New Enthusiast Build Plan

Slumy__57 · Feb 2, 2017

Just landed a new job, and I'm looking into doing a new system build. My brother has also been wanting to get himself a better PC, and I figure it's the perfect chance to sell him mine, and treat myself to a new rig.

This is primarily a gaming build, but I also do some work with virtualization, in addition to regular, everyday tasks. I am looking to make the move to 2k, and may pick up an HTC Vive soon too. A few of the games I play are Ark, CSGO, Just Cause 3, Battlefield, Forza H3, Battlefront, and GTAV. Ideally I would like to be able to play all of these at 2k and get at the very least 60 frames per second.

As for a budget, I am pretty comfortable(ish, haha) where I am at right now, I could probably go up a little more, but I'd like to stay below like $2500.

Here is the build I have come up with so far, I already have a spare Windows 10 key sitting around that I got through my school, so I won't be needing an OS for this build.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K 4.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($349.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H5 Universal 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($46.88 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus STRIX Z270-E GAMING ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($203.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($194.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 960 Evo 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($249.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB Superclocked Gaming ACX 3.0 Video Card ($594.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Inwin 303 Black ATX Mid Tower Case ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($99.99 @ B&H)
Monitor: Asus MG279Q 27.0" 2560x1440 144Hz Monitor ($489.00 @ Amazon)
Total: $2369.78
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-02-02 12:33 EST-0500

juanrdp · Feb 2, 2017

Switch the 850 EVO SSD for a proper M.2 2Gbps+ SSD (Samsung 951, Samsung 961 or something like that). You get almost four times the read thoughtput and two times write one.

Also, i would switch the monitor for a 3440x1440 one, even for 27' (altought i prefer 34')

The last thing, think twice about the water cooler AIO, if no clear reason a good air cooler (Noctua DH-15) is better because it offer a lot more MTBF.

hdmark · Feb 2, 2017

juanrdp :

everything he said ^^^
also very jealous

SgtScream · Feb 2, 2017

Normally I wouldn't tell you to get a nvme solidstate drive due to most users will never need read and write speeds that high, if all they are doing is gaming. However since you'll be running virtual machines and games, I would spend extra money to get a 1tb nvme m.2 drive, as running virtual machines will take up a significant amount of drive space. Once you factor in this and how new computer games are taking up almost 100gb in drive capacity each, you'll be glad you did.

Slumy__57 · Feb 2, 2017

So would something like this be a little better in the SSD arena? https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147594 I considered going for a terabyte SSD, but I typically only have one to three games I play frequently at one time stored on the SSD, so I imagine I'll never have more than 3 games on the SSD at one time.

As far as the monitor goes, I'm pretty solid on the resolution and screen size I want for now, this will be more for my competitive CS GO than anything, I plan on getting a bigger monitor sometime in the future. However, would it be worth looking into something with g-sync? I've done a little research, but I had a hard time finding something I liked within my price range.

Honestly, I got the water cooler for two reasons: aesthetics, and why not. I can't really see myself overclocking the i7, it's already more than enough processor for me stock. If an air cooler would be a far better option, then I could definitely switch that up. Would the Cryorig H7 be a good choice for the processor I'm looking at?

SgtScream · Feb 2, 2017

Slumy__57 :

In my humble optinion, yeah it will work but chances are you'll run out of drive space fairly quickly, running games and vms on it. If you can't go nvme at 1tb, then i'd suggest spending that money on a sata III 1tb solidstate drive. You'll still get excellent performance for your games and vms and most importantly you can plan on not running into capacity limitations for the next 5 years. Just think how much drive space games used to take up and what they are now. Then think about what they will take up in the future. A 1tb sata III solidstate drive should be a bare minimum. However, if you that type of person where you upgrade ever couple of years or buy a new computer often, then you can get away with the 512gb nvme drive.

