Thoughts on a $3000 Computer?

[CCapG]

Hello TomsHardware,

The computer's initial task was to be able to do video encoding, some AE, Photoshop and a bit of gaming all in one. Now, although the total was $3000, I should note that about $700 of that was left into putting the whole system under water with a custom loop. The reason that I did decide to put so much of the budget towards water cooling the entire system was simply because of everything that will be coming out in Q4 2014 / Q1 2015. This will be including the x99 Motherboard chipsets, the Haswell-E platforms for socket 2011, as well as DDR4 Memory (Which actually comes out Q1 2014, but won't be very stable until closer to 2015). Keeping all of this in mind, when it did come time to upgrade to all of these new parts, I wanted a kickass cooling solution to be prepared for everything it will entitle.

Here you are with the details of the build, keeping everything hyperlinked.

CPU: Intel i7 4770k ($350)

Motherboard: Asus Maximus VI Formula ($330)

Video Card: EVGA Superclocked 780 3GB (x2) ($550 per card) ($1020 Total)

RAM: G-Skill Trident X Series 16gb DDR3 2400 CL 10 ($175)** I chose this over other options to better suit the color scheme of the build.

SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB ($190)

Case: Corsair Obsidian 750D ($160) ** After a lot of speculation between this and the 900D

Optical Drive: LG Black Blu-Ray Burner ($70)

Total (w/o Cooling): $2295 *Retail*

Cooling System:

CPU Block: Swiftec Apogee HD ($70)

360mm Radiator: Alphacool NexXxoS XT45 Triple Rad ($80)

Pump: Alphacool VPP655 pump w/ EK D5 X-Top pump top ($136)

GPU Block: XSPC Razor GTX 780 Water Block ($115 Per Block) ($230 Total)

Reservoir: Phobya Balancer 150 Gold Plated ($35)

Compression Fittings: Monsoon 6 Pack Green ($36 Per set) ($72 Total)

Tubing: Primochill PrimoFlex advanced LRT tubing Blue ($25)

Fans: Cooler Master SickleFlow 120 Green LED Silent Fan ($11 Per Fan) ($33 Total)

Cooling Total: $681

Final Total: $2976

EDIT: Something I had forgotten to aforemention was the fact that I already have a 1300w Rosewill Lightning a friend of mine purchased for a build, but never got the chance to put together. He threw it my way for essentially the cost of shipping the thing across the country. Also, I have a 3tb Seagate Barracuda that I purchased during black Friday. I got it for approx. 90 USD and couldn't pass that up.

I do hope that you all like the build, if you don't, tell me what you would do to improve it.

//CCapG

 

[deadlyghost]

Perfect... Just you forgot to add the PSU... !! For PSU get Corsair HX-1050 Modular... Best PSU to get as it is best for stability, hardcore operations, gaming.. On newegg you could get it for $220..

One more thing, will the one 250GB SSD suffice? I suggest you to get WD Black 1TB HDD for storage of data with the 250GB SSD... Because as you will install more and more in the SSD it will be full and you would need another SSD or HDD so better to get a HDD with SDD...

Rest everything is fine..

 

[Marcopolo123]

750w-850w is plenty

would get asus hero

would start with one gtx 780 ti

would get the phantek primo case

 

[CCapG]

Something I forgot to point out in the thread above was I already had a 1300w PSU from an older build a friend of mine disassembled and sold for parts. I also have a 3tb Seagate Barracuda for storage at the moment.

 

[g-unit1111]

i7 does nothing for gaming and you don't need to spend that much on a motherboard. Anything over $250 on a motherboard is complete overkill.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($229.99 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: MSI Z87 MPOWER Max ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($230.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory ($82.05 @ NCIX US)
Storage: OCZ Vector 150 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($134.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($87.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB Video Card ($699.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Silverstone FT02S-USB3.0 ATX Mid Tower Case ($254.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III 1200W 80+ Platinum Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($278.98 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.00 @ Amazon)
Total: $2103.93
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-04 18:15 EST-0500)

Gives you room for a powerful 3-way SLI setup while not splurging on the motherboard too much, and still gives you plenty of room for a killer cooling setup (not listed).

