2014 Gaming Computer. 1440P 120Hz. $1600'ish USA.

[TimKuchiki]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($209.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H80i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($89.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: ASRock Z87 Extreme3 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($109.99 @ Micro Center)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Z Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2400 Memory ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($80.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB Dual Classified ACX Video Card ($759.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($166.58 @ Newegg)
Other: Corsair Graphite Series 730T Black Steel / Plastic ATX Full Tower ($153.98)
Total: $1651.49
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-04-22 20:27 EDT-0400)

1. This build will be used for gaming only. I want it to push 1440P at 120Hz with this monitor. I will be buying 1 GPU straight away then the next when the monitor becomes available in June/July.

2. Is it really worth spending an extra $500-600 to get 2 780 Ti over 2 780? Will the difference in FPS really be that great? I don't plan on upgrading GPU for at least a year. Considering the next batch of GPU will still be 28nm. It will be a long time until there is something that is considerably better?

3. Anyone that has experience with VRAM usage on a 1440P. Can you tell me if 3Gb is going to be a limiting factor?

4. If you guys decide the 780 Ti's is a must. Will the 4670K be a *bottleneck* with two of them heavily overclocked? I was hoping for 1200 core / 7500 mem. Obviously this isn't a for sure thing with the lottery. Which is why I would buy the classified because they have the most potential. Also I would get the EVGA step up program if they get the 6Gb out soon.

5. Is a 1000W PSU enough for a heavily OC'd 4670K and 2 780 Ti?

6. How does this motherboard look? I always feel uneasy with buying a cheapish motherboard when I am going to be pushing components so hard. I am just trying to cut corners where I can.

7. Why does it say the RAM is incompatible with Haswell because it is running at 1.65V? I was under the impression that you were safe up to that voltage?

That is all I can think of for right now. Thanks for your opinions and help!

 

[g-unit1111]

1. A GTX 780TI will handle 1440P very effortlessly. 2 will completely destroy.

2. If you've got the money sure! I plan on getting a GTX 770 later this month.

3. That depends on how many monitors you ultimately plan to add. The bad thing is you don't want to game on two monitors because especially with first and third person games you don't want to have your view obstructed, which is what will happen.

4. Not at all. The term "bottlenecking" gets thrown around a lot and the real definition gets taken way out of context.

5. That EVGA SuperNova 1000W is an excellent supply and it's made by one of the best OEMs on the market (Super Flower). It should handle that setup without question. 1KW might be a little overkill but you could probably get away with 850W - 950W. The thing is the GPUs are what eats most of the power. Overclocking can when you start messing with the voltage, but you shouldn't have to worry about that.

6. I'd say pay a bit more on the motherboard and upgrade to the Z87 Extreme 6. You'll get 2 PCI x16 lanes and the board will be better suited for overclocking. Alternately consider the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD5H. If you're going to be pushing some hard overclocking you don't want to go cheap on the motherboard. And you don't want to skimp on the cooler either. The H80i is decent, but if you really want to push your CPU to the limit get a Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme or Cooler Master Eisburg 240L.

7. Intel motherboards from Sandy Bridge - Haswell require 1.5V, and anything else and the system won't work. Most AMD boards (especially APUs) use 1.65V. You can get away with 1.35V in some cases but for overclocking you want 1.5V. What is your overall budget?

 

[TimKuchiki]

1. A GTX 780TI will handle 1440P very effortlessly. 2 will completely destroy.

2. If you've got the money sure! I plan on getting a GTX 770 later this month.

3. That depends on how many monitors you ultimately plan to add. The bad thing is you don't want to game on two monitors because especially with first and third person games you don't want to have your view obstructed, which is what will happen.

4. Not at all. The term "bottlenecking" gets thrown around a lot and the real definition gets taken way out of context.

5. That EVGA SuperNova 1000W is an excellent supply and it's made by one of the best OEMs on the market (Super Flower). It should handle that setup without question. 1KW might be a little overkill but you could probably get away with 850W - 950W. The thing is the GPUs are what eats most of the power. Overclocking can when you start messing with the voltage, but you shouldn't have to worry about that.

