Advice for a $2800 Build?

[CCap]

Hello LinusTechTips:

 

I am having a lot of questioning and doubting on my final rig, where it all is coming down to whether or not I will be purchasing a 4770k based build, or a 4930k based build. 

 

Here are the list of parts for both Rigs:

 

Rig #1:

 

CPU: Intel i7 4770k

 

Motherboard: Asus Maximus VI Extreme

 

Video Card: EVGA Superclocked 780ti (x2)

 

Ram: Corsair Vengence 16gb DDR3 1600

 

Case: Corsair Obsidian 650d

 

Liquid Cooling: (Not sure on the final list, expecting to spend approx. 200 though to cool both my CPU and both of my GPU's... Looking for a custom loop)

 

PSU: Rosewill Lightning 1300w 80+ Gold

 

SSD: Samsung 840 pro 128gb

 

Optical Drive: Asus Blu Ray Burner

 

Rig #2: 

 

CPU: Intel i7 4930k

 

Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Black edition

 

Video Card: EVGA Superclocked 780ti

 

RAM: Ripjaws Z Series 16gb DDR3-2133 CL 9

 

Case: Corsair Obsidian 900D 

 

Liquid Cooling: (Not Sure once again)

 

Optical Drive: Asus Blu-Ray Burner

 

SSD: Samsung 840 Pro 128gb

 

PSU: Rosewill Lightning 80+ Gold 1300w

 

The questions I would like to ask you all is, which rig should I go with, and what should I do to improve the rigs? Do you agree / disagree with anything I have listed here? Also, should I go with the 780ti's or should I wait for the Direct CU II r9 290x to come out from Asus? 

 

If you are wondering what I am going to be doing with this, I will be overclocking, gaming, and rendering out videos. 

 

I appreciate any help you could give me on the rig, and if you could help me out with a custom loop for liquid cooling that would be fantastic. I know very little about liquid cooling, so anything you could throw my way would be fantastic.

 

//CCapG

[orangecat]

Advice: Don't build a 2800$ system.

[ForeseenVisionz]

Advice: Don't build a 2800$ system.

y?

[madscientist56]

the power supply's in both those builds are overkill, also dont go with the 900d unless you're doing extreme watercooling because if you dont do that the case will look really empty since its so huge, go with the 750d instead also if you want a loop in the future the 750d is also great for that too.

[LogicDeifying]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

 

CPU:  AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  ($129.99 @ Newegg) 

Motherboard:  ASRock 990FX Extreme3 ATX AM3+/AM3 Motherboard  ($119.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Memory:  Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($149.99 @ Amazon) 

Storage:  Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk  ($89.99 @ Amazon) 

Video Card:  Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB Video Card (2-Way SLI)  ($735.91 @ Newegg) 

Video Card:  Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB Video Card (2-Way SLI)  ($735.91 @ Newegg) 

Case:  Corsair 750D ATX Full Tower Case  ($139.99 @ Microcenter) 

Power Supply:  Corsair RM 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($159.99 @ Amazon) 

Optical Drive:  Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer  ($16.99 @ Newegg) 

Total: $2278.75

(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)

(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-12-30 22:30 EST-0500)

If you have to go what the kids call it "overkill".You get almost the same power of the 4770k and maybe the 4930k no fanbois over here,lets be honest.

And you have a solid 800$ for custom watercooling could you want more?Do you need anything else OS,monitor,keyboard or mouse?

Or more storage since you only have one SSD I could throw in a higher capacity SSD or a HDD?

[_ASSASSIN_]

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

 

CPU:  AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor  ($129.99 @ Newegg) 

Motherboard:  ASRock 990FX Extreme3 ATX AM3+/AM3 Motherboard  ($119.99 @ SuperBiiz) 

Memory:  Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($149.99 @ Amazon) 

Storage:  Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk  ($89.99 @ Amazon) 

Video Card:  Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB Video Card (2-Way SLI)  ($735.91 @ Newegg) 

Video Card:  Gigabyte GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB Video Card (2-Way SLI)  ($735.91 @ Newegg) 

Case:  Corsair 750D ATX Full Tower Case  ($139.99 @ Microcenter) 

Power Supply:  Corsair RM 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($159.99 @ Amazon) 

Optical Drive:  Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer  ($16.99 @ Newegg) 

Total: $2278.75

(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)

(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-12-30 22:30 EST-0500)

 

totally not worth it for the price point considering AM3+ is a dead platform

[ForeseenVisionz]

My suggestions:

CPU: Intel i7 4770k

 

Motherboard: Asus Maximus VI Formula

 

Video Card: EVGA Superclocked 780ti (x2)

 

Ram: Corsair Vengence 16gb DDR3 1600

 

Case: Corsair Obsidian 750d

 

Liquid Cooling: (Not sure on the final list, expecting to spend approx. 200 though to cool both my CPU and both of my GPU's... Looking for a custom loop)

 

PSU: Corsair ax or rm 860

 

SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 250gb and dont u want storage? if u do get a seagate barracuda whatever TB's

 

Optical Drive: Asus Blu Ray Burner

[WoodenMarker]

y?