 

[CCapG]

I see what you are saying, but i am not using my system purely for gaming. I am using it more for things along the lines of video encoding as well as Adobe After Effects and software similar, which is why I really need the Hyper-Threading of an i7 as compared to an i5. As for the motherboard, I am using the Formula simply because 1. It has a fantastic on-board Audio Solution that personally I don't feel as though I will need to upgrade for quite a while. Not only this, but it comes with a great On-Board wireless card which runs 802.11ac / Dual Band which my router operates on. This in turn will save me the needed time to install an additional $50 wireless card (which I'll no longer have to)that I would have to purchase anyways to pick up the desirable 5GHz connection I like to operate on.

As for the RAM you selected, I need more Gigabytes of memory-- probably leaning closer to 32GB simply because I will be using my computer for Video Encoding, as well as many other heavily threaded applications. The more RAM I can operate on with a faster speed, the better.

As for the SSD You've Selected, I'm getting a great performing SSD operating with 130GB More space for only 50 Dollars more. The Samsung EVO Operates on the same sequential read/write times as the pro, with the pro beating it on random/sporadic read/writes.

For the Video Card I really do not like operating on anything more than Dual-SLI as to they don't really scale well, and you don't get your desired performance out of the money you are spending. You could save up that money and put it in somewhere a little better such as saving for the new generation of Motherboards, Processors, as well as Memory Modules.

For the Case, I am going to stick with Corsair's Obsidian series as to I am a really, really big fan of their optimal cable management setups, and have worked with the Obsidian series more than a few times in the 650D.

As noted above, I already own a Power Supply, useless to buy another eh?

Per my personal desires, I am going with a blu-ray drive no matter what seeing as to it's a difference of only $50 in a $3,000 computer build.

 

[deadlyghost]

Hey sorry for late reply...

You should get the i7 if you really do works which require hyper-threading...
for the SSD go for Samsung EVO or EVO Pro...
The RAM you chose is good but I would go for Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400MHz 16GB(2x8GB)...
Corsair obsidian cases are perfect and I highly recommend them...
Do not buy another PSU...

and the ASUS Maximus VI formula is good...
There you then got a perfect floor-wrecking high end gaming beast...

 

[CCapG]

@deadlyghost The only reason that I wouldn't go with the Corsair Vengeance Pro is their timings flat out suck. 11-13-13-35 is way to slow for the speed of memory. I would probably go Corsair Dominator 2133 Just so I can get much better timings, the ability to upgrade leaving 2 dimm's left so I can eventually run 32GB as well as the Dominator series overall is a sexy ram kit.

 

[g-unit1111]

I see what you are saying, but i am not using my system purely for gaming. I am using it more for things along the lines of video encoding as well as Adobe After Effects and software similar, which is why I really need the Hyper-Threading of an i7 as compared to an i5. As for the motherboard, I am using the Formula simply because 1. It has a fantastic on-board Audio Solution that personally I don't feel as though I will need to upgrade for quite a while. Not only this, but it comes with a great On-Board wireless card which runs 802.11ac / Dual Band which my router operates on. This in turn will save me the needed time to install an additional $50 wireless card (which I'll no longer have to)that I would have to purchase anyways to pick up the desirable 5GHz connection I like to operate on.

If you're using your system for other tasks I can see where the other threads would come in handy, especially for Adobe After Effects. If it was strictly a gaming system I would say to go with the i5 any time. I'm personally not a fan of Wifi on desktops, use the LAN connection that's already built into the motherboard and route your router through that instead.

As for the RAM you selected, I need more Gigabytes of memory-- probably leaning closer to 32GB simply because I will be using my computer for Video Encoding, as well as many other heavily threaded applications. The more RAM I can operate on with a faster speed, the better.

Well most Z87 systems can support up to a max of 32GB of RAM, if you need anything more you're probably looking at X79 with an i7-4820K.

As for the SSD You've Selected, I'm getting a great performing SSD operating with 130GB More space for only 50 Dollars more. The Samsung EVO Operates on the same sequential read/write times as the pro, with the pro beating it on random/sporadic read/writes.

The Vector 150 is one of the fastest on the market, read - write times exceed that of the Samsung 840 Evo and come close to matching the 840 Pro.

