2nd time build, entirely for gaming, have some questions, any help is appreciated.

[pvab5]

Specs (budget is £1600 with very little headroom, £30-50 at the very best)

Case: Coolermaster Mastercase PRO 5

CPU: i7 7700 (non-k)

Mobo: Gigabyte Z270X ultra gaming: ATX, LG1151

Ram: 16gb Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3000MHz

Graphics card: GTX 1080 8Gb

1st storage drive: Samsung 850 EVO 250Gb

2nd storage drive: 1Tb WD black

PSU: Corsair 650W TXm series Modular 80+ GOLD

Processor cooling: Noctua NH u14s

Thermal paste: Arctic MX-4 Extreme thermal conductivity compound

Extra case fans: 2x 120mm case fans

Wireless card: 802.11N 300Mb/s


Some questions I have:
Is the NH U14s enough for an i7 7700? I couldn't find any builds using it, and I know that the 7th gen i7 CPUs run quite hot.

What version of the 1080 is typically used on the site, since i'm aware you're not allowed to choose the card, but I realised it's not very expensive on here, only ~£470, which I found stunningly cheap. Additionally, will this run cool enough in my system? Is it also just a lottery of which card I get? E.g., will I get an asus turbo 1080 or a ROG STRIX?

I've heard some issues exist with corsair PSUs, and I was wondering if that's just a rare occurrence? I actually have a 750W TXm in my PC which makes a low grumbling noise from time to time, and actually can be felt vibrating quite strongly, but it's never felt to cause any direct issues, so hasn't bothered me much.

Lastly, which is better out of the ASUS ROG STRIX Z270H and Gigabyte Z270X Gaming ultra? Does it come down to basically a cosmetic option? The Z270H is £20 cheaper.


Side notes:
I don't know a thing about actually doing anything with the insides of my PC by hand, so anything that requires that would be pretty painstaking for me, since I don't really trust myself enough to do it.

I really would like to avoid water-cooling, because of the risks of leaks, I know that they are extremely small, but I'd like to avoid them nonetheless.



Any additional observations would be very welcome and appreciated!

 

[Oussebon]

The spec above seemed to come to £1637.

I would suggest instead:

Case
COOLERMASTER MASTERCASE PRO 5 GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-7700k (4.2GHz) 8MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® ROG STRIX Z270E GAMING: LG1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GB, Wi-Fi - RGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 - DVI, HDMI, 3x DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!
1[SUP]st[/SUP] Hard Disk
1TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 32MB CACHE
M.2 SSD Drive
256GB SAMSUNG PM961 M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 2800MB/R, 1100MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W TXm SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
CoolerMaster Hyper 212X (120mm) Fan CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY 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
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 8 to 10 working days
Quantity
1

Price £1,660.00 including VAT and delivery

Unique URL to re-configure : https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/intel-z270-pc/Y7ht8EjDtM/

The 7700k is not just for overclocking, it's also a good bit faster out of the box. It'll well worth getting.

The WD Blacks are hugely expensive vs regular HDDs and there's no point to them for gaming uses.

The PM961 is a lot faster than the 850 Evo and is about ~£13 more.

The Z270E is £14 more than the Ultra Gaming but has much faster built-in wifi than the cheap card, and also has an extra M.2 socket.

The CM212x would be more than enough for a stock 7700k.

The case is pretty expensive and quite large. If you're not in love with it you could go for something like the NZXT S340 which is a lot cheaper, more than adequate, and not huge.

The GTX 1080 will generally be Palit or Zotac, but the exact model can vary.

What resolution and refresh rate are you gaming at? If it's 1080p, a GTX 1070 might be better value.

 

[pvab5]

Thanks for the help, from what I've seen with the 7700k it does have a higher base clock, but in terms of gaming, there's not a great difference in FPS, and since no actual work will be done, the only reason i'm even getting an i7 is because I think games will start using more FPS. I've heard it hits stunningly high temperatures even with a h110i in the mid 80s to 90s, which is something I really wouldn't want to have in the back of my mind, and if the 212x is sufficient for one, i'm guessing the nh u14s would be as well (which is nice for me since i'm in love with Noctua's fans and their products, ignoring the colour scheme xD).


I'm going for 1080p with 144Hz (though 1440p at a similar refresh rate is not out of the question), and the 1080 is in budget and not much more than the 1070 on here, so I might as well (also for 144Hz, it does stretch quite a bit further into that number than the 1070 in a variety few games). This is a rig that is meant to last me quite a long while, so I'd rather stick to the 1080.

