I am going to build my next super PC Please tell me your thoughts

BaZZa101

BaZZa101

Posts: 8   +0
Hi all,
I am in the process of building my next super PC lol. My last one lasted 7 yrs but is now out of date, has been for about a year now. Point form 1 are the ones that I have most interest in then 2 then 3 last.
MotherBoard :
  1. ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
  2. GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-Gaming 6 (rev. 1.0) LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
  3. ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Professional Gaming i7 LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
CPU :
  1. Intel Core i7-6700 8M Skylake Quad-core 3.4 GHz LGA 1151 BX80662176700 Desktop Processor
  2. Intel Core i7-6700K 8M Skylake Quad-core 4.0 GHz LGA 1151 91WBX80662176700K Desktop Processor
  3. Intel Core i5-6600K 6M Skylake Quad-core 3.5 GHz LGA 1151 BX80662156600K Desktop Processor
CPU Cooler:
  1. DEEPCOOL Gamer Storm CAPTAIN 240EX White CPU Liquid Cooler AIO Water Cooler Ceramic Bearing Pump Visual Liquid Flow 120mm PWM Fan Deep Silent Support LGA 2011-v3
  2. DEEPCOOL Gamer Storm CAPTAIN 360EX White CPU Liquid Cooler AIO Water Cooler Ceramic Bearing Pump Visual Liquid Flow 120mm PWM Fan Rubber Coating Deep Silent Support LGA 2011-v3
  3. SILVERSTONE TD03-E Durable High Performance AIO Liquid CPU Cooler with Dual Adjustable 120mm PWM Fans
Memory :
  1. GelL EVO FORZA DC 32 GB (2x16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3000 (PC4 24000) Memory
  2. GelL EVO FORZA DC 16 GB (2x8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Memory
  3. G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2x8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Intel Z170 Platform Memory
Graphic Card :
  1. GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1070 DirectX 12 GV-N1070G1 GAMING-8GD Video Card
  2. GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1070 DirectX 12 GV-N1070WF2OC-8GD Video Card
  3. GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1080 DirectX 12 GV-N1080G1 GAMING-8GD Video Card

Power Supply :
  1. LEPA MaxBron B1000-MB 1000W CrossFire Ready Power Supply
  2. Cool Power CP G980 Gamer 980W Quiet ATX PCI SATA Blue LED 120mm Fan Power Supply
  3. 975W Modular Connectors ATX Silent 140 Fan Power Supply
Concerns...
CPU. I like #2 but I am concerned that it has L3 Cache 8MB shared. I know that it has no fan but I am replacing the cooling unit with a liquid based one.
MotherBoard. I like #1 because it has 2 internet ports that will work as one which should give me twice the DownLoad speed. (Dual Intel® LAN
Users are able to connect two LAN cables to this motherboard's rear I/o. Dual LAN with Teaming function enabled on this motherboard allows two single connections to act as one single connection for twice the transmission bandwidth, making data transmission more effective.) Now I don't know if this is for general internet stuff or only online Games.
At first I was looking for a MB that had e-sata on it as I have a e-sata/usb HDD tower but the tower works fine on current system via usb3 connection. I was also thinking about finding a MB that I could run Ubunti or similar on it natively. But I don't think that these options are important anymore.
Memory. I would like to have 32GBs on board because I can. I have added extra memory on other systems that I have built but found that it always came out best if I installed a whole new set (8Gb) and not just the upgrade (4Gb). I know that at present there is no real benefit between having 8Gb compared to 16Gb. I feel that 16Gb would have to be the least amount of memory on any new PC today.
Graphic Card. I cannot see any difference bar price between the GTX 1070 and the GTX 1080. In fact I cannot see any difference between all three.

What I have and want to achieve.
I don't play team online games but am thinking about it.
I like playing solo shoot them dead games.
I enjoy a little bit of graphics work and like to have 200 tabs open in Browser.
I run two monitors and a few external HDDs and a HDD Tower all with own power supplys.
I have a huge UPS unit to clean the power.
I want to run VR in the future.
I want to run my OS (Win XP, Win 7, Win 10) in VR SandBox, not all at once though.
I will be installing a 500Gb SSD or two.

