New Build 2017 Case?

Atterus · Jan 4, 2017

Hello all!

So here is the build I am planning on: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Atterus/saved/P6nQ7P

Naturally depending on what happens tomorrow things are subject to change but I have been wanting to upgrade for a while from an older machine in a mid-tower (770 SLI, i5 2500k OC). Largely thanks to a new job I can afford to not cut corners this time around (second personal build, but fifth computer built).

I am looking to build a machine for both high-end gaming and heavy computational work with enough stability to lessen the chance of losing any work (I backup, but losing even a day of work is a huge pain).

Most of the components I'm set on. But the component I'm really torn on is the case, which I do like the space of a full tower since playing with my mid tower can be a hassle sometimes. I've heard good things about the HAF X, but I also know there are some newer cases that may be better suited to keeping the system cool (I plan on an average OC, I don't push it but with a k series I see no reason to run stock). Anyone have suggestions?

As always, any comments are welcome and while I have resources to build a "dream machine" I don't need anything over the top, just reliable and as "future proof" as I can get for now (thus the reason my monitor is only a 1080 144Hz intended to run with a 1080ti... not gonna need a upgrade for a while it sounds like XD ).

Thanks all!

JackNaylorPE · Jan 4, 2017

1. What constitutes 'heavy computational work" ? Are we talking video editing / rendering / animation where more threads will be a benefit ?

2. The HAF-X was a great case ... in it's day... and that day was about 6 years ago.

3. The best case of 2015 was the Enthoo Evolv but that precludes the use of a 5.25 drive bay which you have in your build. My favorite case for a build with up to 2 GFX cards and with air or AIO water cooling is the Enthoo Luxe. It has a new version with tempered glass side panels that belongs in an art gallery. It's been reviewed all over the place but not yet dropped onto store shelves.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=enthoo+luxe

http://themodzoo.com/2016/10/phanteks-enthoo-luxe-tempered-glass-edition-review/5/

I have done several builds in the Luxe... can't wait to do one in the TG edition.

As for the build ... things you might consider before pulling the trigger:

1. Cooler: For $10 more you get a superior cooler with two fans that can be color matched to your build. That Noc only has one fan and if you put Phanteks fans on a Noctua cooler, CPU temps drop by 3C while the Phanteks fans are spinning 33 rpm slower... at the same 1200 rpm, the Phanteks fans on Noctua cooler are > 6C cooler

Phanteks PH-TC14PE
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/qX6BD3/phanteks-cpu-cooler-phtc14pe

Another option is the Swifech All in Ones which are basically an assemblage of custom loop components that someone pre-assembled for you. Unlike CLCs, you get strong 1+ gpm pumps, copper rads, ability to expand loop for cooling say GFX card, yada yada yada...

http://www.swiftech.com/h240x2.aspx

You can also grab the Ti version of one of these and connect it to the Swiftech

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127952

But it has to be said, the right card for 1080p is the 1060.... if the next purchase in line is a 1440p gaming monitor, the Ti makes sense but if you gonna stick with 1080p, even the 1070 is too much

2. MoBo - Bleeding Edge guy huh ? I never recommend buying the 1st stepping or two of any new MoBo line.... bugs are always present which are fixed in later steppings. You also will go thru several BIOS generations before they clean all the bugs outta that to... which will usually involve retesting and tweaking all your OCs. for Z270, I'd wait till mid April / early May if you want to avoid buyer's remorse.

As fir the choice of the hero... before pulling teh trigger , I'd look at boards from Gigbayte and MSI in this price range. The Z170 Hero wasn't exactly well rec'd for a board in this price range according to board owners who posted on newegg with just 2 in 5 giving it 5 eggs and 1 in 5 giving it 1 egg. The Alpha version did worse with 29% giving it just 1 egg. Asus seems to have invested a lot in improving component quality so again, I thinka 'wait and see" approach is best so that you not onlt get past the 1st stepping boards but also we get to see what boards are well recived and which are not.

