Just Ordered My Skylake Setup. Is This Good Enough and Concerns.

[GenieGOR]

I just ordered the setup below. I am concerned that the skylake has a 16 pci express lanes. So when I run 2 x 980GTX Ti SLI thats 8x8 3.0 which is good. How about the M.2 I may add in the future and all the usb 3.0 slots? Some where I read the z170 board has a certain amount of PCIE lanes built into the chipset so that my M.2 will have x4 and won't touch the GPU's and there is still more then enough to drive the other ports. Is this 860 watt power supply enough? All links are below. Also I gotten Golden edition 980GTX Ti and if they are sold out later will a regular 980GTX Ti RED/Black still be good enough as long as the GPU and manufacturer are the same?

I am using Tuniq TX-4 for the CPU. How should games be running for me?

Here is my setup for now:

Skylake core i7 6700k 4.0ghz (going to clock it 4.5 ghz or so)
Coolermaster V8 GTS CPU Cooler
16 GB DDR4 3200 GSkill Trident Z series (2 slots for later to go 32gb)
MSi X Power Gaming Titanium Z170
MSi 980GTX Ti Golden Edition (going to get the second one later or a RED/Black MSi 980GTX Ti)
Corsair AX Series AX860 860 Watt Power Supply
1 TB SSD Sandisk Extreme Pro (550 MBPS read/write)
DIYPC Skyline - 07 Case (wanted light weight)


Here are the links:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117559
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...m_re=msi_titanium_z170-_-13-130-870-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...den_edition_980_gtx_ti-_-14-127-912-_-Product
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231914
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103189
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139044
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811353027

 

[trents]

I would have gone a different direction with the cooling but the rest of the choices look good to me. Reports from reviewers are that the design of the cooler can block some PCI-e slots. I think it would have been better to go with one of the twin stack Noctua coolers to get less potential obstruction and as good or better cooling.

There are always trade offs so don't obsess over things like the PCI-e lanes.

Pros: nice looking smooth operating cooler. However most lga2011-3 motherboards dont lend themselves well to this monster of a cooler. It covers PCIE1 and 4 of the 8 ram slots. This may work with the Gigabyte board but not the MSI x99 and from what i can tell the Asus board has about the same type of layout. I had to either buy a water cooler or the Noctua NH-D9L. i am not a fan of liquids and electricity in the same area

Cons: too bit for most high end x99 boards using lga2011-3

Other Thoughts: make it with one fan and make it taller so the ram can fit

From a NewEgg review.

 

[GenieGOR]

I also have a Noctua NHD14 on hand as well that is on my Bloomfield 920. An adapter from the company it will work as well. Which do you prefer?

 

[wingman99]

You won't have any trouble with lanes using the MSI Gaming Z170A has DMI 3.0 also the M.2X4 will work just fine.

 

[EarthDog]

Solid!

Could have saved a hundred bucks on the board (no need really for such a high end board), and PSU. I would have went with a evga supernova g2 850 and saved $50.

 

[trents]

I also have a Noctua NHD14 on hand as well that is on my Bloomfield 920. An adapter from the company it will work as well. Which do you prefer?

Noctua D14. You can't go wrong with that one. Got one of those myself. I'd return the other one then.

 

[Joe88]

+1 stick with the D14

also I would have looked at better cases, that brand is pretty junk in quality

 

[GenieGOR]

Newegg will kick me while I'm down on restocking fees. What's so bad about the cooler master v8?

 

[trents]

Space hog. And it doesn't cool as well as some other top end coolers. Looks cool but that's about it. By the way, make sure the case you bet has enough clearance to the left side panel to accommodate those tall top end air coolers, whichever one you get. Case needs to be almost 8" wide for them to work.

 

[GenieGOR]

I got everything up and running. I am not sure how work the overclock in click bios, much different then the old 920's lol.

I used the quick Msi game tuner and best I could get is 4.4 ghz, and only about 1350mhz on 980gtx Ti with + 40 mV. Otherwise it shuts down.

I got 17,204 in firestrike. Any good settings to overclock gpu/Cpu?

 

[trents]

4.4-4.5 ghz is a pretty common overclock limit on these CPUs when cooling with air I believe.