King Dranzer · Feb 2, 2017

Here is the list:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K 4.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($343.89 @ SuperBiiz)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i GTX 70.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($102.99 @ Best Buy)
Motherboard: Asus STRIX Z270H ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($163.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory ($94.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial MX300 275GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($89.98 @ Directron)
Video Card: NVIDIA Titan X (Pascal) 12GB Video Card ($1200.00)
Case: NZXT S340 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($65.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: Corsair RMx 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($110.98 @ Newegg)
Monitor: Dell S2417DG 23.8" 2560x1440 165Hz Monitor ($419.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $2592.80
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-02-02 11:17 EST-0500

If you want a PC that could provide 60fps at 1440p for a longer time here is one.

You easily get 35% fps gain at 1440p in most of the games. For example in Witcher 3 If you were to get 75fps with GTX1080 you will be getting 95fps with TITAN X PASCAL which is a big jump. In time like after when your fps drop to 35fps with GTX1080 you will be getting a good 50fps+ with TITAN X PASCAL.

I provided 850W PSU because I left enough limit to upgrade the build by adding second TITAN X PASCAL in future if required.

Yes I skipped HDD because you can add the HDD as per the requirement down the lane. That SSD will last you months before it runs out of space. It can handle up 4-5huge(with addition to OS and some basic software) games on it.

g-unit1111 · Feb 2, 2017

juanrdp :

Yeah I completely agree, air is always better and safer than any liquid cooler.

So would something like this be a little better in the SSD arena? https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16... I considered going for a terabyte SSD, but I typically only have one to three games I play frequently at one time stored on the SSD, so I imagine I'll never have more than 3 games on the SSD at one time.

You can't go wrong with Samsung drives - they're some of the best on the market, and their M2 drives, while expensive are far superior to just about anything else you can consider.

Honestly, I got the water cooler for two reasons: aesthetics, and why not. I can't really see myself overclocking the i7, it's already more than enough processor for me stock. If an air cooler would be a far better option, then I could definitely switch that up. Would the Cryorig H7 be a good choice for the processor I'm looking at?

"Why not" is not the best reason for going for water cooling. Water coolers are far more likely to fail on you than standard air coolers are. And if you're not going to overclock very far, then there's no reason for one. You're better off buying a reasonably priced air cooler. It may not look as good, but you won't have to worry about replacing it at any point in the time you own your system.

Slumy__57 · Feb 2, 2017

I definitely see where you're coming from there, in fact I am already pretty close to filling up my current 480gb SSD. At this point, I'm thinking my best bet might be to go with the Samsung M.2 drive I linked earlier, and just move over my current 480gb SSD to the new rig. That'll give me 1 terabyte of flash storage, and after installing the 2tb spinning drive a friend gave me, I'll have 3 terabytes of disk storage.

Alright, I'll definitely switch over to air cooling in that case.

Updated build list:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K 4.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($349.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($34.88 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus STRIX Z270-E GAMING ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($203.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($194.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 960 Evo 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($249.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB Superclocked Gaming ACX 3.0 Video Card ($594.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Inwin 303 Black ATX Mid Tower Case ($89.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Monitor: Asus MG279Q 27.0" 2560x1440 144Hz Monitor ($540.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $2389.76
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-02-02 11:46 EST-0500

Slumy__57 · Feb 2, 2017

King Dranzer :

King, I appreciate the suggestion, but I think it's going in a somewhat different direction than I would like to go. I decided to switch over to air cooling, I will need the extra ram for virtualization tasks, I will definitely need more than 275gb of flash storage, I can't justify $1200 for a 35% FPS gain, and furthermore I don't really believe in futureproofing graphics cards and I fully plan on having to upgrade the 1080 in a few years, since I'm not running SLI, I won't need the 850 watt PSU, and I am looking to get a 27" monitor. And that, my friends, was a hell of a run-on sentence, haha.

I can't fault your build, and I can definitely see where you're taking it, but that's just not really what I'm looking for in this build plan.

King Dranzer · Feb 2, 2017

Slumy__57 :

King, I appreciate the suggestion, but I think it's going in a somewhat different direction than I would like to go. I decided to switch over to air cooling, I will need the extra ram for virtualization tasks, I will definitely need more than 275gb of flash storage, I can't justify $1200 for a 35% FPS gain, and furthermore I don't really believe in futureproofing graphics cards and I fully plan on having to upgrade the 1080 in a few years, since I'm not running SLI, I won't need the 850 watt PSU, and I am looking to get a 27" monitor. And that, my friends, was a hell of a run-on sentence, haha.