For the Video Card I really do not like operating on anything more than Dual-SLI as to they don't really scale well, and you don't get your desired performance out of the money you are spending. You could save up that money and put it in somewhere a little better such as saving for the new generation of Motherboards, Processors, as well as Memory Modules.

Then maybe do something like this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i7-4820K 3.7GHz Quad-Core Processor ($313.98 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme 99.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($109.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock X79 Extreme6 ATX LGA2011 Motherboard ($224.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance Pro 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-2133 Memory ($374.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: OCZ Vector 150 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($134.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($145.00 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB Video Card ($699.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: Corsair 750D ATX Full Tower Case ($139.99 @ NCIX US)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $2158.90
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-01-08 12:56 EST-0500)

As noted above, I already own a Power Supply, useless to buy another eh?

What PSU do you already have?

Per my personal desires, I am going with a blu-ray drive no matter what seeing as to it's a difference of only $50 in a $3,000 computer build.

You could but why would you? I know my own PC has a BD-R drive but I use mine more for backups than I do for playing games and watching movies. Optical drives are no longer becoming a necessary purchase since everything is moving toward cloud computing and online distribution - you know things like iTunes, Steam, Origin, Hulu, Netflix, and so on and so forth. Even the new consoles only use the drives for installation and verification of software ownership, and that's about it.

 

[CCapG]

I have spent approximately the past 3 and a half months deciding on what parts to buy, since my current laptop really has been letting me down. I have spent these three months going over synthetic benchmarks, as well as going over personalized benchmarks for the software and how they would perform in applications such as Photoshop, Sony Vegas Pro 12, Adobe After Effects, etc.

The results of me doing all of this research really made me go hands down with the 4930k. It was the fastest processor in just about every single benchmark I looked at (excluding the overpriced 4960X). Then, I found out some information about this upcoming year and all of the new parts it entailed, such as the new 800 Series Video Cards, the X99 Motherboard Platform, the new Socket 2011 Processors, as well as the New DDR4 memory modules. I had kept ALL of this in mind when I had put together this system, and tried to make it not only the best for what I needed, but something that would leave me with room to still upgrade. Of course, I do know that price-wise, I am still spending $3,000. Let's get into why I selected each part once more, since I really didn't go into depth in the last one.

First, Processing and Motherboards.

The 4930k was my first choice of processor. Seemed like a no-brainer since I was going to be using it for Video Encoding and AE, right? WRONG. The reason being, the x79 Platform is almost 2 years old, and there is confirmed to be a new motherboard platform in as little as 10 months to a year. Sure, they are supposed to run the LGA 2011 socket anyways, but buying an LGA 2011 processor now is honestly a waste. Quad Core on LGA 2011 just isn't that effective, showing in many of the benchmarks I read. Next year they also will be releasing the new 5000 Series processors. Including the LGA 2011 5820k and the 5930k BOTH of which will see an increase of Two cores and some clock speed. I would like to note I will be purchasing one of these as well. This really invalidates the whole argument of "Oh, just stay with a LGA 2011 Processor so all you have to do is make a simple upgrade to your motherboard." or "Oh buy an x79 Motherboard so all you have to do is upgrade your processor." Since I will be buying both.

All of this left me with the 4770k and a low-end motherboard so I can upgrade. Yet-- a friend of mine and I made a deal that he would buy the parts off of me once I do upgrade to the newer-generation products. That's why I selected the motherboard that I did.

Next, let's cover Video Cards.

Initially I was going to run two 780ti's in SLI, but in reality, that limits what I can do with 3k to just about nothing. I then decided that I would rather purchase two 780's in SLI since they would overall be more powerful than the one 780ti. I will be upgrading just about every other component of my computer so instead of just buying one ti right now and upgrading later, it really is just one less component to worry about in the future. I was going to consider going with 290x's since they run better in really, really high end graphics setups, the issue being that right now AE and Sony Vegas only accept nVidia cards for GPU acceleration, which I would like to take advantage of.