So I am looking for any advise as to what you all think. You might know something that is better or something that will work better together.
Many Thanks
 
Hi there! You've got some pretty good choices there, hard to go wrong with any of them. I'm more interested in hearing about what you ended up choosing and why.

I would say that there is no reason why you have to get such a large power supply, but there is also nothing wrong with getting an oversized powersupply. For what you're trying to build the largest you want to buy is 700.
 
I am getting such a big Power Supply is because of the simply way that PSU works.
The output of any PSU is affected by the temperature that it is forced to run in.
The output supply of any PSU is really just not the truth.
Things like what PC peripherals are install will also effect that draw of power from the PSU.
I had to update my current system with a better PSU about two years ago when I started to use 2Tb HHDs.
The old PSU was a 750W which in real terms was about a 550W and while it was handling 4HHDs totalling 2.5Tb in storage and the Graphics Card and 2 DVD CDRoms it started to play-up a little bit when I replaced 1 HHD with a 2Tb HHD.
When I replaced another HHD with a 2Tb HHD, well it was not working very good at all. Strange intermittent problems all of the time.
This was when I learnt a bit more about PSUs.
It is important that there is more POWER to the +12V output connectors then to the other connector types.
It is important that you look at the MAX output figure at what temperature. 350W @ 40c is better then 350W @24c.
I live in Victoria Australia and it is hot here most of the time.
It is also recommended that you choose a PSU that will run your PC MAX load @ 50%(-/+ 10%) of the PSUs MAX load.
When I was doing my research into a PSU I was actually looking for a 1500W unit but decided on a min of 900W.
So one could say that I found out the hard way that not all PSUs are what they say they are.
I know that my old PSU was most likely using the older power Project spec's but regardless of that I have learnt something new.
 
While I use to write Business Computer Programs years ago, I have not traveled down that path as I decided that Computing was just a Hobby for me.
What I would like to do now is go into Running OP's in a Virtual Setting and even playing some Non-Internet Games in a Virtual Setting.
I am semi retired now and would like to go back into programming and would like to do that in a Virtual Setting as well.
So I am trying to see if others believe that the system that I want to build will do what I am hopping to do with it. I have no knowledge is running a Virtual computer.
 
So I'd like to start off by saying that I am a HUGE advocate of having an oversize power supply. However, the computer your going to be building is going to be using, at most, 500W. It'd say it's a safe bet that your computer really wont use anymore than 400Watts, harddrives included. You're looking at ~70W for the CPU, ~100 for the motherboard and ~180W fora GTX 1080, then throw some harddrives in there because why not.

So you want this powersupply because you think having an oversized powersupply will mean overall system durability. There is some truth to that idea, but that's not the whole story.

The correct approach to this is to instead of spending money on more watts, you spend more money on better internal PSU components. All they're doing when they increase the wattage on a PSU is they add capacitors and coils, but that does not mean they are good capacitors or coils. What ends up killing power supplys is the electrolytic capacitors inside. Coils don't go bad, resistors don't go bad, the circuit boards rarely fail. When buying a PSU to last you want to be sure of your capacitors. For your system, a 700W 80+titanium PSU will DESTROY just about any 1000W+ powersupply in a lower efficiency group.

You want a powersupply that will last 10 years in hard conditions and still have room to spare? Buy this
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817256162&ignorebbr=1


Also, a bit of a side note. There is a wattage range on PSU's where they achieve maximum efficiency, too far under and your efficiency goes WAY down. Something else to note about these components, they are designed to be underload. Being used while not under load can change the chemistry inside the capacitors and cause them to fail sooner. You aren't going to be gaming 24/7 on this thing. Fact of the matter is that maybe half of this computers life it will effectively be idling while you're doing things like web surfing. In idle you will use less than 100watts. If you get a 1000watt PSU and for half of it's life it is under <10% load you run the risk of damaging the capacitors. This, again, can be reduced or avoided by buying a PSU with higher quality components.

Realisticly you only need a 550W or 600W. 700W would be the max I would go. When I talk power supply wattage I'm talking about the best PSU in it's class. So don't think I'm talking about some $35 rosewell 500w PSU. If you aren't spending atleast $100 on your PSU you're wasting your money.
 