As far as storage is concerned, I was completely unaware of that, so I'm very thankful for that revelation about the M.2 drives! And thanks for telling me the graphics card i'm likely to get, as that's one of things that bugged me most.

However, the reason i'm getting the WD is mostly because of reliability, and since the standard 1tb sata hard drives on PCS aren't branded, I don't really know whether or not to get one.

I didn't realise either of those 2 mobos had any inbuilt wifi, so that's pretty useful, as I was going to buy a PCI card for it, and I prefer the appearance of the Z270E as well, so many thanks again!

The case is something I really am in love with and will stick with, it was the first part I decided upon quite a while ago before I was even thinking of getting a new rig.

Thanks again!

 

[Oussebon]

I've heard it hits stunningly high temperatures even with a h110i in the mid 80s to 90s

So. That's only really true if you overclock it and torture test it. It is going to really high temps if you make it perform AVX workloads but you're not. You can read about it in detail here: http://edgeup.asus.com/2017/01/31/kaby-lake-overclocking-guide/
Thus the CM212x is more than enough. Plenty of people have bought one with that or the smaller titan cooler and I've need seen anyone come back to say it melted.

I mean, you'll also read the same headlines the 7700 non-k https://www.techpowerup.com/233018/...ed-on-intels-core-i7-7700-i7-7700k-processors if you go looking.

The cost difference between the 7700k and 7700 is £33. Given that the CPU is ~£300, the mobo £200, the RAM ~£130 that's about 5% of your base platform. Or 2% of your total system.

There aren't many reviews of the i7 7700 non-k, especially for gaming, mostly because not many people would buy it vs the 7700k for a gaming rig. However, if we look at Anandtech's measurements, we can see things like:

Pretty similar average FPS right? Which is to be expected with a much weaker GPU than the one you're buying. But if you look at the minimums, the 7700 non-k has 10% more of its frames taking longer than 16.6ms, while in another title the 7700k has 12% higher minimum FPS. Which means that you'd be getting a more consistent and even gaming experience with a 7700k. And that's with a much weaker GPU where the gaming experience will be more limited by the GPU than with a GTX 1080.

There's simply no good reason not to buy a 7700k when spending this much on a system to be honest.

By all means get the Noctua cooler if you like, it's a great cooler, but you're sacrificing performance and value if you are buying a Noctua + 7700 instead of a CM212x + 7700k due to budget limits and it's not a setup I'd recommend to anyone paying this much for a PC.

However, the reason i'm getting the WD is mostly because of reliability, and since the standard 1tb sata hard drives on PCS aren't branded, I don't really know whether or not to get one.

The other drives are branded, it's just that which PCS use will vary. It can be Seagate, Toshiba, or maybe Hitachi. If you deliberately go looking for horror stories and people swearing off Seagate you will find them, but if you then go and do the same for WD you'll find the same. I don't think you're meaningfully more likely to get a regular HDD die on you. You can look up stats but of all the ones I've seen there's no knock-out winner: Random example: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-rates-q1-2017/
Other example: http://www.hardware.fr/articles/954-6/disques-durs.html
In the french data you see WD Blacks fail more often than Toshibas and Seagates, and less often. Depending on whether there's an R in the month.

A 1TB HDD is £39. A 1TB WD Black is £68. Given the tiny % chance any HDD will fail, its just not remotely worth it to pay almost double for virtually no more chance of the drive not dying. Obviously you should back up your data to something like an external drive. If you plan was to buy a WD Black to avoid using an external drive to back stuff up because it;'s more reliable, that would be a terrible plan

 

[pvab5]

Thanks for the research, because that looks like quite a lot of time and effort, so i'm sorry that i've ended up using up so much of your time, and if i do just get a normal drive, it would give me the extra money I need to grab that 7700k, so thanks for settling my fears!

This is one thing I really needed, as I couldn't find many people using these coolers, only a hyper 212 evo, but even so, how do these coolers compare? What i mean is NH U14S vs Hyper 212 Evo vs Hyper 212x

Again, thanks for all your help on the topic, it's helped me a lot!

 

[Oussebon]

Thanks for the research, because that looks like quite a lot of time and effort, so i'm sorry that i've ended up using up so much of your time,

Nah, I was filling in the time waiting in for someone who turned up 2 hours late :/

For the coolers the exact performance difference will vary depending on a lot of things, such as your case/airflow, ambient temperatures, and maybe what CPU is being tested. You won't find many reviews of either with an i7 7700k because it's quite a new CPU and to compare new coolers consistently with older ones, tech reviewers use test platforms from a few years ago. It means they don't need to keep rebenching all the coolers each time a new CPU comes out.