6. I'd say pay a bit more on the motherboard and upgrade to the Z87 Extreme 6. You'll get 2 PCI x16 lanes and the board will be better suited for overclocking. Alternately consider the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD5H. If you're going to be pushing some hard overclocking you don't want to go cheap on the motherboard. And you don't want to skimp on the cooler either. The H80i is decent, but if you really want to push your CPU to the limit get a Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme or Cooler Master Eisburg 240L.

7. Intel motherboards from Sandy Bridge - Haswell require 1.5V, and anything else and the system won't work. Most AMD boards (especially APUs) use 1.65V. You can get away with 1.35V in some cases but for overclocking you want 1.5V. What is your overall budget?

I don't plan on getting more than one monitor. At $799 a pop they are WAY to expensive for more! I switched out the H80i with the Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme. It is slightly cheaper, and reviews say it performs as good if not better than H100! Good catch! Next, I took a look at the motherboards you linked, the Gigabyte doesn't have PCI Express 3.0 x16: 2? Why? Don't I need dual x16 if I am going to take full advantage of SLI 780 Ti? I replaced the RAM with this. I didn't know that Haswell was so limited with RAM speed compared to my Ivy. : /

ASRock Z87 Extreme6

ASRock Z87 Extreme6/ac

GA-Z87X-UD5H

What is the difference between the Extreme6 and Extreme6/ac besides the one has PCIe 3.0 x16?

 

[g-unit1111]

I don't plan on getting more than one monitor. At $799 a pop they are WAY to expensive for more! I switched out the H80i with the Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme. It is slightly cheaper, and reviews say it performs as good if not better than H100! Good catch! Next, I took a look at the motherboards you linked, the Gigabyte doesn't have PCI Express 3.0 x16: 2? Why? Don't I need dual x16 if I am going to take full advantage of SLI 780 Ti? I replaced the RAM with this. I didn't know that Haswell was so limited with RAM speed compared to my Ivy. : /

ASRock Z87 Extreme6

ASRock Z87 Extreme6/ac

GA-Z87X-UD5H

What is the difference between the Extreme6 and Extreme6/ac besides the one has PCIe 3.0 x16?

Yeah they're all going to be about the same. Your GPUs really won't perform any differently if they're connected to x8 vs. x16. x16 will take full advantage of the cards' speeds. I'm told by some users that X79 has full dual x16 support but X79 isn't worth the investment for a pure gaming rig.

That RAM is decent, but this would be far better: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231654

 

[TimKuchiki]

I don't plan on getting more than one monitor. At $799 a pop they are WAY to expensive for more! I switched out the H80i with the Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme. It is slightly cheaper, and reviews say it performs as good if not better than H100! Good catch! Next, I took a look at the motherboards you linked, the Gigabyte doesn't have PCI Express 3.0 x16: 2? Why? Don't I need dual x16 if I am going to take full advantage of SLI 780 Ti? I replaced the RAM with this. I didn't know that Haswell was so limited with RAM speed compared to my Ivy. : /

ASRock Z87 Extreme6

ASRock Z87 Extreme6/ac

GA-Z87X-UD5H

What is the difference between the Extreme6 and Extreme6/ac besides the one has PCIe 3.0 x16?

Yeah they're all going to be about the same. Your GPUs really won't perform any differently if they're connected to x8 vs. x16. x16 will take full advantage of the cards' speeds. I'm told by some users that X79 has full dual x16 support but X79 isn't worth the investment for a pure gaming rig.

That RAM is decent, but this would be far better: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231654

I thought you said that Haswell CPU can't handle above 1.5V?

EDIT: Yeah I don't think I should go X79 right now. Looking into the future. I am going to probably upgrade CPU when the new one come late 2014 or early 2015. That will require a new motherboard and hopefully dd4 ram.

 

[g-unit1111]

I thought you said that Haswell CPU can't handle above 1.5V?

