Gaming Build ~ 4K budget

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Swede88

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1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming

2) What's your budget? 4K

3) Which country do you live in? Austin, Texas. Access to Fry’s, but that’s it.

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget?


· CPU
· RAM
· MOBO
· GPU
· PSU
· HD
· Case
· Monitor
· OS

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? None

6) Will you be overclocking? No

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC? 1-2 months

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? Nothing specific



Last upgrade was in 2009 and I’m basically starting from scratch. At this time, I am familiarizing myself with the new tech that’s out there but will be building a system in the next 1 – 2 months. I’ve never liquid cooled before and I will probably continue that unless convinced otherwise. Also, I’ve never owned a quality monitor before and that is one thing I would like to spend some money on this time around. I’ve been looking at the PG279Q, but also the X34; ultimately, I will visit my local Fry’s to hopefully view these in person, but feel free to weigh in. My current storage usage is about 600 GB.

Thanks in advance for your input.

(edited for formatting)
 
I would suggest the Nvidia Titan X at your budget. Aslo, for gaming, you can consider X99 setups, but there will be really no difference between gaming performance of a quad-core skylake versus a 6 or 8-core broadwell. The X99 setups will probably age more gracefully, and can chow down on more RAM.
 
4K is really demanding. My 1070s in SLI get their workout at 4K and if SLI isn't supported I have to switch over to my 1080p monitor. Definitely a Titan XP at minimum to game at 4K@60FPS. Even that will struggle in some games. My 1070s in SLI outperform a Titan XP when SLI scales properly but the usage rate is pretty high in some games. I think when Volta hits, we'll have a true single card solution for 4K. Until then you're best bet is a Titan XP for single card solution and anything less I recommend going SLI. If you want to go all out Titan XP in SLI (where SLI is supported) will ensure you're good at 4K@60FPS for a couple of years I'm guessing.

I would also recommend Z170 Platform as opposed to X99 as the extra cores do very little to benefit gaming and often perform worse due to lower IPC. 6700K has the fastest IPC right now which is what matters in gaming and the reason why they are so popular right now. If all you care about is gaming save your money. X99 is really for those that use heavily threaded applications.
 
Man, $4k is a lot. You definitely don't need to spend all that.

I have one major additional question, which is whether system portability is a factor for you? It's entirely possible to be pretty damn high end and still run a mini-ITX type platform, if that's your desire. Otherwise, the standard mid or mini tower is the way to go.

With that said, I've worked up a basic build for everything but the case, which I feel is almost entirely an aesthetic choice unless you're watercooling. I'm sure folks on this forum will disagree with some of the choices I've put in, but I have reasons. http://pcpartpicker.com/list/ZCgzkT is the list.

Now, justifications:

CPU - i7 6700k. It's the top end without having to leave the Z170 platform, and most games won't give a shit beyond 4 CPU cores. The only reason we're getting the k is because it's clocked faster, since you said you won't be overclocking.
FAN - The 6700k does not come with a fan, and it would be shit even if it did. You said you had no interest in either overclocking nor watercooling, so an inexpensive tower air cooler sounds up your alley.
MOBO - You can spend all the dollars you want here, but at the end of the day it's just a mobo. I am personal owner of the motherboard on the list. It supports SLI if you decide to do that, and the onboard audio is decent (not that it matters if you use a USB headset) and networking is fine as well. It's stable, and visually attractive (IMHO). It has 4 DIMM slots. Thats all I want in a mobo. The particular mobo here is actually Micro ATX, so feel free to get a slightly smaller case.
MEM - You could get more than 32 GB, but really, what the shit is going to use it? The 32 GB is in 2 sticks though in case you ever want to move to 64 in the future.
STORAGE - this is a contentious point. You could spend a lot more, or less. You could get a Samsung 950 PRO and go NVME, which will be bit faster, but those drives top out at 512 GB. You could get two and deal with RAID or something, or one of those and a big storage drive. My thoughts? Buy a single big ass SSD and don't worry about it. The load time difference in games between an 850 EVO and a 950 PRO are minor, at best. On the other hand, never having to juggle files between a fast storage device and a slower storage device is like heaven. The mobo has M2 NVME compatible slots for use down the line if the drives get bigger.
VIDEO - Single GTX 1080 oughta do it. Any brand is fine, I just picked one off the list. Maybe not the EVGAs, they are supposedly catching fire. You could buy two for SLI, but SLI is a pain in the ass to deal with sometimes (spoken from experience the the current owner of a 1070 SLI setup). You could buy a Titan X also, but it's twice as much money and it's *not* twice as fast. My advice, buy the 1080 now, pocket the price difference between a Titan X and the 1080, and a year or two from now, if you've managed to stress out the 1080 replace it with whatever card has replaced the 1080 at the high end with the saved $600.
PSU - I think PSUs are a racket. Like motherboards, they're a great place to spend a ton of money without much difference. The EVGA 650W is a decent power supply and it doesn't cost a ton of money. Your system won't be particularly power hungry, since you're not overclocking and both the 6700k and 1080 is pretty efficient.
Monitor - I've personally witnessed the PG279Q, and I can't vouch for it hard enough. I wish I had one.
OS - your basic Win 10 license.