That notwithstanding, there are a couple of articles that test the two:
https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cases_cooling/coolermaster_hyper_212x_review/5
https://uk.hardware.info/reviews/68...ew-models-tested-test-results-maximum-cooling

There's a fair performance difference between them. And the Noctua will be quieter. That said, to some degree these are just numbers - while the tests show the Noctua to be better and quieter (for twice the price it ought to be), it also shows that both are capable of sufficiently cooling fairly hot CPUs. And you're gaming, not rendering for 24h at a time. So by all means go for the Noctua, but don't feel you have to go for the Noctua.

 

[pvab5]

Yet again, man, thanks bunches for the help, and i'm not gonna bother with a Firecuda SSHD (though they say the kinks with previous SSHDs have been worked out of it) since any of the programs i'm using frequently will just get put on my M.2 drive.

 

[Oussebon]

cool, glad it was of interest.

and i'm not gonna bother with a Firecuda SSHD ... since any of the programs i'm using frequently will just get put on my M.2 drive.

That seems to be the consensus on these forums - that SSHDs aren't really worth it because, as you say, anything you're loading frequently will be on the much faster SSD anyway.

 

[RichH]

My recently purchased PC has a 7700k, 1080 card and a Noctua cooler and the highest I have seen temps go is the mid 70s, at the moment everything is idling in the mid 30s, so i would say from that respect it does a great job.

First thing the missus said when I powered it up for the first time was "is it working" as the set up is incredibly quiet.

As Oussebon says tho, you pay for that privelidge.

I also concur about the WD Black drives, although my old PC was over six years old, had 2 WD Black drives and they still run fine. With any electrical component, it can fail at any time.

My PC came with a Zotac 1080, but they will just use whatever they have in stock and can get the best deal on.

The build Oussebon posted looks very similar to mine (diff case, ssd, hd, psu, cooler) but the cpu, gpu, ram and mb are identical and I have not been dissappointed

 

[Oussebon]

With regard to the temps, the OP should note that your 7700k is overclocked - whereas the one in the specs above are not.

Good to hear it's behaving itself well

 

[pvab5]

Thank you very much for letting me know that! Temperature was my greatest concern, as when I went looking for problems, I heard that, with the 7700k, the temps would still get incredibly high even without an OC, but I could scarcely find any builds that used a U14S, usually a D15 or a H100i or above, then again, since there are no posts about it, the question about high temperatures sort of answers itself, doesn't it.

Speaking of, is there any chance PCS will get any newer air coolers or water coolers, or even different PSUs, such as the X62 kraken, or the D15, etc.

 

[Oussebon]

They used to have a two tower and fan noctua cooler (might have been D15) but they are massive and heavy and quite a few people found them getting damaged in transit.

Honestly, a CM212x is fine unless you run 24/7 torture tests /with AVX, which is what a lot of people did and then complained about temps.. 70s under gaming load is what my 3770k with an OC runs at and it's fine.

 

[pvab5]

I just remembered, I have one final question, will a 650W TXm form corsair be alright for this build as far as being reliable? I've got a 750 TXm in my current rig which makes this really annoying grumbling noise from time to time, it either happens on startup or doesn't happen at all, if it does, a restart fixes it. It's most definitely coming from my psu.

 

[RichH]

My 6 year old PC from PCS has a 750W TX series Psu and its still going strong.

It was mounted in a HAF 932 tower case with 4 huge fans and cpu fan as well, it was loud, but I think most of it was fan noise, certainly haven't noticed any "grumbling" noise

This rig has a 850W RMx and the whole system is running at about 45-48dB if that helps any, but then the RM is meant to be a "quiet" PSU (20dB compared to 40dB for TX)

I think most of the noise is coming from the cooling fans rather than the PSU based on that

 

[pvab5]

Sound like it was just some bad luck then, I had issues with my PC from the start, but got them fixed very quickly, since the customer service here is great, this started a couple weeks in to having my fixed rig, and would make vibrations that could be felt through my table, but since it has no major effects on my PC, I just left it as it is.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Oussebon]

The RMx would generally be complete silent. It's semi passive which means it can cool itself without needing to use the fan under many load conditions.

 

[pvab5]

I usually can't hear the PSU when it's not making 'that' noise, so I'll stick with the TXm PSU.

Thanks again!