EDIT: Yeah I don't think I should go X79 right now. Looking into the future. I am going to probably upgrade CPU when the new one come late 2014 or early 2015. That will require a new motherboard and hopefully dd4 ram.

Oh yeah duh. That's what I get for pulling the first link off Newegg! :lol:

This would be better: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233528

Don't let the store reviews throw you off, the one review I saw I don't think the reviewer knew what they were talking about.

X79 is definitely not a wise investment right now. The i7-4XXX series are pretty decent (but not worth it for gaming), and apparently Haswell-E is going to be using an entirely new platform called X99 but we won't see those until late August or early September at the latest.

 

[TimKuchiki]

I thought you said that Haswell CPU can't handle above 1.5V?

EDIT: Yeah I don't think I should go X79 right now. Looking into the future. I am going to probably upgrade CPU when the new one come late 2014 or early 2015. That will require a new motherboard and hopefully dd4 ram.

Oh yeah duh. That's what I get for pulling the first link off Newegg! :lol:

This would be better: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233528

Don't let the store reviews throw you off, the one review I saw I don't think the reviewer knew what they were talking about.

X79 is definitely not a wise investment right now. The i7-4XXX series are pretty decent (but not worth it for gaming), and apparently Haswell-E is going to be using an entirely new platform called X99 but we won't see those until late August or early September at the latest.

Alright. I got the RAM in. I think I have decided to go with the ASUS MAXIMUS VI HERO. It seems like a more quality unit that can stand up to abuse compared to the Z87? I also did some research on the 16x vs 8x. The difference in speed is literally 1-3 FPS. You already know this but here is a picture to demonstrate.

You think it will be a tight squeeze fitting 2 780 Ti in there? I intend to max out my case with optional fans so them being close shouldn't effect temps to much?

 

[g-unit1111]

Alright. I got the RAM in. I think I have decided to go with the ASUS MAXIMUS VI HERO. It seems like a more quality unit that can stand up to abuse compared to the Z87? I also did some research on the 16x vs 8x. The difference in speed is literally 1-3 FPS. You already know this but here is a picture to demonstrate.

You think it will be a tight squeeze fitting 2 780 Ti in there? I intend to max out my case with optional fans so them being close shouldn't effect temps to much?

Yeah you won't notice much if the second card is running in x8. The motherboard isn't going to make a huge difference unless you get into some serious nit picking with overclocking results. I think the Maximus is overrated, IMO. I would stick with the Asrock or Gigabyte personally.

 

[TimKuchiki]

Alright. I got the RAM in. I think I have decided to go with the ASUS MAXIMUS VI HERO. It seems like a more quality unit that can stand up to abuse compared to the Z87? I also did some research on the 16x vs 8x. The difference in speed is literally 1-3 FPS. You already know this but here is a picture to demonstrate.

You think it will be a tight squeeze fitting 2 780 Ti in there? I intend to max out my case with optional fans so them being close shouldn't effect temps to much?

Yeah you won't notice much if the second card is running in x8. The motherboard isn't going to make a huge difference unless you get into some serious nit picking with overclocking results. I think the Maximus is overrated, IMO. I would stick with the Asrock or Gigabyte personally.

Alright. I haven't built a PC in two and a half years so I am going to take your advice about Gigabyte but not the GA-Z87X-UD5H. I have been looking at the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 5 . It has some really nice features. All the reviews I have read say it is a quality motherboard but the Newegg reviews seem to say otherwise. Just another random question. What is a good OC for 4670K? As of now the cart looks like so.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($199.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Thermaltake Water 3.0 Extreme 99.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($85.98 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte G1.SNIPER 5 EATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($239.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory ($89.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($80.99 @ B&H)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB Dual Classified ACX Video Card ($759.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($166.58 @ Newegg)
Other: Corsair Graphite Series 730T Black Steel / Plastic ATX Full Tower ($153.98)
Total: $1777.49
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-04-23 17:41 EDT-0400)