You get into diminishing returns where your money doesn't get you the same amount of performance. 

The OP is better off spending less now and getting what he needs, saving the rest of his money for future upgrades.

 

@CCap What kind of content are you rendering? Programs being used? Are you editing as well or just rendering?

[lilc]

Get a smaller psu

I would say crossfire 290's

Don't get the 4930k - also how much rendering do you do?

Go for a cheaper mobo

[ForeseenVisionz]

as for liquid cooling start a topic in that section.

[LogicDeifying]

totally not worth it for the price point considering AM3+ is a dead platform

Proof?Source?Im just curious and I will correct it.

[WoodenMarker]

totally not worth it for the price point considering AM3+ is a dead platform

I don't think a platform being dead really matters. Few people actually upgrade from the same socket and AMD is still going to have driver support for a while. 

[_ASSASSIN_]

 

alright there are a few tweaks I'd do. First off change the PSU to something less ridiculous and ghetto. Get a seasonic OEM PSU and something around like an 850w would be enough for 780ti in sli with a 4930K overclocking.

Also cut on the case, get something like a 750D. As for the watercooling, I'd reserve around $300-600 for a custom loop of your own. 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2t3Qc

pretty decent, but if you are just gaming and don't have the money to go overkill, just go Ivy or Haswell with SLI 780 TI

[_ASSASSIN_]

I don't think a platform being dead really matters. Few people actually upgrade from the same socket and AMD is still going to have driver support for a while. 

but modern features have yet to be implemented on it. I just hope steamroller changes that.

[jscho]

totally not worth it for the price point considering AM3+ is a dead platform

 

It's not dead, nor obsolete. It performs very well in many modern applications. + it's dirt freakin' cheap. Perfect for a budget gaming build. But since we're talking $2800, Intel would be a more appropriate option depending on what he plans to do with the rig.

If on a budget and gaming only, AMD FX. Can't go wrong.

[_ASSASSIN_]

It's not dead, nor obsolete. It performs very well in many modern applications. + it's dirt freakin' cheap. Perfect for a budget gaming build. But since we're talking $2800, Intel would be a more appropriate option depending on what he plans to do with the rig.

If on a budget and gaming only, AMD FX. Can't go wrong.

I'm not saying it's obsolete. If someone wants cutting edge features, AMD is not the way to go currently on their CPU side of things

[brob]

 

If you are wondering what I am going to be doing with this, I will be overclocking, gaming, and rendering out videos. 

 

I appreciate any help you could give me on the rig, and if you could help me out with a custom loop for liquid cooling that would be fantastic. I know very little about liquid cooling, so anything you could throw my way would be fantastic.

 

//CCapG

 

 

What types of videos are being rendered? What software is being used?

 

Is this rig intended mostly for gaming or rendering?

 

Why are you considering a 4930 build?

[CCap]

Alright, I thank all of you for the responses, and I have a lot of questions to be answering here so I will do my best to answer them all.

 

The reason that I included that power supply was I picked it up on black friday for about 100 USD, and I couldn't turn that down. 

 

As for the software I am going to be using... Probably Sony Vegas Pro, Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, etc. 

 

Something else I feel like I should cover that I didn't in the initial thread is that I already have a 3tb Seagate HDD for storage that I had purchased on black friday as well.

 

As for the main parts, I am getting a lot of different recommendations.

 

For the processor, I wanted whichever one would provide an overall faster experience with all of my computer operations. The x79 motherboards support Quad Channel Ram, which is a big plus, as well as the 4930k outperforms the 4770k by nearly 3000 benchmark score (per Passmark testing). If somebody could really sway me one way or another not only on the individual processor speed, but the overall computer speeds, that would be great.

 

As for the motherboard I selected, I just wanted whichever one supported the overkill side of the build. So I just selected the best Asus Motherboard that supports each respective chipset. 