RAM:

Ram isn't something I'm too concerned about. As long as is has decent timings and as much speed as I can get for 200-250 then I'm fine with it. For the color scheme I was going to rock with the Corsair Vengeance pro, yet the timings are horrid. 11-13-13-35? No thanks. I'd rather pay the premium for Corsair Dominator Platinum's than pay all that money for those timings. As far as total Memory goes, at the moment I don't really need to go with
Moving onward to SSD's.

I wanted something that would be REALLY, really fast. Of course, I also wanted a lot of space on it since I have intentions of installing a lot of software and games onto it. Sure, I would probably be able to fit most of my games into the 120gb area, yet all drives to see an increase of performance when there is more storage available. Besides, when it comes down to it, we are talking about a few seconds here. Personally, I don't want to pay a premium for a few seconds- at least not right now.

Power Supply:

This I didn't really put any thought into. A buddy of mine was going to put together a rig, and found out that he wouldn't be able to afford the same PC anymore, and thought it would be a waste to have such a high-end PSU. I bought him a new 750w PSU for his rig and we swapped. He didn't want to tell his parents he wasted money on one, so we just worked that out.

HDD:

Very similar reason, I saw it 50% off on Black Friday, and just bought it. No questions or thought put into it.

Case:

I'm a fan of the Corsair Obsidian Series so I was considering the 900D, yet after a few arguments, I have decided that I would rather put all of that money elsewhere.

//CCapG

 

[g-unit1111]

The 4930k was my first choice of processor. Seemed like a no-brainer since I was going to be using it for Video Encoding and AE, right? WRONG. The reason being, the x79 Platform is almost 2 years old, and there is confirmed to be a new motherboard platform in as little as 10 months to a year. Sure, they are supposed to run the LGA 2011 socket anyways, but buying an LGA 2011 processor now is honestly a waste. Quad Core on LGA 2011 just isn't that effective, showing in many of the benchmarks I read. Next year they also will be releasing the new 5000 Series processors. Including the LGA 2011 5820k and the 5930k BOTH of which will see an increase of Two cores and some clock speed. I would like to note I will be purchasing one of these as well. This really invalidates the whole argument of "Oh, just stay with a LGA 2011 Processor so all you have to do is make a simple upgrade to your motherboard." or "Oh buy an x79 Motherboard so all you have to do is upgrade your processor." Since I will be buying both.

All of this left me with the 4770k and a low-end motherboard so I can upgrade. Yet-- a friend of mine and I made a deal that he would buy the parts off of me once I do upgrade to the newer-generation products. That's why I selected the motherboard that I did.

So why not the 4820K? The 4770K is a great choice for what you want to do but the 4820K will give you the ability to work with motherboards that will allow for 64GB RAM as opposed to Z87's 32GB limit.

Initially I was going to run two 780ti's in SLI, but in reality, that limits what I can do with 3k to just about nothing. I then decided that I would rather purchase two 780's in SLI since they would overall be more powerful than the one 780ti. I will be upgrading just about every other component of my computer so instead of just buying one ti right now and upgrading later, it really is just one less component to worry about in the future. I was going to consider going with 290x's since they run better in really, really high end graphics setups, the issue being that right now AE and Sony Vegas only accept nVidia cards for GPU acceleration, which I would like to take advantage of.

I'm not a huge fan of the R9s right now - if I had the cash I'd sell my 7870s for a 780TI without even remotely thinking about it. Sure the price is great, but the driver and heat instability issues associated with those cards has me shaking my head and wondering why anyone would want one.

Ram isn't something I'm too concerned about. As long as is has decent timings and as much speed as I can get for 200-250 then I'm fine with it. For the color scheme I was going to rock with the Corsair Vengeance pro, yet the timings are horrid. 11-13-13-35? No thanks. I'd rather pay the premium for Corsair Dominator Platinum's than pay all that money for those timings. As far as total Memory goes, at the moment I don't really need to go with

And that's why I very rarely recommend building around a color scheme. A lot of users here think it's great and I tend to agree if you can pull it off. But when it comes time for upgrading that's when you run into problems. I personally wouldn't pay the money for the Dominator Platinum because of how ridiculous RAM prices are (they're like 2 - 3X higher than normal RAM, and RAM is 2x higher than it was at this point last year).