The whole setup, including the $750 monitor, is around $2800. It should game quite well.
 
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KazeoHin said:
I would suggest the Nvidia Titan X at your budget. Aslo, for gaming, you can consider X99 setups, but there will be really no difference between gaming performance of a quad-core skylake versus a 6 or 8-core broadwell. The X99 setups will probably age more gracefully, and can chow down on more RAM.
Click to expand...

Do you think performance will be an issue in the future regarding the quad core?

psy81 said:
4K is really demanding. My 1070s in SLI get their workout at 4K and if SLI isn't supported I have to switch over to my 1080p monitor. Definitely a Titan XP at minimum to game at 4K@60FPS. Even that will struggle in some games. My 1070s in SLI outperform a Titan XP when SLI scales properly but the usage rate is pretty high in some games. I think when Volta hits, we'll have a true single card solution for 4K. Until then you're best bet is a Titan XP for single card solution and anything less I recommend going SLI. If you want to go all out Titan XP in SLI (where SLI is supported) will ensure you're good at 4K@60FPS for a couple of years I'm guessing.

I would also recommend Z170 Platform as opposed to X99 as the extra cores do very little to benefit gaming and often perform worse due to lower IPC. 6700K has the fastest IPC right now which is what matters in gaming and the reason why they are so popular right now. If all you care about is gaming save your money. X99 is really for those that use heavily threaded applications.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I want to game in 4K, but I am interested in a single card solution.

sinisterDei said:
Man, $4k is a lot. You definitely don't need to spend all that.

I have one major additional question, which is whether system portability is a factor for you? It's entirely possible to be pretty damn high end and still run a mini-ITX type platform, if that's your desire. Otherwise, the standard mid or mini tower is the way to go.

With that said, I've worked up a basic build for everything but the case, which I feel is almost entirely an aesthetic choice unless you're watercooling. I'm sure folks on this forum will disagree with some of the choices I've put in, but I have reasons. http://pcpartpicker.com/list/ZCgzkT is the list.

Now, justifications:

