Some gaming pc questions

Tomryan333

New member
Before i purchase this pc, i have some cpu and future upgrade questions, but here are the specs

Case
CORSAIR CARBIDE SERIES™ AIR 540 GAMING CASE
Overclocked CPU
Overclocked AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Eight Core (3.7GHz @ up to 4.1GHz)
Motherboard
ASUS® ROG STRIX X470-F GAMING (DDR4, USB 3.1, 6Gb/s) - RGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
11GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 Ti - HDMI, 3x DP GeForce - GTX VR Ready!
2nd Graphics Card
11GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 Ti - HDMI, 3x DP GeForce - GTX VR Ready!
1st Hard Disk
8TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA PRO 3.5", 7200 RPM 256MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3400MB/R, 2500MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1000W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Noctua NH-U14S Ultra Quiet Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Extra Case Fans
2x 120mm Black Case Fan (configured to extract from rear/roof)
Sound Card
ASUS STRIX Soar 7.1 PCIe sound card
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Google Chrome™
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price £3,165.00 including VAT and delivery

My questions are as follows,

1) Ive chose the ryzen 2700x over intel i7 7820, did i make a good choice?
2) What are the potential upgrades for said AMD series with *and *without a motherboard change. ( i ask this as i noticed the path for intel is the i9 and it didnt require a motherboard change however when selecting what amd cpu the 2700x was the highest it would show me. )
3) With a potential 6 120mm fans and a lot more on the graphics cards is that enough cooling for now and for any future gpu upgrades or should i go for the corsair h115 cooler with fans?

Thank you for your time, patience and replys to my questions i look forward to the answers. :)
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
Before going through those questions, are you using the PC for anything other than gaming, and what monitor are you pairing it with?
 

Tomryan333

New member
Its going to be 2 or more 4k 120 hz monitor, i do a lot of gaming, watch streams and youtube, i dont upload videos or stream myself,
 

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
Its going to be 2 or more 4k 120 hz monitor,
Just so you're aware, there's no point to 2 of these monitors really. Since you'll only be running games on 1 of them - unless you intend to consume videos filmed at 4k at 120 frames per second, while also playing 4k games of course.. and I can't imagine you are as there's not much of that on youtube! The secondary monitor can be any old 4k monitor, saving you £1000-£1500.

If you're just gaming, there's no point to more than 16gb RAM. You just won't get any benefit off it, now or in the future.

I'd suggest dropping the sound card. The onboard sound on the motherboards is pretty decent. If you decide you need better in the future you are probably better off looking into audiophile gear instead of gamer-branded stuff.

If it's for straight gaming, the i7 8700k is better than any other CPU (including the R7 2700x or the i7 7820x)
ArxS7iaQoxa9h5B7cm9uND-650-80.png

GTX 1080 ti SLI is probably not the right play here. Some games will see 0 benefit from SLI / multi GPU setups. And sometimes when there is some benefit, GTX 1080 ti SLI isn't very far off a GTX 2080 ti in performance anyway.
relative-performance_3840-2160.png

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_RTX_2080_Ti_SLI_RTX_2080_SLI_NVLink/7.html

It will almost always make more sense to go with the single fastest GPU you can afford - rather than 2 weaker ones in SLI.

2) What are the potential upgrades for said AMD series with *and *without a motherboard change. ( i ask this as i noticed the path for intel is the i9 and it didnt require a motherboard change however when selecting what amd cpu the 2700x was the highest it would show me. )
This is the wrong way to be look at it.
1) Buying a £500 i7 7820x only to replace it with a £900 i9 7900x (or whatever) that was on sale at the time you purchased - i.e. that you could have just bought - is a shocking waste of cash
2) for gaming, there would be very little difference in performance
3) the i7 8700k which is on the Socket 1151 motherboards (e.g. Z370) is better than any other CPU for gaming anyway

For AMD upgrade options, it is expected that Ryzen 2 out next year will be compatible with current-gen motherboards. However, there is some speculation that new motherboards might come out for Ryzen 2 and that these would include PCIe 4.0 or other new features. So buying an AMD setup that
1) has lower gaming performance
2) has speculative but ultimately unknown upgrades
3) may now need a motherboard upgrade for new CPUs but a motherboard upgrade might end up being desirable anyway
is also a terrible use of money.

Your best option is to buy the single best gaming CPU on the market (the i7 8700k) and keep it for as long as you can, before ultimately upgrading the CPU, mobo, and RAM (because DDR5 will eventually come out).

3) With a potential 6 120mm fans and a lot more on the graphics cards is that enough cooling for now and for any future gpu upgrades or should i go for the corsair h115 cooler with fans?
Cooling isn't just about the number of fans.

The Corsair 540 has 2 front 140mm fans, 1 rear 140mm fan, and space at the top for 240/280mm radatiors (for liquid CPU coolers which will include 2 120mm or 140mm fans).