I can't fault your build, and I can definitely see where you're taking it, but that's just not really what I'm looking for in this build plan.

Yeh just provided different path to choose from.

g-unit1111 · Feb 2, 2017

Slumy__57 :

Yes, air cooling is always a much wiser decision than going with closed liquid loops. Most strong air coolers will provide near identical overclocking results that a CLL will provide. That looks like it will be a solid setup. There's only two things I would suggest. First is upgrade your cooler to an H5, and then swap your PSU with this: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438092 and you are good to go. Also don't forget the OS license.

Slumy__57 · Feb 2, 2017

Alright, I went ahead and applied all changes to the original post. And yeah, I haven't forgotten the OS, I have a spare windows 10 key still sitting around that I got through my college.

g-unit1111 · Feb 2, 2017

Slumy__57 :

Looks good to me! I say go for it.

juanrdp · Feb 2, 2017

Slumy__57 :

The problem is that there is a great "why not" of the wáter coolers (well, really is more tan only one)
- You need to pay more than doubly or triple the price for the same performance, most users get fewer performance because they have a determinate amount of money, the options you have are expend X to get Y performance on air cooling, expend X to get Y/2 on water or expend 2*X to get Y.
- They fail a loooot sooner than any air cooling system
- Usualy a total fault on a failure, the most common broken part, the pumps, when fail stop working almost instanly and in diference with a air cooler that continue working at degrade performance without fans the water coolers dont work at all)
- They fail a loooot sooner than air cooling, the pump fail at least 3 to 5 times sooner than the fans
- With an air cooler could replace only the fan, with the AIO filure its almost sure that you need to replace the whole system
- You have a risk (small but exist) that a improper move while accesing the pc or a failure could throw conductive coolant whithin the system.

The advantages:
- Extreme cooling (you dont get it with AOI) with settings like 360+240 radiators and or freezers to get sub-ambient wáter temperaturas (not yor case since you dont want to overclock)
- Aesthetics (your case)
- Posibility of almost passive cooling for PC (mine for example, i use a 360+120 setting to cool the CPU, with the use of the semi-pasive mode of the 1080 and also a pasive PSU until high loads and with the fans linked to a water temperature sensor to get a 100% pasive PC when not on almost full load)

If you balance the risk versus the advantages and it's ok for you, perfect. But i think that is better to known also the drawbacks and dont think only on the advantages (aesthetics in your case).

For you? i will allways choose a good looking air cooler (even if the performance is slightly under the Noctua as you want nice aesthetics), but that's my personal opinión.

And yes, i really like the system.

Slumy__57 · Feb 2, 2017

You definitely bring a lot of good points to the table. Yeah, I had never really taken an in depth look into the pros and cons of water cooling. My reasoning was that it looks good, it has good reviews, and it puts out good cooling numbers. I never really looked to far into the possible long term cons of a closed loop cpu cooler.

I've considered going open loop, but I'm not ready to get into all that with this system build. For this one, I think I'll just stick to the Cryorig H5.

g-unit1111 · Feb 2, 2017

Slumy__57 :

I totally agree with juanrdp on this one. Plus there's also a lot of hidden costs that go into liquid cooling when something goes wrong - and most manufacturer's warranties don't cover water damage.

King Dranzer · Feb 3, 2017

g-unit1111 :

As g-uniy111 said most manufacturers do not provide warranty support for water damage.

Corsair(India) do replace the other components if they are damaged by the water that got spilled from Corsair radiator. Probably same rules apply in US too.

That being the case.

Every thing has Pros and Cons. If you wanna go with Liquid cooling you can go if you wanna stick to air cooling it good. There is hardly 5-8C difference if look at high end Air Cooler and compare it with Liquid cooler. That 5-8C improvement only comes in handy if you wanna push your CPU to its extreme limits(not recommended unless you wanna add custom loop).

The only reason I feel liquid cooler are useful is for improving overall looks of the build.

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