Need Help Deciding on Z97, X99, or Xeon Platform for Image Editing and Gaming

[johnson5067]

Hello everyone. This is my first build and I'm at a point where I've researched as much as I can but I still cannot determine what the best platform is for my needs. The computer will primarily be used for my wife's wedding photography business. She usually edits batches of ~1000 images in Lightroom, but also uses Photoshop, Illustrator, and inDesign a little bit on the side. I will be using this computer to play Minecraft, so nothing super GPU intensive in terms of gaming. From what I can tell the priority for us is going to be CPU and RAM. Budget for this build is ~$3000 and I don't want to go any bigger than a microATX motherboard. (I'm pretty set on the Corsair air 240 because I really like the design and we are limited with respect to space for the computer.)

After some initial research, I landed on the i7-4790k and put together a potential parts list around the Z97 platform. I asked for some feedback on Tom's Hardware, but posting there hasn't been super helpful to me, hence why I'm here! I had one guy say the 4790k would be fine but another saying I absolutely had to go with a Xeon in order to build a proper workstation. I did some more research on Xeons and workstations. I wouldn't say my wife's business requires "mission critical" hardware but I do understand the argument that workstation components are built to be more reliable and run 24/7 (ECC RAM in particular). I also understand that Xeons have an added benefit that they do not contain integrated graphics, since I'm already planning on having a dedicated (mid-level) GPU.

I also did some more research and saw the i7-5820k that was recently released for the X99 platform. This being the newest chipset it has all the new optimizations for improving performance and efficiency... plus you get to utilize the new DDR4.

Anyway, I'm pretty much stuck now and don't have any clue which way to go on this. I'm sure all three would suit our needs but I just want to be absolutely sure before I pull the trigger on either the 4790k, 5820k, or a Xeon build. Right now I have two PCPartPicker lists built, one for Z97 and one for X99. Can someone please help me just pick which processor/chipset I should go with? Then I can start finalizing the list and figuring out all the other questions I have like what RAM should I get, should I set up any storage in RAID, what kind of GPU/display do I want, etc...

Btw, I'm an engineer and I'm definitely up for learning the art of overclocking and getting stable, high-performance out of either the 4790k or 5820k, so if I go with one of those I think I will at least attempt some moderate overclocking. However I also don't mind if the Xeon is the best route due to reliability, or if I should go this route to be safe and not put my wife's business pc at risk because of overclocking or "consumer-grade" hardware.

Thanks for reading, I appreciate the help!

 

[ATMINSIDE]

This is where I would go for your build:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/pj8MmG

 

[NiHaoMike]

ECC is only worth it if you need all the uptime you can get. At that point, you'll definitely want plenty of other redundancy features to go with it.

From what I can see, that level of reliability probably won't be worth the cost. Just go for good quality, be conservative on the overclock (e.g. don't go beyond the Turbo Boost clocks), and stress test before putting it in a production setting.

 

[johnson5067]

ATMINSIDE -- Thanks for the suggestion. Any reason in particular why you would go with the 8520k? Extra cores? DDR4 compatibility? And any specific reason for choosing the ASRock over the EVGA mATX?

NiHaoMike -- I was kind of feeling the same way about this, so it's good to hear that from you. Having the server-grade hardware seems all about guaranteeing zero down-time which this isn't necessary for us. I appreciate the feedback, it helps me eliminate the Xeon/ECC option, which will save us some money. Have any thoughts on going with Z97 vs X99? I think I'm leaning towards X99 right now.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Extra cores mainly. Light Room will utilize six cores, so it'll help a lot on her large batches of images.

EVGA isn't known for the best motherboards these days, I'd run ASRock over EVGA because of that.
Also, the ASRock has 4x more SATA ports, it has a newer Intel Gigabit chipset (and it also has a second Gigabit port), and it has more power phases to supply CPU power.
More phases for the CPU is big for the 2011-3 equipment due to their power draw. It'll hold a higher OC much more easily than the EVGA.