Would like advice on upgrade hardware for new build

[The Giving One]

Hello fellow Steam users,

I have searched around and looked at various threads here concerning the many-times asked-about topic I have here. I hope I can get some new and fresh ideas on how to build my next rig and upgrade.

Hardware I ALREADY have since my last build I will want to use in the NEW build...

1. PSU....Seasonic Platinum 1000 Hybrid full modular

2. CASE....Coolermaster HAF X Full Tower...all air

3. CPU COOLER....Cooler Master Hyper 212...is versatile to many CPU sockets but if I have to get a new one I surely will

4. SSD/HDD....I am currently running 3 X 256 GB SSD in RAID 0 with a backup going to HDD. These are currently SATA 2.0 and I would like to go with 3.0 perhaps unless you guys think the performance difference is not enough to be concerned with. I do not really care about the HDD, as it will just be used for backup. I only use this PC for gaming and do not care about data loss.

5. GPU...I just had to RMA my EVGA GTX 980 FTW card and am waiting on in store credit hopefully so I can purchase my next one. I would like to get the new 980 Ti, if they can stay in stock long enough...LOL

6. DVD DRIVE...Just in case someone wants to point out that I forgot to mention it. LOL

7. OS...Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit


Hardware I NEED to upgrade to the NEW build....

1. CPU...I would like to get a "K" just in case I want to gently overclock one day, but I do not plan on doing that at first. My debate is between a really good i5 or a budget i7. I am leaning towards the i7, due to the Hyperthreading advantage and possible higher factory clock so what do you guys think ?

2. MOTHERBOARD...What I want is maybe a good board that will handle dual channel memory up to 16 GB, and PCI-E 3.0 slots at TRUE X16/X16 bandwidth in case I want to SLI one day but for now, only one card will be used. Of course it needs to be SATA 3.0 also. I alos want a Z97 chipset unless you guys can recommend one better. It is only going to be used for gaming.

3. RAM...So no big decisions here really. I am not building a competition PC here or trying to so just simple GSkill or Kingston or whatever is fine.

4. OTHER..In case you guys can convince me I need SATA 3.0 SSD's for example.

Please leave any advice and comments and thanks in advance for reading and for input. Your arguments on this VS. that would be also very helpful and appreciated.

[_I_]

cpu
4690k or 4790k (i5 for gaming, i7 for streaming or lots of video editing/encoding)
mobo

any z97 board, sli or cfx capable if you desire to run 2 gpus
pci-e 3.8 x8+x8 is more than enough bandwidth for any 2 gpus

ram
any 2x4g 1600 cl9- 1.5v- kit will be fine (2x8g for streaming)

ssd
will help with windows load times and game loads for games installed on it
120g is enough, 240g will allow for a few more games to be installed on it

[The Giving One]

Thanks for your input and for reading. I see you on this forum alot and know you are experienced with hardware.

Originally posted by _I_:

pci-e 3.8 x8+x8 is more than enough bandwidth for any 2 gpus

ssd
will help with windows load times and game loads for games installed on it
120g is enough, 240g will allow for a few more games to be installed on it

This is the right information true, but why not get a true x16/x16 bandwidth if you are going to get a new board ? Just asking...

Thanks, but the main question I have is should I worry about SATA 2.0 VS. 3.0 that much ? The data transfer rate should be plenty, but if I am upgrading should I get new SSD's at 3.0 ?

I am current running RAID 0 with 3 SSD's, 256 GB each. I have several Samsung SATA 2.0 128 GB SSD's also, and yes the storage capacity is not really my concern, given I am just gaming on this build.

Please let me know what you think about my replies above. Thank you again.

[initiaLiSeD]

What CPU/board are you upgrading from, your parts seem fairly modern?

On SSDs I did notice small gains switching from a SATA II controller to SATA III, bumped up from ~200mbps to about 380mbps on a Samsung 850.

On the other hand almost all SATA 3 based SSD RAID systems I've worked on topped out at ~1gbps so there's little to gain with faster drives.

[_I_]

by the time gpus can use more than x8 @ 3.0 you will need a better cpu to push it
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/22.html

with spinning hdd, they cannot fill sata 2 bandwidth (300mb/s)
ssd can nearly 3 bandwidth (600mb/s)
on a new ssd, get sata 3

[The Giving One]

Originally posted by initiaLiSeD:

What are you upgrading from?

