on some games with 2K, but if the new gen of GPUs can then hell yeah brother. also those monitors cost a whole fucking lot like holy shit tho I may as well

[mamimami]

2 minutes ago, cdsboy2000 said:

I think they meant $4000 to replace your original machine, which does make sense. No reason to have two builds at once. This machine is way way overkill and will offer minimal benefit over something significantly cheaper.

You could have a workplace build with a threadripper or a i9-7980XE and another one for gaming with an i7-8700k (or whatever high single core clock CPU) but reading the comment again I get it now 

Edited May 23, 2018 by mamimami

[brob]

RAID 0 is more fragile than necessary and will not produce a noticeable improvement in performance with the NVMe drives.

 

If you want a RAID 0 array for the hdd get drives made for use in arrays. Seagate IronWolf drives, for example. Also, get two more drives and run RAID 10. That way you won't lose all the data being hoarded when the array fails.

 

There are numerous GTX 1080 Ti gpu that have 3 displayport outputs.

 

Toughpower DPS G RGB Titanium psu have not been well reviewed. Seasonic Prime Titanium 1000 or Corsair RM1000X would be  good choices.

 

Have you seen the new Corsair Obsidian 1000D case?

[mamimami]

58 minutes ago, brob said:

RAID 0 is more fragile than necessary and will not produce a noticeable improvement in performance with the NVMe drives.

 

If you want a RAID 0 array for the hdd get drives made for use in arrays. Seagate IronWolf drives, for example. Also, get two more drives and run RAID 10. That way you won't lose all the data being hoarded when the array fails.

 

There are numerous GTX 1080 Ti gpu that have 3 displayport outputs.

 

Toughpower DPS G RGB Titanium psu have not been well reviewed. Seasonic Prime Titanium 1000 or Corsair RM1000X would be  good choices.

 

Have you seen the new Corsair Obsidian 1000D case?

I'll do the RAID 10 thing, tho many benchmarks and reviews about the 970 EVO on RAID 0 showed that it scaled almost perfectly.

I'm getting the Asus Strix OC one because 1. it has three fans (and even if that doesn't help that much I like the looks of it) 2. I like the RGB around it (as I mentioned I want a fully RGB-lit computer) and 3. It's good for overclocking, and I'm gonna be doing a lot of that with the liquid cooling.

 

I have seen that case, too, I didn't choose it because it was meant for two systems in one case, but if the crazy amount of case fans I can fit in there will help my temps by a good margin, I'll be sure to use it.

 

And about the PSU, JonnyGuru already reviewed it (The 1200W model tho, but it should be the same thing) and he said it was excellent, so that's enough for me to get it. 
https://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&file=print&reid=546

EDIT: Updated part list to have four 6TB IronWolf Pros

[Taf the Ghost]

2 hours ago, mamimami said:

The problem is the cards have 2 Displayports ports and I'm gonna be using three monitors, but if having two with displayport and one over HDMI will cause no trouble, then it's fine by me.

It won't. You'd just need an adapter. Signal is the same. (The details about clock generators aren't important.)

 

As for the build, as much as I love "do everything" builds, I'd really recommend splitting the NAS into a separate enclosure/system. In fact, since we're in the "paying too much for the best" territory, build an entire, monster RGB NAS system to go with it. Then use 10Gb direct networking connections. There's a Baller build; then there's "I has RGB on RGB on my NAS" levels of computer baller.

 

Also, it leaves room for more water cooling within the main system.

 

As for the SLI, you're asking for $1000 headache. I know they look good, but you can pretty much never get a use out of it. You can run 4x 4K off a single 1080 Ti, so that doesn't effect matters. I'd spend the money on more RGB. (That's actually not a joke. It'll be less of a headache & look better.)

 

[mamimami]

1 minute ago, Taf the Ghost said:

It won't. You'd just need an adapter. Signal is the same. (The details about clock generators aren't important.)

