GPU and CPU

I'd just get the 4790k you won't see any difference in games...
EVGA superclocked is just a slightly overclocked normal GTX 980... you can overclock the normal one on your own and make it the same clockrates or even higher if you want...
Also why are you getting a 1300w PSU? SLI 980s would be fine on a 750w PSU.

Hi there, since the cards have just launched and there are not much literature on cases like yours I'll suppose this :
1) 5930K will run more efficiently 2 cards in SLI since it has more dedicated PCIe lanes.
2) The EVGA superclocked has a higher clockspeed than the reference card. So yes, it's 'faster'. But you could achieve a similar manual overclock with a reference card by youself.
3) The ROG motherboards are in my opinion the best gaming mobos on the market. The Rampage VII has a great chipset (z97) that is very stable for overclockers.

BTW since you don't want to overclock, the Z97 chipset and the K series CPU are not necessary.

The DDR4 ram that is out right now is slower than DDR3 ram... I don't think this is the time to Switch to DDR4, maybe by next generation. As for the CPUs from the reviews i have seen the i7 4790k has actually performed better in games than the 6 and 8 core intel CPUs... Back to the PSU, That system you have listed might use 600-650w at max load... I wouldn't recommend getting a PSU any bigger than 850w, this will keep your PSU in the most effeciant load levels ( ~40-60%).

If you are comfortable with the budget then you can go as high as you want and for your info gtx 980 consumes less power than a gtx 760 165 max TDP so a 750 watt PSU is more than enough .

-An 850 watter is way more than enough for two cards in SLI. I have two 780s with 26% OC and they pull 300 watts compared to the 980s 165 .... and they pull 745 watts from the wall..... which means PSU is outputting only 670 watts. You';d be more than fine with a 750 watter ... don't need a PSU twice the size "to be safe".

-I'd suggest 2400 or 2133 RAM is 2800 is still extraordinarily expensive. The Mushkins are the best buy here with 10-12-12-28 timings at 2400 and 9-11-11-28 on the 2133 (last week were $149)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226420
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226416
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226417

-I'd suggest 2 TB SSHD

-The EVGA SC is a "upgrade" if you will over the reference cooler / card. Personally, I would wait for the MSI.

MSI 780 Ti = 9.9 TPU rating
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_780_Ti_Gaming/29.html

EVGA 780 Ti - 9.5 rating
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/EVGA/GTX_780_Ti_SC_ACX_Cooler/31.html

-The Formula and Rampage are different boards .... The Formula is a great Haswell Z97 board and is currently selling only in the Watch Dogs bundle on newegg making it cost $50-60 more for a game you probably have.

-The Rampage IV is an LGA 2011 board which I would only think about if using more than 2 GFX cards. The 5930k is faster than the 4790k in more games than it's slower but marginally so....Asus is the way to go at $225 and up, below that MSI is the far better choice.... The MSI GD65 has the same feature set as the Asus Hero, same or better quality components but is $40 - $50 less.

Ummm..... He has two builds there.... and perfectly matched.

4790k w/ Maximus VII Formula
5930k with Rampage IV

OP listed Asus VII Formula specifically and mentioned the Rampage later on. Many a typo on the forums so I didn't know what he was talking about. Also I'm a mobile user that is currently walking around in the sun.

Everyone has a bias (obvious I like Asus) so I also like to post about consumer rating here. I personally believe MSI lacks in customer support and quality compared to Asus and I have seen many reviews supporting this claim. Like I said, this is from personal experience so I just don't deal with them anymore. Surprised that you don't have an SSD on there as well. I recommend Samsung 840 Pro/Evo.

RAM is RAM, I never cared for faster sticks.

I'm not saying for a terabyte or whatever. I mean a 128gb or so boot disk. You have no idea how fast it will make your computer. Then you can have an extra 2tb disk for whatever else. SSHDs are nice...

I picked up the double build immediately when I read

"MOBO (Motherboard) Asus ROG/ ASUS Rampage VII Formula"

saw the slash and thought OK he's considering two MoBo's .... makes sense as he listed two COus but the 1st one is RoG what ? Later on when I saw

"Asus ROG Mobo/Asus Rampage VII Formula" I figured it was a copy / paste error and concluded that the Formula part belonged before the slash.

"Asus ROG VII Formula Mobo/Asus Rampage " made more sense.

I have seen many posts without support claiming one company has better quality than another but no documentation supporting the claim is usually posted. It is however well documented that Asus has a higher RMA rate than MSI....that's just numbers and they are published so ez for anyone to look up on behardware site.

I used Asus MoBos exclusively for well over 10 years. But not only have the reviews changed, not only have the RMA rates changed, not only have other vendors seriously upped their component quality but Asus TS has greatly changed too....and some of it is not even handled by Asus.

My recent experience with Asus has been less than pleasant ..... on Son No. 3's build, MoBo failed and we were lucky in that the WS series is eligible for "premium" support. So they shipped us a new board before we had to send old one back. New one arrived but was so warped the I/O panel could not be fitted thru the opening in the case.... that was about a week before Halloween. XMas arrived and still no replacement despite dozens of e-mails and phone calls, they just couldn't get it done. Son rec'd about a half dozen games as Xmas presents but had no computer to play them on till mid January. BTW, all the emails from Asus were from "@Pegatron.com" and none seemed capable of solving the problem.