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Another point to make as I just recently built a new i5 system for my father is don't get terribly set on your RAM choice until you have chosen a motherboard. I say that because RAM isn't near as fickle (or motherboards are) as they used to be, and who you purchase from may offer some bundle discounts. I got a MSI board for my dad and newegg had a free 8 gig stick of RAM with it if I bought - so I checked out that RAM and it seemed alright, so I bought a second with it, so I essentially got 16 gigs for the price of 8, all I had to do was switch from what I originally intended.

Another thing to consider is going with a board that supports the M.2 drives and using one of those as your primary drive. You can still use traditional SATA SSDs as program drives. But think of it as now a 3 tier speed system rather than just "fast" and "ok for media and large games". You could put your OS and all very frequently used programs on the M.2. Then you could put less frequently used programs or games if you game on a SATA SSD. Then load up everything else on the super inexpensive per TB spinny drives.

You talk about liquid cooling, but I would just ask you to re-visit why you want to do that. Do you just simply want the look and performance of liquid cooling, or are you going to be trying to push your CPU beyond stock speeds? If you run at stock to slightly faster, even in hot environments the stock cooling is going to be fine (that might get some pushback from people around here, but I've literally never seen stock cooling inadequate for stock speeds to say 10-15% overclocks). I ran a notoriously hot Athlon Thunderbird at a 10% overclock on stock cooling for 6 years before either it or the motherboard died (never figured out which one gave up, because I literally didn't care in 2005 when it finally did give up).

Something that you haven't mentioned is the case. Case styles vary greatly and you may be happy to re-use the one you have. I'd just encourage you to look around at what is available now and see if there is something even better. Its incredibly nice to work on a machine with a well designed case. Cable management, airflow, looks, accessibility are all factors to consider.
 
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Ok I have looked into the M.2 thingy and it sounds good :)
I have noticed that some MoBo's seem to have M.2 onboard. Others mainly have just one M.2 slot on the MoBo and others have two M.2 slots on the MoBo.
MoBo's with this support seem to be about A$250 ~ A$600 which is still fine.
I now have 4 MoBo's that I think would be a good Base.
  1. GigaByte - GA-Z170XP-SLI
  2. Asus - Z170-DELUXE ** I like this one **
  3. MSI - MSI Z170A XPOWER Gaming Titanium Edition
  4. Asus - Z170-WS
The other thing that I noticed was that if I wanted to install Win7 I would have to install extra drivers for the M.2 to work.
So with this in mind I am thinking that will Win7 work on these M.2 MoBo's in a Virtual Environment?
.
One of the important things that I wanted to do at the very least was to run Either Win7 or Win10 in a Virtual Environment.
I am not even sure that I will be able to run WinXP in a Virtual Environment as the MoBo's won't support WinXP.
.
What I like on a MoBo.
  1. The Dual LAN ports as I would like to have another PC just downing some DownLoading and Storage and I believe that I can set this up as so as to have one port connected to the Net and the other port connected to the over PC (networked directly).
  2. The WiFi & BT4.0 connectors (WiFi thing optional extra) I would rather have direct WiFi connections rather then Router WiFi connections.
  3. The Gaming Device Port as I would really love a mouse that does more then just move the cursor around the screen.
  4. Front USB support and HeadPhone jack.
.
So I can say that I am not interested in Hard Core OverClocking. A bit of OverClocking is ok as the MoBo's now make their boards to be OverClocked a bit. So a lot of functions on the MSI board would be totally wasted on me.
.
So a question that I feel needs to be answered is the running of OS's in a Virtual Environment. Feasible or Not.
The other question would be in regards to the Duel Booting of M.2 drives. I know that to get the PC to boot from a M.2 drive one needs to install Windows on to a PC with only that M.2 Drive present (so that it will tag it as "C" drive) but I have seen nothing about duel booting from 2 different M.2 drives. I talk about 2 different drives because the older systems only allowed for one OS per physical drive (so I assume the same still applies).
.
This is getting a bit in-depth and I feel that maybe I should be asking these questions in another section on the board, I don't know how the rules apply to this.
.
I would really like to thank you all for your current support, it has opened up a whole new line of thought.
Looking forward to further comments :)
 
I can't speak to windows 7 support for M.2 drives since I have only tried it with Windows 10. I would expect that it works, but I don't know for sure.

