New Rig Spec | Opinions and Suggestions welcome!

[sHAYM4N]

Hi all,

I'm looking to build a new rig to replace my ageing 2500k based setup. It's about 5 years now since I last built one up, so hoping those in the know may be able to offer some advice or improvements to my initial list here, or any potential problems?

I'm a freelance graphic designer and work from home, (Blender, Photoshop, Premiere, ZBrush, Unity etc, a little gaming) so it's my daily machine and hoping to build something that will last me another 5 years or so..

I've budgeted for around £1500 initially, but it's more important to me that I get the guts as high end as possible, with headroom to upgrade some bits later down the line, so storage etc isn't as important atm (and possibly could be trimmed down to get this closer to budget). If it runs a bit over it's not the end of the world, hopefully I can recoup a little from selling on some of my existing gear.

Prices are based from my local supplier (CCL), and it's just a quick spec I've run through to get an idea..

CPU i7 6700k £309.98
Pushing for the 6700k for rendering and general performance that I need, with a little headroom for the 5 years. Likely won't be overclocking it (apart from XMP profiles etc) but want the capability to do so if I need to later down the line.

CPU Cooler Corsair H100i-GTX-Extreme - £107.34
Again haven't looked into this much, so any suggestions here welcome! Seems a popular choice, and prefer something reasonably easy to install (it's been a while!). Won't be overclocking initially but want to keep the thing ticking daily, and cool when rendering etc..

Motherboard Gigabyte Z170X-GAMING-7 £172.98
Open to suggestions on this, no major requirements other than performance, and a decent amount of USB ports for peripherals. Quickly went by a decent review somewhere, but will look into it further.

PSU Coolermaster G750M - "Free" with mobo
Lifespan and enough juice to power the thing hopefully, it's included with the mobo, but any suggesions here welcome (esp if I go with another motherboard).

RAM - Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x 16GB) 3200MHz DDR4 £195.38
Again open to suggestions here, was hoping to move my 16GB over from my current system, but being DDR3 won't be a possibility, so will need to start afresh. Could possibly drop to 16GB and upgrade later, but with the mobo being max 64GB would prefer 16GB sticks (so I can max it out if needed without having to completely replace). Couldn't find an option for a single 16GB strip so roughed this out. Not sure how much of a performance boost I'll see over 16GB to be honest.

SSD Samsung EVO 500GB SSD £129.98
Will only be used for OS and software, I'm planning to move my OCZ 240GB SSD over from my current machine for game installs (BF4 and maybe another one or two). Open to suggestions.

HDD Storage WD Red 4TB SATA III £131.88
For production files, photoshop etc, realability mostly important here. Will use my current 1TB HDD for docs, photos music etc, or possibly buy another later.. I backup via Crashplan, Onedrive etc, but 4TB should be enough for now. Going by hearsay on WD being more reliable than Seagate etc..

Case NZXT 450 £102.82
Had a Fractal R4 atm which I do like, but this or the 440 looks a little more suitable for radiators with the headroom? Would ideally still like room for an optical drive, but could get an external one if totally necessary. Open to suggestions here, solid build quality and a decent silence/cooling mix also important.

GFX Card - Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti Xtreme 6GB £579.59
Important for work and play not sure how much better the Xtreme version is over standard, but for an extra £40 in proportion seemed the best choice?

Sound Card
Not as important to me, will either use my existing card (Xonar DG) or mobo sound for the time being.


Current Total: £1729.95

All help and suggestions are greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!

 

[BikerEcho]

Now that's a killer rig.
If you have the money and actually need that sort of performance, then why not.

I'll say, if you don't intent to overclock, or maybe only a little down the line, that cooler is overkill.
It's both more expensive and it's noisier because of a dual radiator.
How about an H60? It's almost half the price and it's quieter. Sure the CPU is gonna run slightly hotter, but nothing to worry about at all.


That ram kit is very expensive. You sure you need that much?
I know you are a graphic designer and all that, but i think 16 is properly gonna be plenty... but really only you can know how much you need. To me 32gig and up is for servers, computers running virtual machines or very specific computers.


About the GPU.
All those amp editions and super clocked editions are usually not a good idea. You rarely get enough extra for the asking price.
In this case though, it seems better than other cash grab editions, mostly because of cool LED's and they actually updated the cooler instead of just using the same cooler from their non xtreme edition.

But when you think about it. That card is crazy expensive, and Nvidia is coming out with their new flagship cards properly this summer.
Maybe you should wait for that instead

 

[Technician1]

If it's going to be a render machine, you'll want to double or quadruple that ram and you forgot an OS.
I'd also avoid water cooling like the plague it is. Too much maintenance and risk to be worth it for a daily driver, air is the best choice for none to mild OC.
I do Graphic design as well as 3d game levels, movies, and commercials and a lot of video editing as well so the more ram you throw at it the better, you'll always want more and it's best to buy it all at once in a matched kit.

You might want to rethink the cpu and mainboard to allow for a hexa core or octo core cpu.

 

[sHAYM4N]

If it's going to be a render machine, you'll want to double or quadruple that ram and you forgot an OS.
I'd also avoid water cooling like the plague it is. Too much maintenance and risk to be worth it for a daily driver, air is the best choice for none to mild OC.
I do Graphic design as well as 3d game levels, movies, and commercials and a lot of video editing as well so the more ram you throw at it the better, you'll always want more and it's best to buy it all at once in a matched kit.

You might want to rethink the cpu and mainboard to allow for a hexa core or octo core cpu.

Great points thanks!

OS yep, will grab another copy of Win10 as this one will be linked to my mobo. Just costing up the hardware first (also want zbrush now)

I do render quite a bit, but mainly through the Cycles engine in Blender (using GPU processing). It doesn't tend to be that intensive a scene, mainly animated icons, and occasionally environment scenes for games (casino games etc, pretty simple cartoony style normally). RAM was mainly a consideration for Photoshop, I work in UI design mostly, and tend to use a lot of layers etc but 16/32 should be enough for that atm. Was going to start with 2x16GB, to free the last two slots for another set later down the line. Video editing is mainly personal stuff atm and not very often.

Great point about the liquid cooling! My ex-employer actually bought me a Seidon 120 as an upgrade to my Hyper 212, so felt I had to use it, but saw little difference cooling wise. I was more concerned about the longevity of the chip (with daily use, rendering etc) than OC'ing it, but guess it's better to have a CPU die than a leak all over your system and HDD's! Will take a look into that.

Hex and Octocore are a little out of my budget atm to be worthwhile I think. Would likely have to be a 5820k or 5930k at most, and for the amount I render v everyday use, not sure it will be worth it (I usually render on an evening/occasionally overnight). Eventually I would love to have a separate rig as a networked render farm, but will likely have to move house first, so will be a few years down the line!

Thanks again for your help, good food for thought that!

 

[rocketman25]

I think your rig looks perfect I would just save some money on your CPU by getting a non k CPU. If you don't plan on overclocking. Personally I don't like over clocking due to shortening the parts life. Although every one has their opinion. Also if your really looking into doing some rendering look into the nvidia quadro but that 980ti will also do a great job. Also I think if you do long renders maybe some ECC ram might be better (less memory errors). Every thing looks great. I even have a h100i and I love it 2years of operation and going strong. Hope that helped.


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