 

As for the build, as much as I love "do everything" builds, I'd really recommend splitting the NAS into a separate enclosure/system. In fact, since we're in the "paying too much for the best" territory, build an entire, monster RGB NAS system to go with it. Then use 10Gb direct networking connections. There's a Baller build; then there's "I has RGB on RGB on my NAS" levels of computer baller.

 

Also, it leaves room for more water cooling within the main system.

 

As for the SLI, you're asking for $1000 headache. I know they look good, but you can pretty much never get a use out of it. You can run 4x 4K off a single 1080 Ti, so that doesn't effect matters. I'd spend the money on more RGB. (That's actually not a joke. It'll be less of a headache & look better.)

 

Reading the post gave me a bigger headache than the one I'll get from using SLI tbh  could you explain the separate NAS bit a little bit better?

[Taf the Ghost]

1 minute ago, mamimami said:

Reading the post gave me a bigger headache than the one I'll get from using SLI tbh  could you explain the separate NAS bit a little bit better?

NAS = Network Attached Storage. It's just a storage device on your network. In this case, you'd want it to handle at least 4 hard drives. (That's actually what those IronWolf drives are really for.)

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108682&cm_re=4_drive_NAS-_-22-108-682-_-Product

 

You'd put them in something like that. Then use the network connection to get to the files. You're already talking about 4 TB of 970 Evo storage. You really don't have any use for it in the system itself. My suggestion was to build your own NAS with a really good looking case that just sits there looking pretty.

[mamimami]

3 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

NAS = Network Attached Storage. It's just a storage device on your network. In this case, you'd want it to handle at least 4 hard drives. (That's actually what those IronWolf drives are really for.)

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108682&cm_re=4_drive_NAS-_-22-108-682-_-Product

 

You'd put them in something like that. Then use the network connection to get to the files. You're already talking about 4 TB of 970 Evo storage. You really don't have any use for it in the system itself. My suggestion was to build your own NAS with a really good looking case that just sits there looking pretty.

What do I gain from this? I don't quite understand yet, sorry.

[Taf the Ghost]

Just now, mamimami said:

What do I gain from this? I don't quite understand yet, sorry.

You're water cooling the system, right? 4 HDDs take up a lot of space for a water-cooling build, they don't look pretty and you have no actual use for them in the system itself. (You'll have 4 TB of primary drive storage.) Putting that ~24 TB of storage on your network makes a lot more sense.

[Taf the Ghost]

Also, since this'll be in December 2018, the GTX 1180 will be out, along with the 8c Intel CPUs, plus a new motherboard chipset. "Z390" is the term to keep in mind.

[mamimami]

1 minute ago, Taf the Ghost said:

You're water cooling the system, right? 4 HDDs take up a lot of space for a water-cooling build, they don't look pretty and you have no actual use for them in the system itself. (You'll have 4 TB of primary drive storage.) Putting that ~24 TB of storage on your network makes a lot more sense.

Remember I'm gonna be using the Corsair Obsidian 1000P, there's plenty of room for two systems so I should be fine, tho when I build a second computer I'll be sure to move the HDDs out so I can have them on both computers. I won't really gain much from it if it's just for one computer, imo.

[mamimami]

Just now, Taf the Ghost said:

Also, since this'll be in December 2018, the GTX 1180 will be out, along with the 8c Intel CPUs, plus a new motherboard chipset. "Z390" is the term to keep in mind.

Yeah I mentioned that on the last sentence of the first paragraph, I'm gonna be updating the list until I buy all the parts (December)

[mamimami]

1 minute ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Also, since this'll be in December 2018, the GTX 1180 will be out, along with the 8c Intel CPUs, plus a new motherboard chipset. "Z390" is the term to keep in mind.

Though, if the 8c CPU isn't gonna have great single core performance, I would probably just lose performance when gaming, so I hope it does have. The threadripper 2 is also expected to have around 3.7GHz to 4GHz single core clock so maybe that will be the new banger.