If you mean my MOBO and CPU well they are not really worth mentioning here really...LOL...my CPU was great in its day and still handles many games fine but the board is not so great...it gets me by ok. DP45SG Intel Extreme with QX9650 gently overclocked to 3.33. 8 GB Kingston value RAM...1333 Mhz.I cannot get the darn thing to register faster than 1.1 on the PCI-e slot...maybe a BIOS issue but the board is old and no more BIOS are available for it.

I saw your edit just now so thanks also for clarifying and giving your actual experience with 2.0 VS. 3.0 and RAID.

Originally posted by _I_:

by the time gpus can use more than x8 @ 3.0 you will need a better cpu to push it
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GTX_980_PCI-Express_Scaling/22.html

on a new ssd, get sata 3

Thank you for that link "mystery man"...LOL...that is some good info and I appreciate that. I have always seen that the difference is only about 1% and only seen with benchmarking, so you are right here of course. I just figured if I am going to upgrade, why not get the true x16/x16 anyway but I am ok on that now.

Maybe I can get by for a while with my SATA 2.0 SSD's and get 3.0 ones when they are on sale or something like that, considering what initiaLiSeD posted above ...just an afterthought. The thing is I have about 10 Samsung 128 GB SATA 2.0 SSD's laying around not being used...almost new...so I think I should use them you know...instead of buying new ones just because of the 3.0 question here...not really sure.

[initiaLiSeD]

With SSDs on an Intel RAID a pair of SATA 3s would be limited to 1gbps. Chances are you'd hit this with 4 SATA 2s. If you could stripe 6 of them you'd have a nice big, fast OS drive. Just keep it backed up incase a drive dies.

[The Giving One]

Originally posted by initiaLiSeD:

With SSDs on an Intel RAID a pair of SATA 3s would be limited to 1gbps. Chances are you'd hit this with 4 SATA 2s. If you could stripe 6 of them you'd have a nice big, fast OS drive. Just keep it backed up incase a drive dies.

Hey thanks for that idea and advice here...I saw some data once that suggested that the performance pretty much starts to not be a big deal after you get past 3 drives, so 3 in RAID 0 is better than 2 if one goes by that theory and then 4 or more really does not do much also if one goes by that theory. However, I am always open to new ideas and suggestions so thanks again for yours here. I guess you mentioned 6 over 4 above for the extra storage space and that makes sense in that case.

So in your example, I would need a board with quite a few SATA ports on it, or get a PCI card for the extras, although I do prefer to hook them straight into the board. There is a video on youtube currently (maybe, it was a while ago I saw it) where a group put about 20 together in RAID 0...it was pretty intense. They actually proved that there was an amazing amount of speed from that setup and had the data on video to prove it. But of course, I don't want 20...LOL...but 6 sounds good and that is possible, considering I have plenty of SATA 2.0 ones laying around here.

EDIT...I guess I could hook all the drives into the board directly, and get a pci card for the DVD and HDD because performance there really is not an issue...what do you think ?

So 6 X 128GB in RAID 0 would be about 768, give or take and that is about the same as my setup now...3 X 256GB. But the questions still stands about how to have enough SATA ports on the board and I would need a couple of more for HDD and DVD drive also....

You are right about the backup and I just keep Steam games on my rigs so if a drive dies it is no big deal but still, a backup is good and I do keep one on a regular HDD.

EDIT 2..Hello everyone...I hope this will not be considered bumping as i will compile if someone posts a new comment, but just wanted to update here as I just found out I have my refund on my 980 FTW now and I have in-store credit ready to buy another card !!...The problem is the same as a few weeks ago...Newegg is still sold out of some of the 980 Ti cards. I want the EVGA 980 Ti ACX 2.0+ with stock clocks (no factory overclock...not going down that road again).

So at least the store credit card does not expire, but should I just go ahead and by my other hardware here as duscussed and use my backup 560 Ti until they hopefully restock, or wait to see if the restock happens soon...not sure. I understand it is all the same money in the end really.

Also, it is not really so much on topic so forgive me, but can anyone say they have heard of any issues with the 980 Ti's yet ? The 980 FTW had lots of problems and you can see that on the forums for EVGA so I am a little paranod now and want to be more careful before I buy this time.
That is why I don't want to go with a factory overclocked card at all, you see. Thanks in advance.

