Coming from my '07 Build - Suggestions / Advice / Recommendations

Hey guys, it's been an extremely long time for me since I've last been active on this forum and tech in general so I thought it would be best to run my next build through more knowledgeable people on current tech. I've done a decent amount of research and have decided to stick with Intel's current generation of chipsets / CPUs instead of waiting on Skylake. What's in my sig is what I'm still running right now.. and it's on its last leg.

My main purpose is the same as it was for the previous build, primarily gaming and overclocking down the line. I've rarely done incremental upgrades with any of my past builds unless it was necessary, I typically aim for an upper-mid end build (which probably is a bit shortsighted now that I'm typing this out).

So my prospective parts list is the following:

Corsair Obsidian Series 450D (which I've already bought)
ASUS MAXIMUS VII HERO
Intel Core i7-4790K
CORSAIR Hydro Series H110
CORSAIR Vengeance Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 2133 [CMY16GX3M2A2133C11R]
SAMSUNG 840 EVO

I don't have a GPU in mind yet but I've read the GTX 900 series cards are close to releasing so I'm likely to wait and buy into that.. which will determine what PSU to buy as well.

So what's the opinion on this build? Aesthetically, I did keep a color scheme in mind this time because, honestly, I do plan to position it on my desk as a showpiece item. Functionality-wise, it seems that these are solid parts to go with given some reviews I've looked over.

Thanks a lot for your help and time in this!

It will decimate the wolf!

(Even when Wolfdale is post-2007 and was real exciting. Was superior to Conroe!)

(Even a G3258 should be able to decimate it under x264 first-pass encoding, especially because of better OC ability alone!) (In contrast, many Wolfdales probably can't do 4.5+)

RJARRRPCGP said:

It will decimate the wolf!

(Even when Wolfdale is post-2007 and was real exciting. Was superior to Conroe!)

(Even a G3258 should be able to decimate it under x264 first-pass encoding, especially because of better OC ability alone!) (In contrast, many Wolfdales probably can't do 4.5+)

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This makes my computer feel bad. So I should feel bad too.

I guess you're of the opinion that this is gonna be a heck of a build!

Cant.Touch.This said:

This makes my computer feel bad. So I should feel bad too.

I guess you're of the opinion that this is gonna be a heck of a build!

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Yes! It's gonna be a real good build!

If I may play devil's advocate- I highly suggest X99. You can get a HEX CORE 5820K for a mere $389. that's $40 more than the 4 core 4790K. You also get more USB3, more SATA, more RAM bandwidth and a LOT more PCIE lanes (though the 5820K doesn't have 40 like the 5930K, it has almost 30. Significantly more than the 16 you get on Z97).

The motherboard will cost you a bit more money as X99 boards are more expensive than Z97 and the RAM will cost you a bit more as DDR4 is more costly than DDR3 but other than that, not a lot of difference in the budget. You're spending maybe an extra $200-250 and you're getting 2 extra cores, more SATA, more USB, more PCIE. It's worth it. I plan to go X99 in a couple of months. Z97 isn't tempting to me. Especially with the rock bottom pricing of the 5820K. I'm going to be recommending that CPU to everybody. IMO you'd be nuts not to buy it. Intel is practically giving it away.

Since you're not in a hurry... go slow and wait for great deals on each part you need imo.

bob4933 said:

Since you're not in a hurry... go slow and wait for great deals on each part you need imo.

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It's actually what I've been doing so far. I bought the case because I saw it drop to its lowest price since listed for sale.

Do you know if there's anything around the end of the year that's worth waiting for? Because pretty much all I want has been released for about a year now and my assumption is that it'll stay relevant until the next generation.

Theocnoob said:

If I may play devil's advocate- I highly suggest X99. You can get a HEX CORE 5820K for a mere $389. that's $40 more than the 4 core 4790K. You also get more USB3, more SATA, more RAM bandwidth and a LOT more PCIE lanes (though the 5820K doesn't have 40 like the 5930K, it has almost 30. Significantly more than the 16 you get on Z97).

The motherboard will cost you a bit more money as X99 boards are more expensive than Z97 and the RAM will cost you a bit more as DDR4 is more costly than DDR3 but other than that, not a lot of difference in the budget. You're spending maybe an extra $200-250 and you're getting 2 extra cores, more SATA, more USB, more PCIE. It's worth it. I plan to go X99 in a couple of months. Z97 isn't tempting to me. Especially with the rock bottom pricing of the 5820K. I'm going to be recommending that CPU to everybody. IMO you'd be nuts not to buy it. Intel is practically giving it away.