I wanted something that would be REALLY, really fast. Of course, I also wanted a lot of space on it since I have intentions of installing a lot of software and games onto it. Sure, I would probably be able to fit most of my games into the 120gb area, yet all drives to see an increase of performance when there is more storage available. Besides, when it comes down to it, we are talking about a few seconds here. Personally, I don't want to pay a premium for a few seconds- at least not right now.

The Vector 150 and the 840 Pro are still the best SSDs you can buy on the market. There's a few other good ones from ADATA, Sandisk, Plextor, Corsair, but none match the 150 or the 840 Pro in terms of ultra fast read write times.

I'm a fan of the Corsair Obsidian Series so I was considering the 900D, yet after a few arguments, I have decided that I would rather put all of that money elsewhere.

Yeah I agree there. Get the 750D and put that back into other components.

 

[deadlyghost]

Oh yeah I just completely forgot the timings of the Pro series and hell yeah you can get Corsair Dominator series that has better timings...

 

[CCapG]

The only debate I am having right now is between the 4820k and the 4770k. Honestly, I would prefer to have the 4th generation Haswell Architechture over something such as the Ivy Bridge-E platform. Yet, the 4820k does have 2 more mb's of l3 cache which would help me in tasks such as the ones that I will be trying to complete. So when it all comes down to it, it will leave me with my selection of motherboard.

Personally, there is not a single board on the market that is sexier (don't know how you're technically supposed to spell that, but whatever) than an Asus Maximus VI Formula with the ROG Armour. Sure, there are better motherboards out there that might be able to hold up with a better value, but aesthetically you cannot beat it. If I was to stick with the LGA 1150 platform, then I would be restricted to only 32 GB of memory, yet, I wouldn't see myself upgrading to that much memory anyways for a few more months. I would probably just stick with 16 for now. If I ever had intentions of upgrading to more than that, it would be with my new x99 motherboard and Haswell-E processor. The motherboards that operate on x79 chipsets just aren't that appealing to me for the money. The board that might be able to content with the Formula is the Rampage Black edition, which I will not consider getting anymore since it really is a bad value. Anything above the Formula-ish range is just for bragging rights and nothing more.

So what will I end up with? Probably LGA 1150 with the 4770k due to the Motherboard options, as well as the fact that I won't be able to utilize anything more than 32 gb's of memory for a while.

If anyone has any more insight as to why I should purchase the 4820k over the 4770k please, please do so. I always like a good discussion, and I like to see things from a different vantage point.

Thank you

//CCapG

 

[CCapG]

Something else that should be kept in mind is that the TDP would not be an issue since I have a 1300w PSU already purchased. So if you were going to argue that, that might be able to negate something, it really doesn't matter since I already will be putting either processor under water.

Just something I thought that you all should keep in mind for argumentative reasons.

//CCapG

 

[deadlyghost]

See the stock frequency of i7 4770k is lower than 4820k.. and 4770k has AVX2 / F16C / FMA3 instructions,
Integrates HD 4600 graphics... while the 4820k has little high stock frequency and does not have some instructions... In both the CPUs you have to use quad channel memory... That means you have to buy 4 sticks of memory that will enable quad channel...

While in video editing and multi threaded operations also there is not much difference in both...
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i7_4820k_processor_review,11.html
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/63119-intel-i7-4930k-i7-4820k-ivy-bridge-e-review-6.html

See this-
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i7_4820k_processor_review,15.html

In this just by 1 the i7 4770k is better than the i7 4820k which is negligible... I would say to get the i7 4770k as it is worth the money... For a 64 GB of memory you would not spend $90 more on another processor right? And for your system and requirements I think 32 GB of memory would be enough..! Like 4x8GB quad channel memory...

If I were to get a processor then I would get i7 4770k rather to spend more on a processor for more memory options...

 

[CCapG]

Well, with the 4770k, that operates on the LGA 1150 platform which would take Dual Channel Memory. Whereas the 4820k Operates on Quad.

Because of the selections I have for Motherboards is limited based off of what chipset I run, I am 98% Sure that I will be getting a 4770k.

//CCapG

 

[deadlyghost]

Yes 4770k will run on a dual channel while you need quad channel for a 4820k... Yes you should go with the 4770k which is slightly better than 4820k and worth the money..