3. Great choice 3200 RAM at 2400 price.

4. Be aware that drives 3 TB and larger have particularly high RMA rates. Overall, we can see that everybody has comparable failure rates. The number below are for the most current 6 month data collection period with the previous 6 month period is ( ):

Seagate 0,72% (contre 0,69%)
Toshiba 0,80% (contre 1,15%)
Western 1,04% (contre 1,03%)
HGST 1,13% (contre 0,60%)

At 3 TB, it starts getting a little dicey ... the following two groupings are for 4 Tb and 5/6 TB

3,04% WD Black WD3003FZEX
2,89% Toshiba DT01ACA300
2,29% Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD ST3000VN0001
2,23% WD Red Pro WD3001FFSX
2,18% WD Green WD30EZRX
1,52% Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 ST3000DM001
1,41% Seagate NAS HDD ST3000VN000

2,37% WD Purple WD40PURX
2,02% WD Red WD40EFRX
1,89% Seagate Desktop SSHD ST4000DX001
1,53% Seagate Desktop HDD.15 ST4000DM000
1,04% Seagate NAS HDD ST4000VN000
1,02% WD Blue WD40EZRZ

3,42% Toshiba Toshiba X300 5 To
3,37% WD Red WD60EFRX
2,67% WD Green WD60EZRX
1,43% WD Red WD50EFRX

We've not installed a HD in 6 years... only 2 TB SSHDs with no failures to date.

As for the backup issue we tackled that on my last build by going RAID 1 on the SSHDs (and RAID 0 on the SSDs) ... I broke both arrays 3 month later ... performance was no better and the RAID 1 wasn't doing anything that alternate solutions can't do and w/o all the management hassle.. Now we have twin 2 TB SSHDs installed and one backs up to the other starting at noon and 6 pm in the background making a mirror image w/ F-backup. This way if the drive becomes unaccessible, you can just access the other one without doing a restore.

6:00 - Q:\ CAD Drawings
6:15 - R:\Technical Data
6:30 - S:\Graphics Multimedia
6:45 - T:\Confidential - Personal Data

5. Phanteks has the best fans on the market based upon performance / noise ratio. See chart here:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1345-page7.html

At one point, my son had (9) 140mm installed (3 top, 2 front, 1 rear, 2 bottom and 2 on air cooler) + a 120mm on the back of the HD cage, blowing air in between the 2 GFX cards. Only noise that came from the PC was the fan on the EVGA G2 1000 ... it was replaced but new one has same noise.

6. Hold off on the PSU selection until we see just ho power hungry the AIB 1080 Tis are. The 180 w TDP 1080s drew 200 watts in gaming, and could hit peaks of 250 ... before overclocking. Assuming a 20% increase allowable for the power limit, you might see peaks of 300 watts ... so best wait and see what happens ... I don't think it will be that high.

Zerk2012 · Jan 4, 2017

Most of that just looks overpriced.
From the information I have seen the 7700 is going to be slmost a nothing upgrad from the 6700 clocked to the same speed.
For the vidro card yoy can buy a GTX 1070 put the other 400 bucks in the bank and by the time you need a new card for the 400 buy one with better performance that what your going to buy. The tech on video cards changes so fast that is not a spot to try to future proof.
For not being able to loose any work then the old fashion raid 1 makes more since. Their also programs to back up work as you do it.
For work programs why not the 6 core 6800K.

Atterus · Jan 4, 2017

Thanks for the inputs.

The heavy computational work is MATLAB scripts and some other various code I use for work that has speeds directly tied to the processor frequency (and drive speed which is where the big SSD comes in). Those processes do benefit from hyperthreading so I prefer getting the i7 series over the i5 since it does cause some limitations on my current build. Effectively, for a balance between getting my work done quickly and still having good single core performance for most games I have typically leaned towards fewer, faster cores at home. I should clarify that my home computer is a supplemental to a much larger machine in a lab, so while this new machine *should* be able to do work, it will mostly be used for games regularly and occasionally is tasked with a intensive job that doesn't need the large machine (tests, experiments prior to scaling up). Thus the interest in the 7700k since it seems to have excellent OC capabilities. I'm not sure what the benchmarks are between the 7700k and the 6800k, but that is a separate issue to me relating to the MB.

[strike]What I'm honestly a bit more interested in with respect to the CPU is the related Z-270 motherboards. Since I can afford it, I figured I might as well get a 7700k since it is designed for the Z270's over the 6700k which I acknowledge is a fine CPU still and not a big step down. That was more a consideration based on "wanting the latest Motherboard tech" since my first build initially had issues when I was pairing an ancient MB with newer tech. This way, I could eventually upgrade to an Optane SSD or even a newer processor since I'm guessing the Z-270 will be the next standard for a while without having to get a whole new MB.