CPU - i7 6700k. It's the top end without having to leave the Z170 platform, and most games won't give a shit beyond 4 CPU cores. The only reason we're getting the k is because it's clocked faster, since you said you won't be overclocking.
FAN - The 6700k does not come with a fan, and it would be shit even if it did. You said you had no interest in either overclocking nor watercooling, so an inexpensive tower air cooler sounds up your alley.
MOBO - You can spend all the dollars you want here, but at the end of the day it's just a mobo. I am personal owner of the motherboard on the list. It supports SLI if you decide to do that, and the onboard audio is decent (not that it matters if you use a USB headset) and networking is fine as well. It's stable, and visually attractive (IMHO). It has 4 DIMM slots. Thats all I want in a mobo. The particular mobo here is actually Micro ATX, so feel free to get a slightly smaller case.
MEM - You could get more than 32 GB, but really, what the shit is going to use it? The 32 GB is in 2 sticks though in case you ever want to move to 64 in the future.
STORAGE - this is a contentious point. You could spend a lot more, or less. You could get a Samsung 950 PRO and go NVME, which will be bit faster, but those drives top out at 512 GB. You could get two and deal with RAID or something, or one of those and a big storage drive. My thoughts? Buy a single big ass SSD and don't worry about it. The load time difference in games between an 850 EVO and a 950 PRO are minor, at best. On the other hand, never having to juggle files between a fast storage device and a slower storage device is like heaven. The mobo has M2 NVME compatible slots for use down the line if the drives get bigger.
VIDEO - Single GTX 1080 oughta do it. Any brand is fine, I just picked one off the list. Maybe not the EVGAs, they are supposedly catching fire. You could buy two for SLI, but SLI is a pain in the ass to deal with sometimes (spoken from experience the the current owner of a 1070 SLI setup). You could buy a Titan X also, but it's twice as much money and it's *not* twice as fast. My advice, buy the 1080 now, pocket the price difference between a Titan X and the 1080, and a year or two from now, if you've managed to stress out the 1080 replace it with whatever card has replaced the 1080 at the high end with the saved $600.
PSU - I think PSUs are a racket. Like motherboards, they're a great place to spend a ton of money without much difference. The EVGA 650W is a decent power supply and it doesn't cost a ton of money. Your system won't be particularly power hungry, since you're not overclocking and both the 6700k and 1080 is pretty efficient.
Monitor - I've personally witnessed the PG279Q, and I can't vouch for it hard enough. I wish I had one.
OS - your basic Win 10 license.


The whole setup, including the $750 monitor, is around $2800. It should game quite well.
Click to expand...

I appreciate all of the effort put into the detail provided.

Portability is not a factor for me. It's going to sit tight right where I put it.

I'm picking up on what you guys are saying regarding going beyond 4 cores not giving you any additional benefit. But is it likely that that will always be the case? Any indication that more than 4 cores will be utilized in the near future?

I do like the idea of single large drive. I'm not interested in a RAID setup either.
 
My thoughts are that it's not likely that more than 4 cores will offer significant advantage in the near future. There are three main reasons for this:

1. Coding difficulty: extracting multithreaded performance was difficult enough just expanding to a few cores, and many companies accomplished it by splitting their code in the manner that graphics pipeline setup runs on core 0, AI runs on core 1, sound on core 2, etc. There's not enough of those 'big things' to spread around on many more cores. Truly parallel code will be difficult to write
2. The consoles: The X1 and PS4 are "8-core" systems, but they're using AMD's definition of 8-core, which means 8 integer units and 4 floating point units. For a lot of game related programming, which relies on the FPU, they're functionally 4-core designs. That's the design target for a lot of games and engine work.
3. Self-fulfilling prophecy. The gaming PC CPU market is *dominated* by the i3, i5, and i7 consumer grade units. The i3 is dual core, the i5 is quad core, as is the i7. I'm not saying a game won't be able to take advantage of more, but it'll be *designed* for 4 or less, because that's what the vast bulk of the market will be running.

There are of course niche cases; strategy games in particular seem the type to be able to utilize more than 4 cores effectively, and apparently if implemented properly DX12 and Vulkan can have a bit better scaling across CPU resources. But none of that affects item number 3, which is that no sane PC game will *expect* more than 4 cores for a long time, and if game devs know what's good for them as far as market share they'll include the possibility of i3 (dual core) as a likely platform as well.

If you're not interested in portability, then how important is aesthetic appearance? I'm not a huge fan of fancy cases; my computer is literally thirty feet away from me in a closet, my idea of a beautiful computer is one I can neither see nor hear. So I can offer options with setting up *that* kind of computer, but I'm not the one to ask for fancy cases or making things pretty beyond a functional level.
 
Hey SinisterDei -

I've been educating myself since these lasts posts, including reviewing your part selection (which I appreciate BTW).

Couple of questions:
1. With regards to the memory selected, why DDR-2666? Any reason not to go beyond that? (I vaguely recall the importance of CAS latency timings, etc... the last time I built a rig, but my familiarity with that fails me now)
2. With regards to the cpu cooling - I do not plan on watercooling, the but when you browse Amazon for example, they have water cooled options but they don't display a pump, reservoir, etc...is that because the unit is all-in-one or they just assume you know that you need those other things?
3. I've tried to educate myself a little on the power supplies and it is confusing. I know enough to look beyond the 650w advertised when it comes to powering the GPU. Would you have any other recommendation if let's say I were to do SLI with a pair of 1080's in the future? (I know based on the motherboard it goes down from 16x to 8x, so I'm not sure if that's a big deal with regards to adding in another 1080 in the future versus buying a new single gpu).
 