My Maximus VII Formula has been plagued with the Frozen BIOS Clock Freeze bug as has many other Z87 and Z97 users with no solution offered by Asus for well over a year now. They announced a fix which unfroze the clock only to have it return daya later. There's dozens of threads (mostly on Hero) on RoG Forums attesting to the problem, it turns up in user reviews on newegg .... eventually Asus a BIOS fix on June 11 stating that the new BIOS would be released in next day or two stating "RTC Stop Error Cured". No such BIOS has been released and now Asus denies that there is, was or will ever be a BIOS Fix. yet these threads still remain active. Lots of "I did this and it's fixed" posts, only to be followed by "I spoke too soon, it's back" posts.

http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?33895-Hero-Time-Clock-Problem
http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?46242-Hero-boot-shutdown-time-clock-error
http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?49989-VII-HERO-Clock-never-changes-hour
http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?49904-VII-Hero-Real-Time-Clock-Issues
http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?45079-BIOS-Time-Clock-not-Keeping-Correct-Time-or-Date
http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?35490-Sabertooth-Z87-Bios-Clock-Issue
http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?35490-Sabertooth-Z87-Bios-Clock-Issue
http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?36676-Frozen-Time-Clock-in-UEFI-The-Fix
http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?47956-General-issues-with-the-Maximus-Vi-Formula

As far as RAM being RAM, I like the RAM that is as much 10+% faster. As above, posts from "days gone by" oft get reposted as still factual when the reasoning behind them is long since outdated. When DDR3 first hit the streets, no reviewer ever said there wasn't any difference (At last no knowledgeable ones who actually did testing); what they said was that the increase in performance was not worth the increase in costs.

This was supported by somewhat "fuzzy logic" in that, as the argument went, "It isn't worth spending twice as much for $180 DDR3-2400 as it was for $90 DDR3-1600 which was only 2-5% slower. I have two beefs here:

1. The whole system goes faster not just the RAM. The proper comparison on a $1600 box would be that It's not worth it to spend an extra 5% to go only 2 - 5% faster. I have no problem with that logic.

2. But now we get to reason No. 2 and that is "Things change". As of Tuesday (last time I checked, the cheapest set of 16 GB RAM on newegg from any reputable vendor was the 2133 Mushkin set @ $149. The 1600 sets were $160. Yet when I included those sets in recommended builds, there was still posts in response suggesting that 2133 "wasn't worth it over 1600". Those that posted were still quoting reasoning based upon 2011 pricing structure.....the 2133 was in fact $10 cheaper but still hanging on to what they read 3 years ago.

As to the, there is no difference argument that still persists, yes it's true, ..... well sometimes it's true, mosty it's not. There are games that show no improvement from faster RAM. The graph below for Metro 2033 supports that argument well



Most games show a moderate improvement. Some games get big boosts ..... the STALKER series for example shows substantial benefits from faster memory. And sometimes games show some pretty incredible benefits....the graphs on the same page as the graph above speaks well to the other side of that argument

Here was see an 11% gain on F1 going from 1600 to 2400.....that's exactly the same performance boost between a 770 and 780.



So going back to that $1600 box, 8 GB of GSkill DDR3-2400 will cost me $78.30 at CAS 11 or the CAS 10s at $87.00

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231666
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231587

.... meanwhile a comparable set of GSkill DD%3-1600 will cost me $80

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231428

Lets forget the CAS 11 set and just look at the CAS 10 at $7 more....that's a 0.44% increase in system cost for the average 2-5% performance increase.,...and 11% in games like F1.

And while some would still consider 2%, 3%, 5% or even 11% inconsequential, the one thing that comes to mind that is even more inconsequential is the $7




It's the Maximus VII Formula that has the Z97 chipset, the Rampage hasn't quite made it to version VII yet:

The Rampage IV uses X79
The Rampage V uses X99

That's great.

Anyway, to answer your question static, you would make the SSD your primary drive (since you would have to choose it when going through windows install) and the OS will install on there. The second disk is for whatever else you want to put on there. I recommend looking up a guide on installing windows as there are some steps that may be unclear as well as tips to go about installing necessary drivers/software.

Well ya get a samalle rone and reserve it for what is most important. Here's the deal .....

-A good HD will boot ya machine in 21.2 seconds.

-Moving up to a 2 TB SSHD will boot you in 16.5 seconds.

-A SSD will boot ya machine in 15.6 seconds .... but most peeps pick 120/128 - 240 - 256 GB models.

Problem w/ an SSD is what fits on it and managing what goes where. Gaming won't see significant improvements if they are not also on the SSD.

I wouldn't buy a HD these days, SSHDs are only minimally more expensive and you reap most of the benefits of an SSD with none of the disadvantages.

As for moving up to an SSD, the question is .... is your experience going to be significantly affected by saving 0.9 seconds of boot time ? And then, what about your games ? Will these be relegated to a slow HD ?

So the two options I recommend are:

1. SSHD
2. SSD + HD

I haven't bought a HD in almost 2 years. The fin part about using he SSHD for games is that the algorithms automatically adjust according to usage so if playing Far Cry 4 for a month has resulted in all the Far Cry file sitting in the SSD portion of the SSHD, the algorithms will note that you have now started playing Witcher 3 and will move the Far Cry files to a slower part of the drive and put Witcher 3 files there.