 

The Video Cards is another place where I am still very much in the air. I really, really like the 780ti as to it is the fastest single GPU on the market, yet, the r9 290x with liquid cooling has shown to be equally as efficient. The reason that I am very very much leaning towards the 780ti is the liquid cooling loop might not come for another month or two afterwards whilst I find a custom loop to fit both my case and the parts that I will purchase. Even then, NVidia supposedly will be releasing their new 800 series very, very soon. (source). If this is the case, then you could expect some form of a price drop in cards such as the 780 and the 770. With those price drops I might be able to pick up those cards and run them in triple or even quad sli for the price it would have been to run them in 2-way sli now. Once again, I'm really talking out of my ace on this one, any intelligible advice you could give me on this would awesome. 

 

Finally, the RAM. Honestly, this isn't an issue as much as I'm unsure whether or not to wait for DDR4 in Q1 of 2014, or just stick with the DDR3 solution, since there would be a lot of compatibility issues anyways. (I guess I answered my own question there.)

 

Thanks to anyone that has already responded, and anyone that will respond in the future. I do appreciate it.

 

//CCapG

[brob]

The explanation helped. It is not clear to me if the intention is to put together a working system immediately and then take time to work out a liquid solution or if the intention is to get all but the liquid cooled parts first, then wait till the liquid cooled parts are acquired. I've presumed the first and included an air cooled 780 Ti and cpu cooler.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU:  Intel Core i7-4930K 3.4GHz 6-Core Processor  ($568.98 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler:  Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($89.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard:  Asus P9X79 PRO ATX LGA2011 Motherboard  ($295.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory:  Mushkin Blackline 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory  ($169.99 @ Newegg)
Storage:  Samsung EVO 1TB 2.5" Solid State Disk  ($579.95 @ Newegg)
Storage:  Seagate Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (Purchased For $0.00)
Video Card:  EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB Video Card  ($745.91 @ Newegg)
Case:  Corsair 750D ATX Full Tower Case  ($139.99 @ Microcenter)
Power Supply:  Rosewill Lightning 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  (Purchased For $0.00)
Optical Drive:  Asus BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer  ($58.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $2649.78
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-12-31 00:23 EST-0500)

[WoodenMarker]

It would help if you just listed what parts you already have.

You need to quote a post or tag a member or else they won't get a notification you replied to them.

 

Synthetic benchmarks are pretty irrelevant and you should be looking appropriate ones--vegas benchmarks if you're using vegas etc. After all, you're not using passmark all day.

Triple and quad sli scale badly and I would advise against them. 

 

DDR4 doesn't look that promising in terms of usefulness. Same applies to quad channel unless you're doing heavy editing.

[orangecat]

y?

Because you can spend much less and get similar performance it just wont look as flashy.

[CCap]

It would help if you just listed what parts you already have.

You need to quote a post or tag a member or else they won't get a notification you replied to them.

 

Synthetic benchmarks are pretty irrelevant and you should be looking appropriate ones--vegas benchmarks if you're using vegas etc. After all, you're not using passmark all day.

Triple and quad sli scale badly and I would advise against them. 

 

DDR4 doesn't look that promising in terms of usefulness. Same applies to quad channel unless you're doing heavy editing.

 

The parts that I do already have are a 3tb Seagate HDD and a Rosewill 1300w Power Supply, that's it. 

 

Thanks for that tip, I'm new to the forums, and that helps me a lot. I'll try to use quotes and tags more often. 

 

@brob The build you've put together overall I like, yet, I really disagree with the addition of a one terabyte SSD. Maybe I could understand 500 Gigabytes or something close, but to me one terabyte just doesn't redeem itself as all too useful at the moment. 

 

The only questions I really have left are between my processor/chipset, and my liquid cooling loop. 

 

As for the processor/chipset, I still don't know whether or not I should go with the 4930k or the 4770k. I've looked up benchmarks for software such as Sony Vegas Pro, and as far as timings go with processor/gpu arrays, the 4930k does what I'm looking for it to do when it is only paired with one stock R9 290, (source) and since I will more likely than not be running two 780ti's in sli, then I should be more than capable of out performing that benchmark. This then leads me to believe that since I am going to be running the two 780ti's, that I should be able to get a 4770k and not notice all to much of a difference to a 4930k paired with one r9 290. I still am free to any other arguments that would sway this otherwise.

 

As for the Liquid Cooling loop, I don't really have any sort of idea for what I should do to keep not only the CPU and GPUs cool, but the entire case. I know in Linus's Overkill build, he used many Noctura fans and ended up spending close to, if not exceeding, a thousand dollars in cooling. The question I'm really trying to ask here, for my rig, am I better off just running a closed loop cooler of the sorts, such as an h100i and splurge on fans for overall better airflow, or go for a custom loop and maybe not spend as much money on fans for overall airflow. With my 780ti's, is it necessary to keep them liquid cooled, or will they be fine without it? I'm currently doing as much research as I can, but I am free to any sort of recommendations anyone has. 

