Building an Uber Battlestation... Eyefinity and Futureproofing

Guys I could really use some help in tweaking my build. Specifically, what needs improving and where can I trim and go less OTT?

Here is my build at the moment:
CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz 4 -Core Processor (£238 @ Aria PC)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X79-UP4 ATX LGA2011 Motherboard (£162.99 @ Ebuyer)

Memory: Corsair Dominator PLATINUM 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C10 2400MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit £200

Storage: Samsung 840 Pro Series 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£87.45 @ Amazon UK)

Storage: Samsung 840 Pro Series 512GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£321.64 @ CCL Computers)

Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Hydro Copper 3GB Video Card (2-Way SLI)
or
R9 290x water cooled x 2

Case: Corsair 900D ATX Full Tower Case (£286.12 @ Amazon UK)

Power Supply: Corsair RM 1000W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power
Supply (£131.65 @ Dabs)

Plus

Monitors: 3 x Dell UltraSharp U2414H 23.8 inch Widescreen IPS LCD Monitor (1920 x 1080, 2M:1, 250 cd/m2, 8 ms, HDMI/DP/mini DP/USB)

Stand: Digitus Triple Desktop Monitor Stand -£136.84

Watercooling Kit:
XSPC Raystorm D5 EX420 Water Cooling Kit : D5 EX Series Kit by XSPC - £319.77

Fans: Compucase CF-V12HP Cougar Fan with Hydro-Dynamic Bearing,MTBF300,000hrs and Auto Sensor Control - £144.49


Questions Please:
1) Which graphic cards would you run wiht for the 3 monitors so that everything can be played maxed out for at least the next 12 months

2) Which specs would you change?

3) Will the watercooling kit do the job to cool everything listed above?

My game usage is as follows:
60% FPS
25% Strategy (Company of Heroes, Civ 5...)
15% 3rd person Elder Scrolls, WOW, Splinter Cell, Assasins Creed

Thanks for the help!

A couple of things... No need for a 4930K for a gaming machine... and also the H60 won't cool it well if you are overclocking.

32GB is overkill, go 4x4GB DDR3 1866 CL9 1.5v

As mentioned in your eyefinity thread, 2 290s or 2 780s are enough. More than that you lose scaling and is, to me, a waste of money.

1. Listed in eyefinity thread and here already.
2. Listed that above
3. It will be fine for the CPU only and one GPU (need to buy a block), not two or 3.

1) as mentioned, pass on the H60 lol
2) I would suggest 2x8 since its the same cost as 4x4, and youd have room in the future to upgrade if it were needed. For now, its not needed at all
3) Why have 2 SSD's? If you were raiding or something sure, but a 128 and 512 just makes no sense. Get a 250ish GB SSD and a 2TB HDD. 250gb will hold windows and 20+ games, 512 is overkill.
4) why would you want an H60 and the XSPC?
5) 2 780's will run 3 monitors @ 1080p just fine @Max settings.

bob4933 said:

1) as mentioned, pass on the H60 lol
2) I would suggest 2x8 since its the same cost as 4x4, and youd have room in the future to upgrade if it were needed. For now, its not needed at all
3) Why have 2 SSD's? If you were raiding or something sure, but a 128 and 512 just makes no sense. Get a 250ish GB SSD and a 2TB HDD. 250gb will hold windows and 20+ games, 512 is overkill.
4) why would you want an H60 and the XSPC?
5) 2 780's will run 3 monitors @ 1080p just fine @max settings.

Click to expand...

Just a note...

2. If he goes with 4930K it is a quad channel platform. Though there are few performance gains to be had, I will still get quad channel (4 sticks).
3. Bologna will it hold 20 modern games. I have 6/7 installed and am at half that. Heck, BF4 WITHOUT any add ons in 30GB!!! 40+ with all the packs installed to this point (2 more to come!).
5. Vram... I already use 2.4-2.6GB in BF4 at a lesser res... I lean towards the 290s.

Thanks guys.

I was going for 2 ssds so I have one dedicated for my OS, emails, work files and another large one to hold all my games.

May I ask what specific model processor and RAM you suggest that is the best for gaming? Please allow for future proofing.

I have never built a watercooling system so forgive my noobness. I will ditch the H60 and go with just the XSPC kit.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008P9XC76/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ASVUGRXKAIUKO

If I want to use the XSPC kit to cool the CPU and my GPUs do I need anything else? Is there a better value option as £320 seemed like a lot, but I wasn't sure?

Thanks again!

EarthDog said:

Just a note...

2. If he goes with 4930K it is a quad channel platform. Though there are few performance gains to be had, I will still get quad channel (4 sticks).
3. Bologna will it hold 20 modern games. I have 6/7 installed and am at half that. Heck, BF4 WITHOUT any add ons in 30GB!!! 40+ with all the packs installed to this point (2 more to come!).
5. Vram... I already use 2.4-2.6GB in BF4 at a lesser res... I lean towards the 290s.

Click to expand...

2) I thought we were dissauding him off the 4930 though
3) Ok. It'll hold 10-15 games? Still more than hes going to play at once is more of my point. 512gb for games is overkill and pointless. Doesn't take long at all to move games from one hard drive to the other really. Most "high end fps" are 7-16gb tops usually. BF4 is "special" lol.
5) I would imagine 2 780s would be plenty for 1080p, but is the r9 290 going to be worth the extra cost really?

kill8r said:

I was going for 2 ssds so I have one dedicated for my OS, emails, work files and another large one to hold all my games.

Click to expand...