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Hmm, I did do some browsing around X99 but the pricing of what I specifically wanted was a bit steep. Why are they asking almost $600 for an i7 5930K? I don't see much of a difference besides clock speed.

EDIT: Reporting back on what I've put together, X99 is too steep for me. The extra money that I'm forking over for it is essentially what I was planning to pour into the GPU.

Cant.Touch.This said:

Hmm, I did do some browsing around X99 but the pricing of what I specifically wanted was a bit steep. Why are they asking almost $600 for an i7 5930K? I don't see much of a difference besides clock speed.

EDIT: Reporting back on what I've put together, X99 is too steep for me. The extra money that I'm forking over for it is essentially what I was planning to pour into the GPU.

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No, not 5930K, 5820K. Other than a slight difference in clock speed, and 12 fewer PCIE 3.0 lanes on the 5820K, the chips are nearly identical. The 5820K is about $400 USD. That's the chip I'll be building with in January when I get the funds together. I highly recommend it. It's Intel's first "affordable" 6 core CPU.

If you'd rather save some coin towards GPU, then you can definitely build with a cheaper CPU and a cheaper chipset. Just keep in mind that you only get 16 PCIE 3.0 lanes on Z97 vs 28-40 on X99. And you're losing 2 physical cores.

Cant.Touch.This said:

It's actually what I've been doing so far. I bought the case because I saw it drop to its lowest price since listed for sale.

Do you know if there's anything around the end of the year that's worth waiting for? Because pretty much all I want has been released for about a year now and my assumption is that it'll stay relevant until the next generation.

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Black friday/cyber Monday is around the corner... I'd wait for that. Got my 8320 for 99$ last year and a 7770 for 65$ (good deal at the time).

Theocnoob said:

No, not 5930K, 5820K. Other than a slight difference in clock speed, and 12 fewer PCIE 3.0 lanes on the 5820K, the chips are nearly identical. The 5820K is about $400 USD. That's the chip I'll be building with in January when I get the funds together. I highly recommend it. It's Intel's first "affordable" 6 core CPU.

If you'd rather save some coin towards GPU, then you can definitely build with a cheaper CPU and a cheaper chipset. Just keep in mind that you only get 16 PCIE 3.0 lanes on Z97 vs 28-40 on X99. And you're losing 2 physical cores.

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Oh, I knew you were referring to the 5920K.. I was just wondering why the next model up is significantly more expensive.

I've never gone with a multi-GPU setup in the past, so I'm okay with the given lanes on Z97. How much faster is 16x/16x PCI-E 3.0 vs 8x/8x PCI-E 3.0? From when I my build was new there was a good cause to go with the higher end chipsets for this reason but from what I've gathered PCI-E 3.0 has closed this gap in performance.

What will I do with the two additional cores that is a necessity?

bob4933 said:

Black friday/cyber Monday is around the corner... I'd wait for that. Got my 8320 for 99$ last year and a 7770 for 65$ (good deal at the time).

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I'm waiting up to that point as well (unless I see deals in the meantime). I didn't look up the availability of the GTX 900 cards yet. I'm assuming that there will be a good supply on release so hopefully when I do gather everything I don't have the GPU to wait on.

Cant.Touch.This said:

Oh, I knew you were referring to the 5920K.. I was just wondering why the next model up is significantly more expensive.

I've never gone with a multi-GPU setup in the past, so I'm okay with the given lanes on Z97. How much faster is 16x/16x PCI-E 3.0 vs 8x/8x PCI-E 3.0? From when I my build was new there was a good cause to go with the higher end chipsets for this reason but from what I've gathered PCI-E 3.0 has closed this gap in performance.

What will I do with the two additional cores that is a necessity?

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You don't need those two extra cores. Not yet. Not for gaming/general office work. For serious video/photo work, CAD work, etc, you can really use the two extra cores. The idea behind the 5820K is that it's only $40-60 more expensive than the 4790K. That's quite a deal IMO. And it future proofs you if games start demanding more than 4 cores in the future.

Why is the 5930K so much more costly than the 5820K? The same reason as the 5960X is even MORE expensive... Because intel can get away with it. That's about all there is to it. With the 5930K vs the 5820K you're basically just getting an extra 12 PCIE lanes. That's about it. The 5960X adds 2 more cores (total of 8) to the mix, for over $1000 US. The best bang for the buck in Intel CPUs right now in the "high performance" sector is the 5820K, hand down... just because of it's low price.