 

Once again, I thank anyone whom has responded, or provided any sort of insight on this build. I really do appreciate it. 

 

//CCapG

[N3D9ed]

As for the Liquid Cooling loop, I don't really have any sort of idea for what I should do to keep not only the CPU and GPUs cool, but the entire case. I know in Linus's Overkill build, he used many Noctura fans and ended up spending close to, if not exceeding, a thousand dollars in cooling. The question I'm really trying to ask here, for my rig, am I better off just running a closed loop cooler of the sorts, such as an h100i and splurge on fans for overall better airflow, or go for a custom loop and maybe not spend as much money on fans for overall airflow. With my 780ti's, is it necessary to keep them liquid cooled, or will they be fine without it? I'm currently doing as much research as I can, but I am free to any sort of recommendations anyone has.

They will be fine without liquid cooling. If you are going custom loop, avoid cheaping out on anything even the fans. As for AiOs, it's a good place to start if you want to water cool the CPU, though an air cooler is usually recommended over AiOs as they are cheaper, no chance of pump failure, only the fans will fail so you only need to replace them, no pump noise and lastly, no need to worry about coolant leakage.

[CCap]

They will be fine without liquid cooling. If you are going custom loop, avoid cheaping out on anything even the fans. As for AiOs, it's a good place to start if you want to water cool the CPU, though an air cooler is usually recommended over AiOs as they are cheaper, no chance of pump failure, only the fans will fail so you only need to replace them, no pump noise and lastly, no need to worry about coolant leakage.

Something that would really help me out greatly would be to know everything that I would need for a Custom Loop. I know I'll need a CPU block, GPU Block, tubing, fans, and radiators, but I don't know anything else, nor do I know what size / how many I should get. I will more than likely getting a 900D, but there is still a small chance of me getting the 650d if I do decide to go with the 4770k. 

[brob]

The parts that I do already have are a 3tb Seagate HDD and a Rosewill 1300w Power Supply, that's it. 

 

Thanks for that tip, I'm new to the forums, and that helps me a lot. I'll try to use quotes and tags more often. 

 

@brob The build you've put together overall I like, yet, I really disagree with the addition of a one terabyte SSD. Maybe I could understand 500 Gigabytes or something close, but to me one terabyte just doesn't redeem itself as all too useful at the moment. 

 

The only questions I really have left are between my processor/chipset, and my liquid cooling loop. 

 

As for the processor/chipset, I still don't know whether or not I should go with the 4930k or the 4770k. I've looked up benchmarks for software such as Sony Vegas Pro, and as far as timings go with processor/gpu arrays, the 4930k does what I'm looking for it to do when it is only paired with one stock R9 290, (source) and since I will more likely than not be running two 780ti's in sli, then I should be more than capable of out performing that benchmark. This then leads me to believe that since I am going to be running the two 780ti's, that I should be able to get a 4770k and not notice all to much of a difference to a 4930k paired with one r9 290. I still am free to any other arguments that would sway this otherwise.

 

As for the Liquid Cooling loop, I don't really have any sort of idea for what I should do to keep not only the CPU and GPUs cool, but the entire case. I know in Linus's Overkill build, he used many Noctura fans and ended up spending close to, if not exceeding, a thousand dollars in cooling. The question I'm really trying to ask here, for my rig, am I better off just running a closed loop cooler of the sorts, such as an h100i and splurge on fans for overall better airflow, or go for a custom loop and maybe not spend as much money on fans for overall airflow. With my 780ti's, is it necessary to keep them liquid cooled, or will they be fine without it? I'm currently doing as much research as I can, but I am free to any sort of recommendations anyone has. 

 

Once again, I thank anyone whom has responded, or provided any sort of insight on this build. I really do appreciate it. 

 

//CCapG

 

The reason for including the 1TB was as much to illustrate its existence as to suggest that you might want to consider going all SSD. It is quieter, much faster, and consumes less power. In terms of reliability and longevity current experience suggests they are going to be more reliable than hdd and longer lived.

 

Sony Vegas Pro 12 has issues with gpu assisted rendering. I think it safe to say that it is spotty at best. Hopefully this will improve over time or with a new release. But right now SVP seems to do better the more cores it has.

 

One option on cooling is to go with something like the Swiftech H220 or H320 - NCIX may carry them in the US. The H220 is available in the US as the Cooler Master Glacer 240L. The H220 and H320 can be expanded into a custom loop, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fpum4J6C2k&feature=player_embedded.