Swede88 said:
Hey SinisterDei -

I've been educating myself since these lasts posts, including reviewing your part selection (which I appreciate BTW).

Couple of questions:
1. With regards to the memory selected, why DDR-2666? Any reason not to go beyond that? (I vaguely recall the importance of CAS latency timings, etc... the last time I built a rig, but my familiarity with that fails me now)
2. With regards to the cpu cooling - I do not plan on watercooling, the but when you browse Amazon for example, they have water cooled options but they don't display a pump, reservoir, etc...is that because the unit is all-in-one or they just assume you know that you need those other things?
3. I've tried to educate myself a little on the power supplies and it is confusing. I know enough to look beyond the 650w advertised when it comes to powering the GPU. Would you have any other recommendation if let's say I were to do SLI with a pair of 1080's in the future? (I know based on the motherboard it goes down from 16x to 8x, so I'm not sure if that's a big deal with regards to adding in another 1080 in the future versus buying a new single gpu).
Click to expand...

1. Over the years, I've looked at multiple "memory review roundup comparison" type posts where they figure out what the performance differential between memory speeds is. And, generally speaking, the consensus of those reviews is that once you go above some threshold the performance gains are pretty minimal, partially because the CAS rating does go up hand-in-hand with the frequency. Typically above whatever that threshold you start to pay for it as well. The last roundup I saw for DDR3, the threshold was somewhere in the 1600 to 1866 range. Sure you could get DDR3 up to 3000, but the performance gain compared to 1866 in most scenarios was pretty unimpressive, meanwhile the 3000 set costs a lot more money. I don't know where that threshold lies with DDR4, but typically it's trended closer towards the standard for the processor (in this case 2133) than the high end memory offered. 2666 is a couple bumps above 2133, but still not unreasonable in terms of pricing. By all means, get whatever memory you like - if there's a deal on 3000 then go for it. I just recommend to pick some up just slightly above-spec (2133) as a baseline.

2. Most of the $100-200 kits are AIO (all-in-one) solutions; things like the CoolerMaster H series. If it looks like this - http://www.corsair.com/Media/catalog/product/h/1/h100i_hero_fan.png - it's an all-in-one. These systems are simple in that they are sealed and never require filling etc, but their efficacy is somewhat limited compared to custom loop solutions. All of it is overkill unless you're going for some dramatic overclocking.

3. Firstly, regarding PCI Express link speed. The PCI-Express interface speed (16x vs 8x) is largely of negligible value in the performance of the cards, as far as any research I've ever seen can tell. I've a couple articles to link - https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/ and https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Impact-of-PCI-E-Speed-on-Gaming-Performance-518/ - that agree with this. It's not that the link speed can't have an impact - it can; it's that generally you have to use such a low-speed link to have a substantial impact that worrying about it is a waste. No modern system is going to run a GPU at PCI-E 1.1 x8. This is largely a repeated event in history - AGP4X was not really faster than AGP2X in most cases, and 8X was not faster than 4X most of the time. The bottleneck is in other areas.

As for the power supplies, the best advice I ever got regarding power supplies is that their quality tended to directly correlate with their physical weight. I'm from old school computing, back when companies pretended to sell "1300W" PC speakers for $8.99 and other such nonsense. Power supplies are in the same boat- there are a list of companies out there who will sell you a "900W" power supply that can't reasonably sustain over 300W of continuous draw. In my opinion, the presence of those companies is the reason that GPUs started to have such ridiculous stated power supply requirements - sometimes cards that only drew 150W of power would say the system needed a 550W supply, etc. Because there was no qualifier on whether the 550W supply you bought was actually capable of 550W or only 300W or less, so they erred on the side of caution. Back in those days, you could tell the difference between a bullshit PSU and a well built one by weight- bullshit ones weighed a feather, real ones had to be stuffed with heatsinks to handle the load. That was then, but times have evolved a bit, and the reputable power supply companies don't engage in that kind of bullshit anymore. If Antec/Corsair/whoever says their power supply can supply 600W, I generally believe it. Thus, when a GPU's tested power draw is actually only 170W and the rest of the system put together only draws 100W, then I trust you could technically get by with a well made 300W PSU.

