Yet Another Review My "Gaming" Build Thread

Daiceman

Distinguished
Dec 18, 2009
5
0
18,510
I'll be getting an Intel Core i7-4930K on hand that I'm going to be building a system around. budget for the rest of the system is around $1500

I've currently got a system that I'm going to be scraping the essentials from (case, 750w PSU, HDD, etc), but am looking to add a second monitor to my setup too. Here's what I've got so far:

Motherboard: ASRock X79 Extreme6 ATX LGA2011
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory X 2
Storage: Intel 530 Series 240GB 2.5" Solid State Disk
Video Card: HIS Radeon R9 280X 3GB Video Card (2-Way CrossFire) X 2
Monitor: Asus VG248QE 144Hz 24.0" Monitor

Total list:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/25Txp


I'm not set on anything really besides the Intel SDD (and even then, I'm just looking at 240GB as the best value, not 100% set at 240GB). From what I've seen and been told at the $600 price point I'm better off with Xfire/SLI and that AMD is currently looking better in that respect at this level. I'm by no means set on either vendor or dual GPUs though.

This is not my first build, thought it has been about 3-4 years since I've taken a good look at hardware (mostly helped family/friends put together their systems recently) so looking for advice on what's the best for me at the moment.
 
Solution
Sorry, I meant that even when you're using LGA115x (which only has two channels and thus half the bandwidth), there's still very little point in fast RAM. Throw in the quad-channel controller on LGA2011 and there's even less point.

Very few things are memory bottlenecked.

I would tend to suggest a single GPU instead of CF/SLI. They tend to be trouble, and CF doesn't play nicely if you move to multiple monitors due to microstuttering. That's fixed on the new cards, but not the rebranded GCN 1.0 ones.

You may want to consider an R9 290/290X. Make sure you get one with an aftermarket cooler, though.
You'll need a CPU cooler - LGA2011 chips don't come with one. Noctua's NH-D14 is very good and not stupidly pricey.

What 750W PSU? A 4930K plus a pair of Tahiti chips is going to suck juice.

There's not much benefit in getting DDR3-2133 - you've already got huge bandwidth thanks to quad-channel, and there's little point on LGA1150 anyway. Get some DDR3-1600/1866.
 

Daiceman

Distinguished
Dec 18, 2009
5
0
18,510
Thanks for the advice on the cooler, I've already got a few in mind but I'll take a look at that one too.

My PSU is a corsair tx750 I've had for a few years now, the partspicker website estimated power draw at around 720 peak (everything drawing maximum current even the memory/drives)

You mention the memory clock speed not being too much of an issue but then mention a socket I'm not using (1150) I assume that's just a typo? Is it really that marginal that a ~15% clockspeed reduction won't impact performance that much? I guess with the savings I could get more memory, though 16GB is already likely overkill.

To be honest, I was more posting this here to get opinions of the mobo/gfx. I'm by no means amd/nvidia loyal or deadset on SLI. Any recommendations on items in that pricerange, or am I already getting the best value at that price range?
 
Sorry, I meant that even when you're using LGA115x (which only has two channels and thus half the bandwidth), there's still very little point in fast RAM. Throw in the quad-channel controller on LGA2011 and there's even less point.

Very few things are memory bottlenecked.

I would tend to suggest a single GPU instead of CF/SLI. They tend to be trouble, and CF doesn't play nicely if you move to multiple monitors due to microstuttering. That's fixed on the new cards, but not the rebranded GCN 1.0 ones.

You may want to consider an R9 290/290X. Make sure you get one with an aftermarket cooler, though.
 
Solution

Daiceman

Distinguished
Dec 18, 2009
5
0
18,510
Thanks for your help someone. The memory issue you pointed out makes sense to me now and I'm glad you pointed it out. Honestly I think I'd be better served asking more questions in the Graphics forum versus fishing for information here.