Thus, I'm set on most of the parts except for the case. I had no idea the HAF X was old XD I've been looking at some of Phantex's stuff but never seriously, I have to admit that new case does look appealing. Are there any real advantages of the new one over the old one other than looking like a ferrari?
[/strike]
[strike]Edit: Gah! Just noticed the rest of your post Jack XD I only saw 1-3 XD Looking at the rest now...[/strike]

Edit 2: Well then... consider myself educated XD I had no idea the HAF X was that old.

I'll still ask if the newer Luxe will have any advantages aside from looking fancier? Still, I'll be looking at the Phantek stuff since you seem to enjoy them and can back them up too.

1. Switched... no competition it looks like. I'm still wary of the water cooling stuff so I'm avoiding that for now. I may change my mind if a friend decides to give it a go and I can watch them.

With the GPU, ya. I don't plan on upgrading right away to a new monitor, but the next planned upgrade is the monitor so I figured I would grab the ti. Ultimately, I probably cycle again in another five years so would it be more prudent to simply get a high end 1080? If that should be capable of playing anything at max on 1080 until the next major shake up I would be a happy camper. I'm still young and stuck in the "bigger is always better" mindset

2. Yeah... mostly because I didn't want to bother with the firmware upgrades on the Z170's for the 7700k :/ That and the handful of features that seem like they would be useful later down the road. I don't think I want to wait for a few more months though, I've been planning for over a year and realizing I need to just do it already. If it is more sensible to do a 6700k on a Z170 I can do that, but if the Z270 would only pose a mild chance of problems I like to think I'm lucky. I'd probably stick with the Code though if the last Hero was unfortunate.

3. Thx!

4. I didn't know that... Anything about the gold series though? I'd imagine it's similar, but doesn't hurt to ask I guess. Maybe I'll just get three 2TB if there is that kind of attrition and go through the hassle of organizing them all. I'm trying to avoid RAID since it seems like more effort than I'm willing to put in, but if there isn't a way around it I can bite the bullet. Or, the only reason I was wary of going only SSD was because I hear the read/write puts a strain on the drives and the work I do does a *ton* of read writes. If modern SSD's are not as bothered by that anymore I'd reconsider to a SSD only build.

5. You sir, may have won over a new Phantek customer

6. Yup! That PSU was there mostly as a place holder. It was based on the assumption of using a Titan XD

JackNaylorPE · Jan 4, 2017

The i7 makes perfect sense over the i5, but the question is what happens when you move to a platform that supports even more threads ... looking at system requirements on their web site, it doesn't ask for much (just 4 cores) ... only that AVX is recommended.

Did note that RAM recommendation is 4 GB "per core".... are we talking i7 w/ 32 GB or 8 cores with 64 GB

I certainly understand the logic of getting latest tech, the problem is ... it's basically "beta tech" for the 1st 3 or 4 months.

Each Phanteks case, with just one exception I can think of has won "Case of the Year" honors at Computex and that exception was they came out with multiple cases in the same year and ya can't have two winners. I used to have a set of 4 or 5 cases that I kept for recommendation to users, but now it's really hard for me to find something more appealing in just about any category ... and I am talking from an air flow, ease of installation, cooling options, cable management and aesthetic standpoint. It doesn't hurt that the come with up to 5 of the best fans on the market. Of course many vendors have since emulated many design features into their own designs but Phanteks always seems to do a little bit more and sell it for a little bit less.

With regard to your MATLAB work ... is it similar to our CAD work were we are basically working on the same 3-4 projects at a time and then one finishes and a new one gets added / or are you working on new projects every day and never opening the same files on Tuesday that you used on Monday. In our stuff, we see no impact from using the SSD versus SSHD.

Atterus · Jan 4, 2017

Thanks Jack, you clearly have more experience than I do.

Definitely 4 core with 32 GB RAM. I'd love to go more nuts, but the price and hardware upgrade paths seems to get more restrictive at the ultra high end

Phanteks do keep coming up when I was rummaging around for a case, I'll give them a hard look if you recommend them so highly. It sounds like they have the main considerations I care about, with a price tag that isn't nuts.