Theres no benefit at all to having a 2nd drive though (sans raid of course.). I don't even have "that much" crap, and I would burn through 512gb in a heart beat. I have my "gaming/os hard drive" (except I have a 15k not an SSD lol) and my storage drives (random ones) I keep things organized on. edit: I use a program called "steam mover" to put games I dont play much off the main drive. Honestly, takes me like 3-5 minutes to move games around, its never been an issue at all.

kill8r said:

May I ask what specific model processor and RAM you suggest that is the best for gaming? Please allow for futureproofing.

Click to expand...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116901

PLENTY of juice. PLENTY.

2. We are, but if he sticks with and goes with that advice........not to mention if you help others with that same advice that are going with that platform... again, not a huge deal, but, might as well.
5. He mentioned in another thread that the 290 is cheaper than the 780 on his planet (hehe!). ANd he is using multi monitors where more than 3GB of vram can easily be used with the highest settings in many titles.

EarthDog said:

2. We are, but if he sticks with and goes with that advice........
5. He mentioned in another thread that the 290 is cheaper than the 780 on his planet (hehe!). ANd he is using multi monitors where more than 3GB of vram can easily be used with the highest settings in many titles.

Click to expand...

Here is the best pricing I can find:
780 hydro copper = £489 Each
https://www.google.co.uk/shopping/p...per&ei=mKIPU8XTNsab0wWr9YGwDA&ved=0CE8QpiswAA

MSI 290x = £396
https://www.google.co.uk/shopping/p....5&ei=LaIPU8rQKrCV0QWF9oGgBA&ved=0CIUBEKYrMAI

290 = £299
https://www.google.co.uk/shopping/p...90&ei=dqIPU7TxIIeO0AX09oDgDw&ved=0CIwBEKYrMAI

bob4933 said:

2) I thought we were dissauding him off the 4930 though
3) Ok. It'll hold 10-15 games? Still more than hes going to play at once is more of my point. 512gb for games is overkill and pointless. Doesn't take long at all to move games from one hard drive to the other really. Most "high end fps" are 7-16gb tops usually. BF4 is "special" lol.
5) I would imagine 2 780s would be plenty for 1080p, but is the r9 290 going to be worth the extra cost really?



Theres no benefit at all to having a 2nd drive though (sans raid of course.). I don't even have "that much" crap, and I would burn through 512gb in a heart beat. I have my "gaming/os hard drive" (except I have a 15k not an SSD lol) and my storage drives (random ones) I keep things organized on. edit: I use a program called "steam mover" to put games I dont play much off the main drive. Honestly, takes me like 3-5 minutes to move games around, its never been an issue at all.



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116901

PLENTY of juice. PLENTY.

Click to expand...

Ok 4770 it is.

This was the reason I chose the 4930k.
http://www.futuremark.com/hardware/cpu/Intel+Core+i7-4770K/review

If you are using a ton of threads (more than 8) it will help, but gaming is not there. In some benchmarks, including a few of the futuremark benches, there are CPU tests in which it inflates the score but it does not translate to real world FPS.

You will need more radiator than that kit offers to cool 2 290s or 2 780s...we have a watercooling section with very informative sticky threads... check those out and see what you can come up with after taking a look.

EarthDog said:

If you are using a ton of threads (more than 8) it will help, but gaming is not there. In some benchmarks, including a few of the futuremark benches, there are CPU tests in which it inflates the score but it does not translate to real world FPS.

Click to expand...

Ok noted, thanks

May I ask please, what specific RAM you recommend?

Also the the 290x is priced less than the 780 Hydro Copper so maybe 2 x 290x is the way to go. Does anyone make a liquid cooled 290x? The noise from some of these GPU fans are hard to bare.

Ram is ram to me... Get the cheapest prettiest stuff that fits is my take. GSkill, Corsair, Mushkin, Kingston, Patriot, all solid brands.

Ok editing my original spec to reflect the recommendations so far.

Any other changes you guys suggest?

Can you please advise me a bit more on the water cooling side of things?

Increasing the Budget... New Built to Push 3 x 27" ROG Swift Maxed Out

After giving things much thought I am considering increasing my budget, waiting till April and buying 3 x ASUS ROG 27":

Display: 27-inch (16:9) wide screen
Resolution: 2560 × 1440 WQHD with 1ms response rate.
Brightness: 350cd/m²
Connectivity: DisplayPort, USB 3.0 ports (upstream x 1, downstream × 3), 3.5mm earphone jack
Ergonomic Tilt (+20° ~ -5°), swivel (+60° ~ -60°), pivot (90° clockwise), height adjustment (0 ~ 120mm)
VESA wall mountable (100 × 100mm)

These are the build specs I am considering:
CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor

Motherboard: Asus Maximus VI Extreme ATX LGA1150 Motherboard

Memory: Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2133 Memory

Storage: Samsung 840 Pro Series 512GB 2.5" Solid State Disk

Video Cards: 2 x EVGA GeForce GTX Titan Black Hydro Copper 6GB Video Card

Case: Corsair 750D ATX Full Tower Case

Power Supply: Corsair 1200W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply


A few questions please:
1) Is 27" too big for an Nvidea surround setup?

2) Would 2 x Hydro Copper Titan Blacks handle everything on Ultra for the foreseeable future given the three screens at 2560 × 1440 and 120hz?

3)Would a water cooled 4770k be up to the task or should I up the CPU and if so which one?

4)Is there stand for the three 27" monitors you would recommend?

5) Is there a water cooling kit you recommend that can handle up to 4 GPUs (future proofing) and the CPU?

6) Which case would you find ideal for up to 4 way SLI (future proofing)?

Thanks for all the amazing advice!