Would I recommend you get a 300W PSU? Absolutely not. But I also wouldn't recommend you get a 1500W PSU, because that's fucking nuts. I believe the PSU can provide 1500W, but holy fuck you'll pay for it and jesus christ nothing is *actually* going to use that much power. I'm currently running a 1070 SLI setup, a (lightly) overclocked 6700k, two SSDs, and two HDDs on an old Antec 600 (650?, i'd have to go look) supply and it's held up. The 1080 uses a bit more power than the 1070, I'd probably step it up to 750, but anything more than that is probably a waste of money.

With that said, SLI is a waste. I wouldn't have it except I got the second 1070 for free. Gaming at 1600p, the second card has improved the gaming experience on exactly zero of my games thus far, and sometimes introduces problems into the games that single GPU gaming doesn't have. I'm seriously considering pulling the second GPU out and giving it to my wife for Christmas.
 
I should mention, this is all, like, just my opinion man. I briefly mentioned, I've been doing this a long time- professionally around 19 years now, more than half my life. I feel like over the years I've "lost respect" a bit for the fancy, high-end shit, in favor of the more value proposition options just below the high end. I've not owned a truly top-end GPU or CPU for around a decade now, because I couldn't justify the cost vs returns for it. The 80/20 rule is like my personal mantra at this point.

I've also become quite blunt, as might be evident.

Others may disagree, and they may have strong arguments as well. I just call it how my personal experience and the bits of research I've absorbed has guided me.
 
Swede88 said:
I'm not sure I want to game in 4K, but I am interested in a single card solution.
Click to expand...

OF COURSE you want to game at 4K! Unless you prefer fast shooter games as 4k doesn't support more than 60hz.
Get a Titan X Pascal and a 40"+ GOOD 4K TV (one of new Samsung TV's should do it) and fire up The Witcher 3, GTA V or modded Skyrim and get blown away by the visuals. A single Pascal Titan X will do fine (I have 980Ti SLI which are about as fast and they do fine maxed out in Everything at 4k).
I have a 48" 4k TV and next to it a 24" 1080p monitor. I can't stand looking at that tiny monitor. Maybe ultra wide 1440p would be doable, but after 48" going to something smaller seems impossible.
 
Assuming you choose to go this route, be very careful when ordering a 4K TV for use as a monitor. You'll want the TV to *not* feature a RGBW sub-pixel layout as well as need the TV to accept and properly display 4:4:4 chroma signal. This rules out almost all inexpensive 4K TVs. The website rtings.com helps with this- they do detailed reviews of 4k TVs as monitors and the troubles they experience.
 
sinisterDei said:
...With that said, SLI is a waste. I wouldn't have it except I got the second 1070 for free. Gaming at 1600p, the second card has improved the gaming experience on exactly zero of my games thus far, and sometimes introduces problems into the games that single GPU gaming doesn't have. I'm seriously considering pulling the second GPU out and giving it to my wife for Christmas.
Click to expand...

I don't know what games you're playing but SLI does make a big difference at 4K when it works scales properly. GTAV, MGSV, Call of Duty series, Battlefield series (although BF1 has flickering issue in SLI since latest update), Doom, Mad Max, etc... Without the extra card, I wouldn't be able to play at maxed out settings on 4k@60 FPS that's for sure.

Although SLI support isn't what it used to be especially with the latest Ubisoft games which scale very poorly or have no SLI support at all (i.e. Tomb Raider, Watch Dogs 2, Deus Ex) and Mafia III with no SLI support. Surprising considering these are AAA titles and 5 years ago most AAA titles had SLI support.

My 2 cents.
 
If SLI worked consistently and without bugs I'd be all for it. But more and more it doesn't. I used SLI back in the gtx 460 era and it was much more consistent.

Though on your list watch dogs 2 supposedly supports SLI, and apparently needs it with how crappy it runs at high detail level.
 
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