With the drives, we definitely have seen a impact between the two. We end up having files shared and moved thousands of times and accessed a ton of times so the SSD was a big improvement over platters when we started using them (pattern recognition, big sets of data that are reused and queried over and over by different jobs). For the at-home stuff, it comes down to just balancing what I would end up needing here for work (the SSD) and enough space for the ever size increasing games along with the stability (HDD). Thus, the reason at work we have a tally of the appx reads and writes on the SSD so we can swap it before killing it XD. But I don't know if I'll ever reach that or if the newer SSD's have circumvented that problem (or never was to begin with).

JackNaylorPE · Jan 4, 2017

I think if I understand what you wrote correctly, you see a big difference between HDs and SSDs

HD Boot time = 21.2 seconds
SSD Boot time = 15.6 seconds .. so yes that's about a 25% reduction

SSHD Boot time = 16.6 seconds, so that's less than 1 second... that's not a big impact.

What I mean is this ... the SSHD puts a small SSD on a big HD.....so if you are loading and working on this this big project at home for say Monday and Tuesday ... then by the time Wednesday rolls around, the algorithym says "Hey Atterius is loading these files frequently of late, let's push some files off the SSD portion that he hasn't used in a while and put all the files he has been using of late on here"

So whatever you are using frequently gets put on the SSD ... and what you don't gets moved off to the slower mechanical portion ... all w/o user input. In my office, if I am working on a Bakery design on Monday, I may open one or two other jobs to do edits but for the most pat, i working on the same 2-3 jobs until they're done. So all the files for any projects I work o in a given week are mostly on the SSD portion and I benefit from that speed. When i start a new job, after the 3rd time I load the project, the new job's files "push off" stuff that I haven't looked at in last few weeks.

So getting back to you.... if you are loading the same MATLAB projects pretty consistently, you will fly ... opening 8 different jobs a day avery day every week with never the same ones, then no it won't help you much

Atterus · Jan 4, 2017

Ah! I get what you mean. SSHD is a "hybrid" drive correct? Yeah, I have not looked at those too much yet, but I think the Gold 6TB is a hybrid though (*with a really small cache). It has a NAND cache at any rate. Thinking about it that way does make getting a hybrid more sensible though, I think I know what the next drive in both this and our lab machine is going to be... I could have sworn there was some reason I avoided hybrids though, it could have been when I was looking at the HAF X and the tech was still new XD.

Yeah, I was only referring to comparing SSD and HD, I forgot there were hybrids XD

Mmm... I'm kinda lost on the storage side then XD I guess either getting only hybrid drives without the M.2 makes sense? But then it seems like the Hybrids tend to be a bit smaller with the exception of that 6Tb Gold which apparently is a hybrid (for some reason it is the only one with a SSD cache... seems odd). I know I want around 4Tb, the 6Tb was originally chosen because it was the first of the Golds to get "special features" as far as I knew and I wanted to consolidate the number of drives on my home machine. I suppose something like a smaller M.2 (like a 150 or 250) for the open world games and then hybrid drives for everything else would be correct? Its sounds like I would want the OS on the Hybrid to free up an SSD if I had one. Again, the new information has thrown my worldview into chaos. Curse you relentless march of technology! *shakes fist*

*EDIT: Looking at the SSHD's available, are they all at 5400rpm currently? I don't know much about hybrid drives, but while I hope to use the SSD/SSHD for work, I was also hoping to put the open world games on it too.

JackNaylorPE · Jan 4, 2017

It's a media thing .... A headline that reads "new tech is same ole same ole" won't sell any magazines or result in click bait based ad revenue. No one wants to read past the 1st 3 sentences and if you do a detailed post about any topic, the responses will usually include a "I fell asleep reading that post comment". Few want to develop a deep understanding of a complicated issue, most want to just be told what to believe.

I used to enjoy reading or listening to William F. Buckley who was a conservative columnist and commentator who would expound on issues in detail listing both pluses and minuses and debating with people with opposing views with intelligence, respect and insight ... now it's all name calling and yelling because it gets the biggest impact when everything is limited to a 15 second sound byte cause that's how long the listener's attention span is.