For running Windows 7 or XP in a virtual machine, that is totally fine and it won't care at all about the drive setup as that is all handled from a client OS level.

On the RAM, I'd absolutely get the most RAM in the fewest sticks possible. That way you can add more later if you have to. We don't know how much a later OS or some awesome program we need to run will use, but if you've got 16 gigs over 4 sticks that is going to be more expensive to deal with bumping it to 32 than it is if you have 2 8 gigs and just want to add 2 more. My personal opinion as of late 2016 is you probably shouldn't build a system with less than 8.. however I don't think you need to build one with more than 16.

I wouldn't be concerned with underutilizing board features, I mentioned MSI only because that is what I have recently used, I have no loyalty or ties to them, it doesn't matter at all to me what brand you choose. I used a 'gaming' board for my dad's build because it was a good board with what I needed for the right price, he won't ever game on it.

I also wouldn't get too hung up on dual LAN. Those boards support gigabit connections, that speed is going to far surpass what you would normally do online, so one LAN connection will be fine. I've seen a few board with dual LAN advertised over the years, however I haven't seen much discussion (on forums or websites) about how or why this is great... So IMO its mostly a marketing thing, you don't really need it - if it does offer some benefits they are incredibly inconsequential.

I know I didn't directly answer your questions, but I'm not sure they were the right questions...
 
Last edited:
xLegendary said:
The MSI boards I would stay away from them, so many issues these last few years...
Asrock is a very good alternative to asus, great features, solid overclocker and great price.

About the PSU's.... 1000w? serisouly?
Check this out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=LFx26E_DBUY
Click to expand...
What problems has MSI boards been having? I use MSI MOBOs in all my builds and I've never had a problem or have someone comeback to me with motherboard issues.
 
xLegendary said:
The MSI boards I would stay away from them, so many issues these last few years...
Asrock is a very good alternative to asus, great features, solid overclocker and great price.

About the PSU's.... 1000w? serisouly?
Check this out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=LFx26E_DBUY
Click to expand...
Well not trying to be Not nice but that video got the Thumbs Down. Remember that ones PC power usage should be 50% of the PSU. This guy in the Vid is saying something like make it 80%.
Well I can only recommend this artical http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1036 about PSU's
But thankyou very much for your interest.
PS. I also have used MSI MoBo's with out any problems.
 
SNGX1275
Yes I know what you mean about the Ram and that is why I am very interested in doing the 2x16Gb cards first and then maybe add another two later on down the track. Just want to make sure that the OS's will run in VR mode with ease.
I am still reading up about PSU and will do some more research into different brands soon.
I am getting a new PC Case but I don't feel that it is that important. It will still be a decedent case and of cause Air Flow is important.
I forgot to say something about the Liquid Cooled system for the CPU. Well I don't like having to pull the fan off the CPU every now and again just to clean it. I worry that I will break the CPU or MoBo. I have broken a few fans in the past. So I felt that the Liquid Cooled systems would be a better way to go.
 
BaZZa101 said:
Well not trying to be Not nice but that video got the Thumbs Down. Remember that ones PC power usage should be 50% of the PSU. This guy in the Vid is saying something like make it 80%.
Well I can only recommend this artical http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1036 about PSU's
But thankyou very much for your interest.
PS. I also have used MSI MoBo's with out any problems.
Click to expand...
what do you mean the thumbs down? That video was rated 94% positive. Keep in mind that my recommendation of a 700w PSU puts you at just over 50% power usage
 
Well because I have had to research so mush info about PSU's I realise that the vid did not cover any of the real main points. I felt that he just glossed over the subject.
And yes a 700 may be all that I need. I just gotta find the right PSU.
There is soooo much that I had to research at present so it will take a little while before I can say that I have found what I need.
Naturally I will share that info on here and sharing what I have learnt with others here.
It is all very exciting. I didn't think that I would every like studying again after doing it for 7 yrs straight.
 
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