The fans on the GPU don't 'count'. That;s because their job is not managing airflow in the system, their job is getting heat away from the graphics card's radiator and into the surrounding air. In terms of making sure the PC doesn't cook it its own heat, it's the other fans that will manage this by flowing the hot air off the graphics cards out of the case.


Case
CORSAIR CARBIDE SERIES™ AIR 540 GAMING CASE
Overclocked CPU
Overclocked Intel® Core™ i7-8700K Six Core (3.7GHz @ up to 4.8GHz)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Ultra Gaming: ATX, LG1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
11GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080 Ti - HDMI, 3x DP GeForce - RTX VR Ready! ()
1[SUP]st[/SUP] Hard Disk
8TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA PRO 3.5", 7200 RPM 256MB CACHE
1[SUP]st[/SUP] M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3400MB/R, 2500MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1000W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Corsair H115i PRO Cooler w/ PCS Liquid Series Ultra Quiet Fans
Thermal Paste
COOLER MASTER MASTERGEL MAKER THERMAL COMPOUND
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Quantity
1

Price £2,835.00 including VAT and delivery

Unique URL to re-configure : https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/intel-z370-overclocked/cnXsVNBZqr/

I would suggest the H115 liquid cooler as it's the most effective, and it also adds two fans to the top of the case. The cooling in the setup above - default case fans and a high end AIO CPU cooler - is more than sufficient.

The build would also support a second RTX 2080 ti should you decide you want one in the future.
 
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Tomryan333

New member
Before i get to the pc specs, i am a screanaholic, my old screens which im just tagging along are a 26" an 27" and a ~34?" Screen all at 1080p that i shouldve clarified were also going to be used, while yes 2 120 hz (or 144hz) 4k screens will be overkill, i do find my self doing multiple tasks on all current screens (free time up the wazoo) i might limit my self to one main screen at 120 or 144 and one anything else screen at 60..

With that out of the way, onto the pc specs

My budget is at, out right buy is under 3100 and max 3500 if im convinced, i didnt wish to go higher after factoring the screen costs

In all honesty, i didnt get an option to choose the i7 8700k, i choose the intel £850 - £5000 budget option, it simply skips from i7 7820x to i9 with a huge price tag increase, which got me into comparing the two cpus for hours, i didnt want to go to i9 when ryzen 2700x and i7 7820x was well within budget +extra, now it seems a trivial choice what to go for between what i was presented.

I chose the sound card because amd didnt have the 7.1 built in sound system unlike the intel mother board, im not so much a audiophile, but i prefere 7.1 over 5.1, will have to look into getting a system then

The 32gb ram i do admit everyone says its to much for gaming *alone*

Thanks for the claraty on the skeptisim on the future of amd upgrades, partly a reason why i asked is because im fine with waiting longer and jumping longer gaps and having not quite the 100% highest end gaming, since im upgrading from a cheap 3 year old pc, (amd fx 8320 and single gtx 950 to say the least) and before that was a very old windows xp era pc, so the intel i7 8700k card i will use it till ddr5 stuff becomes trivial.

Your system does hand me the freedom to improve the hdd storage now and look forward to upgrading with certainty of a powerfull system and the additional 2080ti if push comes to shove and when it does it will be cheaper than buying it now.

I Just really needed huge a boost in performance and your system will do just that :) but before i do buy it, are there any last tweaks or advice on it now knowing the budget and what its going to be used for now? Just want to be on point with this purchase.

Before i end up doing a midnight speading spree for something that couldve been a tiny bit better within budget :sleeping: :whistling: :sleeping:
 
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Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
find my self doing multiple tasks on all current screens (free time up the wazoo) i might limit my self to one main screen at 120 or 144 and one anything else screen at 60..
That would be for the best imo as there just won't be any benefit to the 2nd screen being more than 60hz :)

In all honesty, i didnt get an option to choose the i7 8700k, i choose the intel £850 - £5000 budget option,
This is because the 8700k and Z370 motherboards are under a different configurator. The one labelled "top spec" or "Z370 overclock" rather than "extreme".

I chose the sound card because amd didnt have the 7.1 built in sound system unlike the intel mother board, im not so much a audiophile, but i prefere 7.1 over 5.1, will have to look into getting a system then
All the motherboards have 7.1 audio. PCS's configurator saying 5.1 is a bit of a leftover from older series.

I Just really needed huge a boost in performance and your system will do just that :) but before i do buy it, are there any last tweaks or advice on it now knowing the budget and what its going to be used for now? Just want to be on point with this purchase.
You may as well get the 3200MHz RAM for a system of this budget. Other than that, no changes spring to mind.

The only thing to note is that Intel have just announced their new CPUs e.g. i9 9900k. It's only available for pre-order at the moment, and PCS aren't offering them pre-overclocked yet, but if you don't mind waiting for November for availability then that would be the easiest way to futureproof.
 
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