The adjustments in bios are pretty simple. Just core voltage and multiplier. Yeah, you can tweak some other things but doesn't usually contribute much substance. Start by adding core voltage in .025 increments, increase the core speed multiplier by 1x increments, stress test and monitor package temps. Keep package temps from exceeding 85c in your stress testing. When you encounter instability then add more core voltage if temps permit. Start with .025 core voltage increases, as I already said, and as you get the overclock dialed in switch to .010 vcore increments. Intel Burn Test is a good quick and dirty stress test. Use "High" setting. When you think you have her dialed in then switch to AIDA64 Extreme or Intel Xtreme Tuning Utility fro stress testing. Those two don't produce as much heat as IBT but are more real life stress testers. If you can pass either AIDA64 or IXTU stress test overnight you should be good.

 

[GenieGOR]

4.4-4.5 ghz is a pretty common overclock limit on these CPUs when cooling with air I believe.

The adjustments in bios are pretty simple. Just core voltage and multiplier. Yeah, you can tweak some other things but doesn't usually contribute much substance. Start by adding core voltage in .025 increments, increase the core speed multiplier by 1x increments, stress test and monitor package temps. Keep package temps from exceeding 85c in your stress testing. When you encounter instability then add more core voltage if temps permit. Start with .025 core voltage increases, as I already said, and as you get the overclock dialed in switch to .010 vcore increments. Intel Burn Test is a good quick and dirty stress test. Use "High" setting. When you think you have her dialed in then switch to AIDA64 Extreme or Intel Xtreme Tuning Utility fro stress testing. Those two don't produce as much heat as IBT but are more real life stress testers. If you can pass either AIDA64 or IXTU stress test overnight you should be good.

I believe the Intel utility came with Msi software. Weird thing is when I change multiplier and then benchmark it's the same as before. Overclocking doesn't stick in that program for some reason.

I got 17,000+ many times on firestrike, and 9,550 on firestrike extreme are those pretty good for this setup?

I just used MSi's turbo button to get 4.4 ghz. Not sure if that's ideal. Also my memory is 3200 yet it was showing up to be 2100mhz. I had to enable xmp to get 3200mhz is this normal?

 

[GenieGOR]

Would it be worth it for me to remove my FrozR cooler from my MSi 980gtx Ti golden edition and replaced the thermal compound with tuniq tx-4? I heard people doing this with the AMD R9 380/390 cards and working wonders.

 

[Joe88]

From oc.net , msi seems to use pretty good paste, also removing the hsf from the card will void the warranty, there is a sticker on one the of the screws

 

[GenieGOR]

From oc.net , msi seems to use pretty good paste, also removing the hsf from the card will void the warranty, there is a sticker on one the of the screws

Oh OK, I had heard from many sources that MSI is usually pretty good about not voiding the warranty when removing the heat sink. I also heard reports of people using pliers to turn the screw so that they would not disrupt the warranty sticker.

 

[GenieGOR]

I also find it odd that I can play every game @ 4k 60hz and get fps yet Dying Light gets boggy and plays at 18fps. I have a SLI 2x980gtx Ti. Doesnt make much sense.

 

[wingman99]

I also find it odd that I can play every game @ 4k 60hz and get fps yet Dying Light gets boggy and plays at 18fps. I have a SLI 2x980gtx Ti. Doesnt make much sense.

Do you have the most resent drivers for Dying Light.

 

[GenieGOR]

Do you have the most resent drivers for Dying Light.

Downloaded the update and its much better. Still a tad of judder or frame drops here and there. I noticed with all games in 4k, with MSAA 8x or Anisotropic filtering 8x/16x drops frames horrendously. Why is this? Is that normal for a 980gtx ti setup?

 

[EarthDog]

I would guess you are running out of vram. There isn't a need for such high levels of AA at 4k... the pixel density is so high you don't need it. Lower AA to 2x or turn it off... bet the problem goes away....

No, vram doesn't 'add up' in SLI...

It's not a lack of horsepower, just vram as AA uses a lot. You should be fine with AF at 16x once you lower AA to 'appropriate' levels for the resolution.

 

[wingman99]

How much Vram does Dying Light use maxed out?