New Gaming / Video Editing / Music Production PC!

[Phil]

Hey guys, it's been a while but my old PCS desktop is over 5 years old and it's time for an upgrade. Like the title says this will mainly be used for gaming but I do video editing and some music production too. I think this build is pretty damn solid myself but if anybody has any input as to better the build that would be great, thanks.

Case: CORSAIR OBSIDIAN SERIES™ 750D FULL TOWER CASE
Overclocked CPU: Overclocked Intel® Core™i7-6700k Quad Core (4.00GHz @ upto MAX 4.60GHz)
Motherboard: ASUS® MAXIMUS VIII HERO: RoG, PCI-e 3.0, SATA 3.0, LG1151
Memory (RAM): 32GB HyperX FURY DDR4 2666MHz (4 x 8GB)
Graphics Card: 6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 980 Ti - DVI, HDMI, 3 DP
1st Hard Disk: 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk: 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
RAID: RAID 0 (STRIPED VOLUME - 2 x same size & model HDD / SSD)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive: 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply: CORSAIR 750W CS SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Processor Cooling: Corsair H100i GTX Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste: ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Extra Case Fans: 2x 120mm Apache Black Quiet Fan (fitted to extract from rear/roof)
LED Lighting: 2x 60cm Red LED Strip - To Compliment The Colours of Your Case
Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster ZxR 5.1 PCI-E Soundcard
Wireless/Wired Networking: 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB Options: 2 PORT (1 x TYPE A, 1 x TYPE C) USB 3.1 PCI-E CARD + STANDARD USB PORTS
Operating System: Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence
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 7 to 9 working days
Promotional Item FREE RAINBOW SIX OR ASSASSINS CREED with select GTX 9 Series GPUs!
Promotional Item ASUS ROG Gladius Gaming Mouse Promo (£32)

 

[Spuff]

I would always want a smaller primary drive. If you have an OS related catastrophe you may not be able to access the drive, so storing data on it is not ideal.

 

[Phil]

I would always want a smaller primary drive. If you have an OS related catastrophe you may not be able to access the drive, so storing data on it is not ideal.

Good thinking, might have to add another drive.

Might add an M.2 drive for the OS

 

[jerpers]

I have a similar set up and it runs like a dream. The samsung 951 M.2 drive is blisteringly fast. I went for the ranger board as there is minimal difference between the two. I did find the fans on the cooler a little noisy and swapped them out, it is now silent on basic operations.

 

[Phil]

I have a similar set up and it runs like a dream. The samsung 951 M.2 drive is blisteringly fast. I went for the ranger board as there is minimal difference between the two. I did find the fans on the cooler a little noisy and swapped them out, it is now silent on basic operations.

Thanks, that is the exact drive I'm looking at.

 

[Frank100]

Hi,

I think the M.2 drive would make a nice addition to the spec and I wanted to suggest a few areas where you might claw some of the cost of that drive back.

Sometimes overclocked PCs aren't as stable as those running at stock speeds. I don't know what video editing software you will be using but it is quite possible it will have CUDA support and most of the rendering will actually occur on the graphics card. If you were an hour into a three hour conversion or render you'd be quite cross if the CPU did cause a reboot and it might on the odd occasion. Certainly for gaming I would think the stock speed will be plenty.

I'm not a huge fan of water cooling and I have a number of high end workstations running 24/7 on GPU assisted processing work running on aftermarket heatsinks and fans, which do the job perfectly well. These are machines with 2x8 core processors, 4xdouble width graphics cards running 100% CPU and 100%GPU non stop for weeks at a time without any problems, (although these CPUs aren't overclocked). If you did go for the stock speed processor (i7 6700k) you could lose the water cooling.

As for sound I suppose it comes down to gaming versus listening to music. For gaming a good soundcard makes sense but for listening to music, maybe what you've produced, I think you would get a better sound from some monitor speakers if you went with an external DAC. The motherboard has optical out and there are some good DACs out there for about £60-100. You could try the on-board sound for gaming and see how good or bad that is to start with. PCS allow you to add to your PC so you could add a sound card later on.

Instead I might be tempted to just up the PSU a notch to give me plenty of capacity to add a second graphics card later on. For me a 750W is cutting it a little close on a system like yours with two 980tis. The 850W would be my preference.

Frank100

 

[Phil]

I have added a Samsung 951 256GB M.2 drive to the build now. I had a bit of cash spare still and didn't need to cut back anything to afford the cost of it. Thanks for your input though Frank100 theres some useful things to consider.

The reason I've gone for an OC this time around is due to the fact I've been using some CPU intensive programs recently so I've decided to see what an OC can offer in terms of performance. I've also used water cooling in my last two builds and haven't had any problems with it and it has been good to me so I'm going to stick with it for now. Also I have multiple headset / headphones which I use for different thing and I know what you mean with the soundcard for gaming but I have that covered.

Also I was recommended a 650w PSU but upped it to 750w just incase. I have no desire to go SLI anymore as support for multiple GPU's is practically dead now, when I need to upgrade I will just buy an whole new single GPU instead.

 

[Frank100]

Sounds like you were well researched Phil. I hope the rig impresses when it arrives. With all that processing going on it will be a warm Christmas in your house!