You are one of the few people in a position to actually benefit in any significant way from the faster speeds of SSDs... the problem is that the performance advantage of the SSD is dwarfed by the user. I'm a bottom line kinda guy ... will the legal secretary type any more briefs in her workday if we put an SSD in her machine ? I use AutoCAD and was a time that it was very storage intensive writing files to disk between almost any action so I used fast SCSI drives and i could see the impact .... nowadays, I don't see that anymore. If it write an 8 MB file to disk do I care if it does so at 150 MB/sec (0.053) or 481 MB/sec (0.016) ? What can I accomplish in that 0.036 seconds that I saved ?

The only thing I could do on our test rig that has an impact was backups....let's say making a copy of XXX GBs of files takes 11 minutes on the SSHD and 3.6 minutes n the SSD ... certainly I could benefit in some way from that extra 7+ minutes right ? Only if ya wake me up cause I'm sleeping when that happens

Gaming is the biggest draw i guess and for example I saw Witcher 3 video where SSD was 15 seconds faster (41 vs 26) than on a HD ... well 1st thing that's gotta be said is that's not an SSHD. Is that a significant impact ? ... if you sit and stare at the screen, obviously ... but is that the typical scenario ? When I finish working and am prepared to do some gaming, I close the work files, launch the game and then am in a position to ...

a) Stare at the screen
b) Open iTunes and pick some background music
c) Run to kitchen and get a snack.
d) Launch CCleaner and get rid of excess space
e) Open Afterburner and select higher GPU profile.
f) Take a bio
g) Answer a question on THG.

Point being if I am going to be inconvenienced for 26 seconds, I am going to want to do something in that time ... at my age, f) is most likely

Another way to look at it is as a business ... if you play say 5 days a week, and stare at the screen every time, you'll use up an hour of your life. Or with a typical 4 year lifespan, call it 3 hours, if I am paying you $30 an hour, spending $100 on that SSD saved me $20 ... or does it ? Did you do anything productive in that 15 seconds ? if you finish your task at sat 4:59:45 pm, do you undertake another productive task in that 15 seconds till quitting time or do ya just shuffle things around ya desk for a few seconds put on ya coat and go ?

In short, what I am saying is there's two ways to look at performance .... what the machine is capable of doing and what you and the machine are capable of doing. Video editing, animation, rendering all benefit from fast storage subsystems...because you are constantly having to write to disk to flush RAM and read more data as you progress. What most folks do on their PC doesn't fall into that category because the user has to continually supply input and just can't keep up. Your the 1st person I have met with MathLab and I don't have enough experience to know what typical file sizes are and how it uses CPU resources.

Curious ... how is ML performance affected by GPU capability... Open GL, Open CL, CUDA etc ?

Also should mention AVX will spike ya CPU voltage and temps.... using RoG Real Bench w/ HWiNFO, RB will stress the CPU while HWiNFOR monitors temps and voltages. The 3rd test in the RB stress test uses AVX instruction sets and i saw my Vcore voltage spike from 1.38 to 1.44 ... with peaks to 1.48 and even over 1.50 for short ms bursts. You'll want to know how your overclock stands up here voltage and temp wise when AVX is present.

Atterus · Jan 5, 2017

Thanks for all of the help.

Taking all of your points into consideration, I decided to go with your suggestions, especially since you seem to be more of an expert on the subject than I am. It also is saving me a pretty penny so thank you.

Matlab is actually affected pretty strongly if you enable the CUDA options, I usually don't since the big machine is only using a small dedicated card for other 3D applications we use off and on.

Atterus · Jan 9, 2017

[strike]I appreciate the help you gave me with the build, but the sink didn't work. It does claim that it is compatible with 115"x" but when I tried installing it, there was clearly a mismatching which made me none too happy (bad part? I was baffled as to how the sink couldn't seat despite the bracket being fine). So, I went ahead and am returning the Phanteks and sticking with the Noctua U-14S single tower since it succinctly claimed "1151" compatibility and the Phanteks had some clearance issues anyways (fixable, but concerning). Sorry

Thanks for the advice though! Full refund and all and saving money even with overnight shipping so no real harm done aside from having to redo the thermal paste.[/strike]

Edit: So... it turns out that you just have to be a bit more forceful with the block than I'm used too... The pins that come through the MB are a bit loose so you have to jiggle them a little to match the block's attachment... Consider me cowed.

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