Upgrading Machine, Gaming and Moderate Engineering Use.

dan1668

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Dec 10, 2010
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Hey all,

Any help on this would be great! :)

Why Are You Upgrading: Current AMD rig is about 5 years old and I need to update it.

Approximate Purchase Date: e.g.: ASAP or next year depending on response

Budget Range: Upper mid range components (no need to go overboard)

System Usage: Gaming and Engineering Programs (CAD/CAM/FEA *don't need insane specs)
All the apps I shall be using are CPU intensive, but I don't need anything higher than the proposed intel CPU. Ram wise I plan to update it to 32 gb in the future.

Parts to Upgrade: CPU, mobo, ram, heat sink?, and ssd.

OS: Windows 7 Professional (already have)

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: Amazon (Have Prime) or w/e is in the USA

Location: USA, So CAL

Parts Preferences: intel 4790K, (2x 8gb) gskill ram, 7+ sata slots

Overclocking: Yes / Maybe

Additional Comments: Essentially I'm not sure what type of mobo I should be aiming for with that type of processor. Also how the ram speed differences will effect my performance 1800 vs 2400 basically.

For now, I'm not trilled by the current selection of video cards, so I shall hold off until a later future date, but that also brings another question: will the next gen cards all be PCIE 4.0? If so then would I be better off waiting till they come out?

I shall also swap out the gaming card with a quadro when I want to work, but I know it wont be a major issue.

My case has very good air control and I have no reason to replace it, additionally I have a 800 watt modular psu.
 
Solution
Mobo - ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 - 10 sata 3 ports - http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z97%20Extreme6/?cat=Specifications

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($317.85 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($89.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 EXTREME6 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($139.99 @ Micro Center)
Memory: G.Skill Trident X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory ($134.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $682.81

pcie3.0 will be around for some time.

Mobo - ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 - 10 sata 3 ports - http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z97%20Extreme6/?cat=Specifications

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($317.85 @ OutletPC)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($89.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 EXTREME6 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($139.99 @ Micro Center)
Memory: G.Skill Trident X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 Memory ($134.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $682.81

pcie3.0 will be around for some time.

 
Solution

dan1668

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For the sake of SSD's I'd like to sink about $350 at most in it.

I have an engineer POC at WD who's getting me %35 off anything they sell ;), so I'm getting 4x 4TB WD Red NAS drives with 2x in this: My Cloud EX2100 (if the reviews turn out to be good)
@ raid 5 and the other 2 in my desktop as independent drives.




good to know thanks! :)




Thanks, Ill take a look at these. I was torn between an ASrock and ASUS.

Also for the water cooling, do you have any sugguestions on a 120mm equiv(EDIT: MY bad those are 120mm)!!?



Again,
Thanks everyone. Ill look at this in the morning.
 

gregbattis

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The nas is really good idea. As for the ssds keeping it under 350 you could raid0 2x 850 pros.
 
Some comments:

1) GPU:
I'm not certain, but I think you can have both the Quadro and Gaming cards installed at the same time physically and swap between them in software. You definitely don't want to be physically moving them very often since it's a hassle and breaking something is very likely if done a lot.

(Ideally you would have the monitor attached to the Gaming GPU and be able to tell your video editing programs to use the Quadro from within the program settings)

Which GPU is hard to say. For the GAMING card it really comes down to budget and the games you plan to play. Without delving into all the pros and cons I'll simply recommend these:

$125 GTX750Ti 2GB http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-video-card-gtx750tioc2gd5 (light/medium gaming)

$200 GTX960 2GB http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-02gp42966kr

$232 R9-280X 3GB http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-video-card-gvr928xoc3gdrev3

$330 GTX970 4GB http://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-04gp42974kr

2) DDR3 difference:
Beyond 1866MHz CAS9 is very unlikely to give any real-world difference.

3) Windows 7:
*It's not transferable unless you have a FULL version which is unlikely. If it's installed on your current system it's almost certain you need to buy a new OS (Windows 8.1 64-bit OEM).

You can install W7 fine, but if it's non-transferable then Activation will fail so you can only fully use the PC for 30 days. Microsoft has a list on a server for every activated PC which specifies details about your PC especially your SOCKET TYPE. You can change a lot of things but a new socket means a new PC.

Ifyou do have W7 I'd upgrade to W10 later. I'm not certain if W7 to W10 can be done whilst keeping your progams as well. You can with W8 to W10 but then W10 is largely based on W8 code unlike W7.

4) CPU cooler:
I don't recommend liquid coolers at all. My top choice is the Noctua NH-U12S air cooler which is about $60 to $65. Why? It's silent in basic usage and very quiet with the i7 at full load.

Liquid coolers are much more prone to fail due to the pump and other things so should mainly only be used if an air cooler can't do the job. The Noctua can, is cheaper, more reliable, and quieter.

5) PCIe v4?
It's a non-issue.

*I'll make a system and put it below.
 
Recommended parts:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/fQGrhM

1) The CPU has an iGPU if you don't want to buy a gaming or Quadro card right away.

2) Samsung Magician software is one reason I highly recommend SSD's. Simple to update firmware, benchmark, apply profile etc. It's unclear whether making a RAID setup will make much difference in the real world since the bottleneck when doing video editing is likely the CPU anyway. RAID0 is slightly less reliable though.

3) Don't forget to download setup fan control from motherboard site and setup to minimize noise. If possible attach case fans as well.

4) I strongly suggest Acronis True Image and setup to automatically backup your C-drive on SSD to an HDD. I have it automatically done weekly, incremental, and delete older backups.

5) With a single 250GB SSD one option is to partition in TWO with Windows on one half and use the second half as a temporary work space for video files. Then, store the video on your HDD and copy over when you wish to edit.

125GB (before formatting) should be well over what you need for basic Windows, programs etc but for GAMING I'd strongly suggest installing those on your HDD such as:
a) Steam-> install to C-drive but create a Steam folder on your HDD (E drive?) and install games to there not C-drive. It's very easy to do that.

"E:\Steam2"

b) Other games-> "E:\Games"

Cheers.

OTHER:
If you have STEAM games already you can move them to the new machine rather than re-download. Simply install Steam and I think you can just copy over the Steamapps folder. I did it myself and it worked fine. SAVE GAMES are mostly in your "Documents" folder so you'd need to find and copy those unless the game has saves on your Steam cloud (start game first to see).

If using the 2nd Steam folder as I suggest you need to create that folder to have a Steamapps folder to copy the files to. That's located at:

Steam-> Settings-> Downloads-> Steam Library Folders-> "Add Library Folder"

Alternatively you can make game BACKUPS and RESTORE them to the new machine (backup a game, copy game backup to new machine and choose restore in Steam and find the game to restore). I can't think of a reason to use this method over copying the games in the Steamapps folder though.
 

dan1668

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GPU wise, I'm using a 560 GTX, so I'm fine with that for now. OS wise, our work allows us to get MS office and OS's for a discounted rate.

Thanks again!