[Rove]

To have true Gen 3 PCIe x16/x16 you are going to need to go for a LGA 2011-V3 CPU and X99 motherboard platform. The cheapest CPU for that is the 6 core 12 thread i7-5820K

Here's what i'd recommend for you:

Intel Core i7-5820K 3.3GHz 6-Core Processor
Antec KUHLER H2O 650 Liquid CPU Cooler
ASRock X99 Extreme4 ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard
G.Skill Ripjaws 4 series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/N7KXzy
Base Total: $744.96
Mail-in Rebates: -$50.00
Shipping: $3.99
Total: $698.95

You can of course get more RAM, a better cooler or a more expensive CPU since this is the cheapest one for the platform. I think that this is probably the best value for the money though unless you want 32GB of RAM or a better cooler. This motherboard and CPU are definitely the best value for the money on this platform.

[The Giving One]

You are right, Rove, those are really great prices for the hardware you posted about. I did some reading on the X99 before posting here and some say unless you are doing so serious stuff with video editing and serious multitasking, then it is way overkill, but that does answer the part about my topic concerning true x16/x16. Thanks for doing the homework here on the parts and posting it. I had not really considered going LGA 2011-V3 because of how expensive it is right now, also with X99 but those are really good prices for it, truly. Thanks for the comment.

Do you have any input on my previous post edit number 2 also ? I compiled my last posts.

[_I_]

the 5820k has slower cores than the 4460-4790k
but 2011-3 ddr4 ram speed is greatly improved if you go with a quad ch kit (4x4g or 4x8g kits)

[The Giving One]

Originally posted by _I_:

the 5820k has slower cores than the 4460-4790k
but 2011-3 ddr4 ram speed is greatly improved if you go with a quad ch kit (4x4g or 4x8g kits)

Yea that is true. I really like the 4.0 stock speed of the 4790K. I am leaning that way, but appreciate Rove's info about true x16/x16, and your comment here also. I think Rove was just trying to post the specs on the most affordable one for my information, as you may know.

[Rove]

I'd say get your other stuff first cause why not? GPU will be easy to install later without taking everything apart.

I'd also say that I think you should consider a R9 Fury X. They're all on preorder now (equivalent of sold out) but will probably be comming as soon as your GTX 980 ti would or nearly. The R9 Fury X is the first consumer graphics card using HBM (high bandwidth memory) and provides memory bandwidth of 512 GB/s. It may only have 4GB on that card but speed is more important than total GB and while AMD is using 8GB on the R9 390X the R9 Fury X is more expensive, higher up on the branding totem poole and expected to outperform the R9 390X by a long shot.

Check out the stats on the R9 Fury X here on the AMD Radeon Rx 300 series Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units#Radeon_Rx_300_Series

Compare it to the GTX 980 ti meanwhile on a Nvidia GeForce 900 series wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#GeForce_900_Series

As you can see the R9 Fury X has significantly more GFLOPS and Texel Fillrate than the GTX 980 ti or even the GTX Titan X. It's by far the leader in computer power and filling in 3D graphics (with texels) so based on these stats and the super high memory bandwidth I like it.

[The Giving One]

Thanks again for the info here and support, Rove. I was just checknig out the links you gave here...pretty conclusive as you said. So yea, until I can decide on which card to get considering the many options, I think I will just go ahead and get the other hardware. I will just have to use my old card for now with this new build if the card I decide on is not available on Newegg at the time of getting the other hardware...no biggie.

Lets say I am going to go with the z97 option and the 4790k. Which board manufacturer has the best reputation for support and for making a good product ? I have a few preferences based on my experience, but hope to get info and opinions for you guys here while this thread is somewhat active.

So if anyone would like to post their opinions on a board, please feel free and thanks in advance. i am most likely just going to go ahead and pick some 1600 memory also...hopefully get the whole kit (16 GB) at one time. Or whatever the fastest CL9 memory is I can get without overclocking that will work on the board chosen. I am not asking anyone to do any legwork here concerning matching up hardware, I just would like to get help picking a good board pretty much. My heatsink will work with LGA 1150 so I should be good there with no heavy overclocking. I am going to have to look at the suggestion of having 6 SSD's in my RAID array, so SATA ports are a concern also. Thank you all again.